Warren’s Island visit focuses on housing initiatives

Updated Aug. 19.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass, came to the Island last week to focus on affordable housing at a roundtable discussion as local officials look for federal and state assistance amid growing concerns about the sustainability of life on the Island for year-round residents. 

Arriving Friday, August 14, for the day, Warren said she came to learn more about the reality of housing for locals and to present a substantial housing act that she co-sponsored, which became federal law this July. She toured workplace units, and lent her ear to the drawbacks faced and achievements made toward tackling the Vineyard’s housing crisis, as the median home price was close to $1.7 million in 2025, and the average sale price jumped in the past year more than $600,000, to $2.5 million; all while the regional median income remains steady at $114,200 for an individual and $163,100 for a family of four, according to the Dukes County Housing Authority. 

Local leaders in regional planning, the working waterfront, social services, housing, and the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) met with Warren at the Martha’s Vineyard Chamber of Commerce Friday and described a balancing act between the building pressure of a tourism economy and the reality of 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 percent of Americans … I just want to be able to hear from all of you.”

Warren, a Democrat, represents Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate, and on Friday, in a bright room at the Chamber of Commerce, she highlighted the federal government’s most substantial housing law in more than three decades, which she co-sponsored and championed, called the 21st Century Road to Housing Act.

The act aims to increase housing supply and cut through regulatory red tape as most of the country faces higher costs and a rising need for housing development; in Massachusetts, to meet demand, the state needs to build 220,000 new homes by 2035, according to Gov. Maura Healey’s office. It had bipartisan support in the Senate and became law last month, despite President Donald Trump refusing to sign. According to the Constitution, a bill becomes a law automatically if a sitting president doesn’t sign it for 10 days.

“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 in action. But there are some legislative acts in the new law that could address local concerns if local municipalities, nonprofits, and private developers choose to take them on. Warren described the act as a “giant department store.” 

“The best part of the bill is going to be everybody who looks at it and figures out what they can make work for them,” she said on Friday. 

One provision in the new law beats back private equity homebuyers by restricting the number of homes a private firm can own. Institutional investors, defined in the bill as those owning 350 homes or more, are barred from purchasing more single-family properties and cashing in on rent. 

“This is literally the first time the federal government has said no to private equity on anything ever, and the good news is: We did it. The lobbying, no surprise, it’s all on the other side. It’s Wall Street, Wall Street money, and Wall Street lobbyists. We got nothing on our side except tenacity, right? A willingness to fight back,” Warren said to the officials in the room on Friday. 

Another part of the law streamlines manufactured development, or the process of building elsewhere and transporting the structure, which for a place like the Island is often cheaper than building from the foundation, up. 

And 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 a manufactured building project countrywide. 

“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, Airbnbs and short-term rentals take up housing stock, the “Island shuffle” — a euphemism for seasonal housing insecurity and frequent moves — for locals starts again, and many take on second or third 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 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,” Philippe Jordi, executive director and founder of Island Housing Trust, said at the discussion. 

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 more than $1 million to be added to a “housing bank” for affordable housing initiatives. Last Thursday, The Times learned that legislation had stalled in the House and Senate in July. 

“These are our ancestral homes, and we’re losing our tribal members pretty heavily due to the cost of living here and the housing crisis,” Kevin Devine, chairman of the tribal council of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), said. “The millionaires and billionaires are buying us out.”

Devine also said the area median income for Dukes County is restrictive for local families. The mode of determining who qualifies for affordable housing and who doesn’t is based on a median in an area known for wealth disparities.

“When you sit here and tell somebody that it’s affordable housing, and you have someone that’s making $30 an hour that doesn’t even meet the affordable income threshold to get that, that’s one of the biggest problems that we’re dealing with right now,” Devine said. 

As more than 60 percent of the Island’s housing stock sits empty for eight months and Airbnb rentals go for up to $300,000 a month in the summer — almost triple the annual median income for a year-rounder — the issue affects local businesses and workplaces, who have trouble finding housing for the people they need to hire. 

“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. 

Nitrogen-loading and wastewater capacity were another big discussion point for Island leaders in housing. 

Wharton said that when the American Rescue Plan Act — signed by President Joe Biden in 2021 to speed up economic recovery after the COVID pandemic — opened up funding for municipalities across the country, the Vineyard got $3 million from the federal government. It spent the entire amount on wastewater improvements. 

Warren referred to wastewater systems and the near-constant requirements for upgrades as a “hole in the bottom of the boat.” 

Affordability restrictions were another point of friction, local leaders explained. “The incentives really need to shift so that what we’re building is affordable and attainable,” Peter Wharton, chair of the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, said. “If you’re working three jobs on this Island, it becomes unsustainable. We’re trying to address that, but the incentives from the federal government need to change: the ability to subsidize that.”

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 have their basic needs met, while also keeping Island summers a vibrant vacation hot spot. Island representatives in housing, health, and regional planning described it as a constant juggling act, and a dynamic that many year-rounders are participating in every day. 

And another strain on year-round Islanders peeked through on Friday as well: resources, staffing, and solutions spread across all six towns. Although the individual character of each locale on the Vineyard is often considered a strength both economically and culturally, it sometimes translates to a misalignment of town assistance and slower uptick on new initiatives, along with understaffed departments and budgetary concerns.

“Who do we want to be as a culture, as an Island? Because that’s the starting point for this stuff. We can talk about the housing and the economic implications, but if we don’t have a voice — a collective voice — of ‘This is who we want to be’ — then we’ll get lost in the minutiae,” Scott Turton, CEO of Martha’s Vineyard Community Services, said. 

Editor’s note: Updated to include more information about the new federal law and from the roundtable discussion.