What is holding up action on housing?

The scene at the Massachusetts State House this past week was a familiar one: Island law enforcement, business owners, school officials, hospital workers — the cornerstones of the community — were all but getting on their knees, pleading with lawmakers to take action on housing initiatives.

The testimony was emotional, but also data-driven. Almost half of the Island is severely cost-burdened by housing; the median home price has reached $1.5 million, a more than 100 percent increase over the past decade, with a post-pandemic surge. Police chiefs are struggling to staff their departments; it’s most acutely felt in Aquinnah, where there is only one active police officer left on the force. Small businesses can’t find workers, and are deciding to close; schools are worried that with a significant number of teachers at retirement age, staffing classrooms could become even more difficult in the near future.

It was a dire picture presented, and we hope that the Joint Committee on Housing, and other state lawmakers, were actually listening. We hope they may finally stop holding up action on this obvious need, and overcome whatever that obstacle is. Time is running out.

Those testifying were at Beacon Hill to support a transfer fee — what some have called the mansion tax. It is just one option that could allow Vineyard communities to raise significant revenue, not only for building new affordable housing, but for redeveloping, and other new ways to find relief for residents. 

The transfer fee has long been the goal, not just for the Vineyard. Other resort communities, like Nantucket, Chatham, and Provincetown, have also pushed hard for the option at the State House, and in the case of some municipalities, it has been a battle fought across decades. 

There are a number of different ways the fee could work, but before lawmakers now is an option of a 1 to 2 percent tax on real estate transactions over $1 million. For example, when a $20 million home is sold, roughly $200,000 on the low end would go toward housing initiatives. Had the fee been active during the pandemic, there would be millions of dollars in local coffers that could be helping right now to put shovels in the ground. 

Sadly, the real estate lobby on Beacon Hill, a formidable group, opposes the idea. Realtors, though not all, fear that the fee could increase prices, and that not enough money would be raised to make a dent in the housing crisis. They have apparently been lobbying effectively against the measure. Last legislative session, there was a real chance the governor could finally sign the act with the House and Senate approving, but the option was dropped by lawmakers from consideration just before the session ended.

We believe that the real estate lobby fears are shortsighted, and that the Massachusetts House and Senate leaders need to grow a backbone and get this done. If the real estate lobby is indeed what is holding this up, it is high time to call it out about that, and surge past its attempts to derail this effort. We have done study after study to show that we are housing-insecure and in a housing crisis. We don’t need studies. We need action.

There is some hope with the latest version of the bill before lawmakers. Instead of giving the option for any municipality across Massachusetts the ability to enact the transfer fee, current legislation — which was under consideration at last week’s hearing — would give the option only to “seasonal communities.” The term obviously relates to tourist-heavy communities, but it is also an official designation approved through the legislature that gives communities with a seasonal workforce special tools to address their unique needs. It’s a smart tactic enacted by the legislature, given the more profound housing struggles that communities like the Vineyard and Nantucket are facing. The idea now is to provide the option as part of that seasonal communities designation, which we strongly endorse.

By providing an option just for seasonal communities to enact the transfer fee, lawmakers are sidestepping opposition in other parts of the state, where there may not be as great a need for housing as on the Islands. It’s giving new hope that this could pass.

We are badly in need of housing. As we heard from some police chiefs across the Island, long passed is the time when a police officer — or anyone in the working class — could work extra shifts and overtime to save up for a downplayment on a house. And the incentive to work hard for a community where it’s impossible to buy a house, we fear, is one that is not open and accepting — the true Vineyard way.

It is time for the legislature to act. We leave you with a quote from Dukes County Sheriff Robert Ogden at last week’s hearing: “We cannot afford to stand idly by while Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, grapples with the detrimental and erosive effects of the housing crisis. We cannot afford to wait any longer.”