Editor’s note: This piece is the last in a series in collaboration with potter Victoria Wolf and her exhibit “Show Me the Way to Go Home” at the Workshop in Vineyard Haven. The series will be highlighted at the gallery until Sept. 30.
Lexie Roth grew up spending summers on Martha’s Vineyard, sidling up to the sandy shores of up-Island beaches and settling into the local community, before moving here full-time in the mid-2000s.
Now a musician, and owner of Goldie’s Rotisserie — a bright orange and yellow food truck that caters public and private events — Roth’s journey with housing has been a daunting one, characterized by frequent and regular moves. She estimated that she’s moved more than a dozen times in the past six years.
“The fabric of this place rests on community,” Roth said. “But I feel like having [housing] stability throughout the year is nearly impossible to find.”
In a recent interview with The Times, Roth described the feeling of participating in the “Island shuffle,” a euphemism for the housing insecurity that many year-round residents are affected by.
While the beauty, comradery, and loving nature of the Vineyard community have motivated many, like Roth, to cultivate deep ties with the place, the prevalence of luxury real estate, minimal rentals, and high costs has raised a wall between that sense of safety and true security for thousands of year-rounders.
Roth now lives in a home in Vineyard Haven — her second move this summer alone, totaling three different apartments in four months — but her experience with housing started when she and her father, musician Arlen Roth, bought a house in Aquinnah in 1999. They spent time there seasonally until Roth moved to the Island year-round in 2009. Their decision to own a home was predicated not only on their previous connection with the Vineyard community, but also in the wake of family adversity.
When Roth was 10, her mother and sister died tragically in a car accident. A few years after they experienced the devastating loss and purchased the Aquinnah house, Roth found more than a seasonal place here — she found home.
Roth described her trajectory over those next few years as the start of a new life; she attended culinary school in 2011, and recorded and released an album, titled “Lexie Roth,” in 2012.
But due to an adjustable-rate mortgage (popular in home purchases in the early 2000s), they had to sell the house 18 years after buying. “We clutched onto it for as long as possible,” Roth said. “And I knew once you’re out of owning property here, it’s nearly impossible to get back in.”
Roth’s connection with the Island prevailed, however, and she sought other housing options, moved off for a time, then came back again. All the while, she remained an integral part of the music and food scene.
After they sold the house in 2018, Roth spent the next three years on the Island, working as a private chef and living in workplace housing when she wasn’t on the road as a musician. But as she navigated her own life, the landscape for homeownership was changing.
In 2021, she and her partner, Eva Faber, decided to open a business, Goldie’s Rotisserie. Roth’s workforce housing lease ended, and the pair searched for an apartment together.
“We searched, and searched, and searched,” Roth said. Most of the places they were finding were winter rentals, with extremely minimal options for year-round homes: “[That shuffle] is the constant reminder of the environment that we live in here — there is so much struggling behind the scenes that no one really sees.”
A 25 percent increase in residents in 2020 — coupled with thousands of people flooding the real estate market and occupying their previously seasonal homes — made finding a place far more difficult than before.
Roth said she looked into the affordable-housing projects that were being developed across the Island, but with a budding business, income restrictions were a boundary she couldn’t commit to; if she made more money than their quotas because her business took off, applying would be moot.
So she and her partner moved. And moved again. They reached constantly for more opportunities and tried their best to navigate the overwhelming market. Roth said the longest she has lived in one place during the past five years is six months. Security through a year-round rental was not only difficult — even with hard work, community outreach, and word-of-mouth connection, it was nearly impossible.
“It’s now kind of shifted — you have to be uber-wealthy to own a home here … The majority of people who can afford to buy homes here, they don’t need rental income. So they don’t rent,” Roth said. “In any other housing situation that you don’t own, anything could happen. So living with this kind of low-lying anxiety is just part of life here.”
Roth said her gratefulness for lodging in the past and her love of the Island have been a part of her story as well. She’s often found housing under the wire through conversations she’s had with Islanders when she’s been searching for a place to live. While she said she’d prefer to plan ahead, that path is less of an option when there aren’t any units available.
“I’m always bringing it up,” Roth said with a laugh. “Anyone I run into at the store, it is my leading thing.”
Although the Island boasts a vibrant community of residents who contribute artistically and economically, secure lodging is elusive for many. According to a Martha’s Vineyard Commission Housing Needs Assessment from 2024, the cost of a home has increased 158 percent since 2012, rent for a unit — if available — averages $3,000 for a one-bedroom, and more than 60 percent of homes on the Island are categorized as vacant, meaning they’re occupied for two months or less each year.
“There’s all of these beautiful homes — guest buildings, pool houses — all of these structures that could be housing people who would actually make this place, and continue to make this place, an interesting place to visit and live,” Roth said.
The issue Roth saw in her own life is not one of a lack of community care, but of a shifting tide that residents are being swept up in; while she sees some enjoying the natural beauty and remaining largely unaware of the “Island shuffle,” the severity of housing insecurity looms heavily over many year-rounders.
But Roth said she hasn’t given up hope, and that the tides could turn again. “I love improving upon a place where I live,” she said. “I long to live in a place where I can plant, and see trees grow, and see perennials come back every year, and really put my love into a property.”
