To the Editor:
There was a nice little piece recently in the New York Times today decrying the “destruction” of European cities by tourism (“My Beloved Italian City Has Turned Into Tourist Hell,” I.M. Sala, August 9, 2024). It’s not what you’d think: higher prices, more traffic, bigger crowds, more garbage, which are bad enough. It’s short-term rentals and short-term businesses: short-term rentals that drive up the price of housing and drive ordinary citizens and working people out of town; and short-term businesses — shops, shacks, bars, restaurants, car and moped rentals, real-estate agencies — that open in April and close in October, and live off the daily, weekly, monthly tourist trade. These are the money interests that are behind the constant clamor that “there’s a housing crisis” and “not enough affordable housing,” because of course no one, including their own workers, can afford to live and work where they do business. Why should they pay for affordable housing for their employees when they can get state and local public money to pay?
We don’t have a housing crisis on the Vineyard: We have a tourism crisis. Publicly funded affordable housing is not the solution to, but an accommodation of, the problem. What we should be doing is stop giving seasonal business licenses to people who will not commit to doing business all year round. The towns should all be able to agree that if you want to do business on the Vineyard, you should be willing, like a good citizen, to stick around and help clean up. It may be too late to save the Vineyard from the fate of Bologna and Barcelona, but we can at least stop pandering to the industry that’s ruining the Island for its residents every summer.
Michael Hall
Vineyard Haven
