The critical need for hundreds of affordable housing units on Martha’s Vineyard need not conflict with the Island’s environmental beauty. With smart growth, we can achieve both. We can enrich the lives of everyone by building good homes and guaranteeing clean air and drinking water, preserving coastal ponds and ocean waters, maintaining biodiversity and its habitats, and retaining open space.
The Oct. 17 edition of the MV Times highlighted the recent Martha’s Vineyard Commission (MVC) study concerning the lack of 3,000 affordable housing units. Residents and visitors have long known that housing prices have skyrocketed. The commission’s assessment stresses that since 2012, incomes have significantly risen in all six towns, and in Dukes County overall, making local workforce housing increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to satisfy.
The Island-wide effort to create an affordable housing bank, which all six towns have approved, is now in the hands of the commonwealth to move forward.
Housing and environmental conservation must go hand in hand. The development of affordable housing units should never lead to urban sprawl that might endanger delicate habitat and species.
Three years ago, I commented in these pages about the negative impact of unleashed growth on the Island. I observed, “If we compare Martha’s Vineyard to Staten Island, N.Y., we find that the Vineyard consists of some 88 square miles, while Staten Island is smaller, at 59 square miles. But Staten Island’s 2020 census showed that almost 500,000 people live there. If we increased M.V.’s carrying capacity to accommodate all the needs required by increased growth, it would require wider roads for more people, producing more sewerage, more waste to transport from the Island, along with declining freshwater sources, and just about more of everything that no one really wants or needs.”
Affordable housing development can be compatible with land and water conservation if we plan well.
First, the sites of affordable housing should be in the already-built environment, with appropriate permitting approvals from the towns, the MVC, and neighbors. In this way, we will avoid urban sprawl, preserve natural resources, and maintain climate resiliency. We should think about placing new housing near schools, public transportation, and shopping districts.
Second, new construction should use the nitrogen-reduction septic systems to reduce nitrogen runoff into our ponds, the sounds, and the ocean. If possible, we should avoid using fossil fuel sources in new affordable housing, and instead erect solar arrays and install electric heat pumps to produce renewable energy.
Third, new construction should be tied to town sewer systems, which may require upgrades to accommodate additional units.
Finally, development should never take place in our ancient woodlands and the lands that have already been preserved by the Vineyard Conservation Society, the M.V. Land Bank, Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation, and other organizations. These lands, often delicate habitats, should not be vulnerable to human activity that undermines their beauty and serenity. Conservation will enhance the Vineyard’s extraordinary beauty and maintain its pristine environment for future residents and visitors alike.
We should therefore concentrate on protecting undeveloped land, and develop more affordable housing. The MVC’s open space report notes that 40 percent of the Island remains undeveloped and vulnerable. With overdevelopment, “favorite vistas could be blocked, wild stretches of tree-canopied rural roads could become rows of houses with front lawns, and farm fields could become subdivisions. Over time, areas of open land still large enough to support a rich population of plants and animals could become so fragmented — with a road here, a house and lawn there — as to threaten their biodiversity, and especially the survival of rare species.”
We can have both affordable housing and Island beauty, but only if we produce planned economic development for affordable housing while preserving precious Island areas.
Jack Fruchtman, who lives in Aquinnah, serves on the board of the Vineyard Conservation Society. While the views expressed here are his own and not necessarily those of VCS, he helped VCS develop its affordable housing policy, which the board unanimously approved in March 2022
