Sen. Elizabeth Warren tackled housing on Martha’s Vineyard on Friday as costs continue to soar while working people are priced out of a market that caters to wealthy visitors with a median home price that breaches $2.5 million.
Warren was on the Island to learn more about the reality of housing for locals and present a substantial housing act that became federal law this July. She toured workplace housing and lended her ear to the issues and the achievements made toward tackling the Vineyard’s housing crisis.
Local leaders in housing, regional planning, the working waterfront, social services, and the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), met with Warren at the Martha’s Vineyard Chamber of Commerce and described a balancing act between the building pressure of a tourism economy and the lower- to middle- income earners who support that system; the nexus of both is affordable housing.
“My view on this is: it is a really tricky economy,” Warren told the room of Island representatives. “There’s enormous wealth flowing to the top. We’re watching the pressure on not just families that have struggled for a long time; we’re watching a lot of pressure on 90% of Americans, and then you just keep getting hit with tariffs, with a war halfway around the world, with ICE swooping in and changing both the safety issues, but also the long-term, like how you build a housing a workforce. So lots of issues, and the opportunity here is I just want to be able to hear from all of you.”
Warren represents Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate. In a bright room at the Martha’s Vineyard Chamber of Commerce, she highlighted the federal government’s most substantial housing law in over three decades that she championed called the “21st Century ROAD to Housing Act.”
The act aims to increase housing supply and cut through red tape country-wide as most of the nation’s towns and cities face higher costs. It had sweeping bipartisan support in the Senate and became law last month after President Donald J. Trump stalled on a signature for 10 days. According to the U.S Constitution, the president not signing a bill for 10 days while Congress is in session means it becomes a law automatically.
“Donald Trump couldn’t pick up the pen because he just isn’t interested in lowering costs for American families,” Warren stated in a press release at the time.
The ways the new housing law could affect Vineyarders and the unique challenges facing this 100-square mile island are yet to be seen. But according to Warren, not only is there hope on the horizon for housing, but locals are already hitting the mark with some projects. She called the workforce housing near Navigator Homes, an elderly care facility she toured during her visit to the Island, a great model for that type of project country-wide.
“You all have built something really special here,” Warren told Claire Seguin, president and COO of the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital.
But at the roundtable, local leaders, while hopeful, described the reality for an Island community facing the edge of sustainability. Every summer, Airbnb’s and short-term rentals take up housing stock, the “Island Shuffle” for local individuals and families starts again — a euphemism for seasonal housing insecurity and frequent moves — and Islanders take on extra jobs. Some people live in tents in the woods while others share beds in crowded housing. All the while, middle-income individuals and families are leaving the Island more frequently as home and rent prices soar.
“We don’t have middle-income opportunities anymore. I could never have come here, as I did 30 years ago, and settled down and had a family. It’s just not possible anymore,” said Philippe Jordi, executive director and founder of Island Housing Trust.
Cape and Islands State Sen. Julian Cyr, who was also present at the roundtable, introduced transfer fee legislation, which would have added a 2 percent fee to real estate sales over $1 million to be added to a “housing bank” to mitigate some of the issues locals face through affordable housing initiatives. Last Thursday, The Times learned that legislation had stalled in the House and Senate in July.
“These are our ancestral homes, you know, and we’re losing our tribal members pretty heavily due to the cost of living here and the housing crisis,” said Kevin Devine, chairman of the tribal council of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah). “The millionaires and billionaires are buying us out.”
As over 60 percent of the Island’s housing stock sits empty for eight months or more each year and the median home price rises to $2.53 million — a $600,000 increase from 2025 — the numbers show a frightening prospect for locals who need a place to live.
“Our biggest pain point is being able to staff our businesses well,” Lora Ksieniewicz, owner of Yoga on the Vine in Edgartown, told Warren. “I do find housing to be the biggest factor in why we’ll lose staff over time.”
Jordi agreed. “If you don’t have housing in your business plan, you don’t really have a viable business plan,” he said of the Vineyard.
While solutions for housing at both the state and federal level were toggled through during the roundtable discussion, the discourse continued to return to the specificity of the seasonal nature of Island life: Finding ways to ensure year-rounders aren’t working just to survive the summers, while also being sure that Island summers remain a vibrant vacation hot-spot. Island leaders in housing, health, and regional planning described it as a constant juggling act, and a dynamic that many year-rounders are participating in themselves.
