The deliberation on the 54-acre subdivision proposed in Edgartown called Katama Meadows went over time again Thursday, and further discussion was pushed until September 10. Islanders who are anxiously awaiting some certainty regarding Katama Meadows will have to wait a bit longer.
It remains unclear whether the meeting in September will include a decision on the 52-lot proposal by Utah developers Richard Matthews and Douglas Anderson, which includes market-rate parcels with 4,000-square-foot homes and attainable lots for moderate-income Islanders.
At the meeting on August 6 in the Martha’s Vineyard Commission (MVC) meeting room, one question kept coming up through each condition the group discussed: Is it the MVC’s job to redesign a project?
Final deliberation on Katama Meadows has already stretched over three MVC meetings. On Thursday, commissioners acknowledged that because the proposal is made up of lots instead of actual houses, it makes the process far more complicated. Not being able to fully visualize the project is a hurdle for the board members tasked with weighing the benefits and detriments of housing developments that could impact the fabric of Island life, character, and the environment.
“This project is primarily a subdivision. They’re not providing any housing … We’re trying to redesign this at this point, and I think we have to accept what they propose,” Tisbury Commissioner Ben Robinson said in the three-hour long deliberation. “We’re trying to fix a project that might not be fixable in these ways.”
“One of the benefits is the housing, but we don’t know when the housing will happen,” Joan Malkin, Chilmark commissioner, said later in the meeting. “If this is approved, it’s because we believe there’s a housing benefit, so let’s make sure we get it.”
While most conditions on Thursday were not passed or were tabled for later, such as clean energy assurances and a further decrease of the market-rate lots, a condition to restrict all market-rate lots from becoming short-term rentals did make it through.
The condition stated the homes that would be built on 19 market-rate lots could not be rented for 31 days or less. The condition doesn’t apply to longer seasonal stays, but quick turnover of renters won’t be possible. With Airbnbs listed for as high as $300,000 a month on the Vineyard, a longer seasonal-stay could still be a lucrative undertaking for a homeowner, but Malkin, who introduced the condition, advocated for the restriction partly to make the homes less desirable for investment buyers.
Through a short-term rental tax in Island towns, there’s a clearer picture of the number of properties used for rentals of 31 days or less than before. The homeowners, however, can be anyone, from year-rounders making extra income to companies.
In the Housing Needs Assessment through the MVC in 2024, the revenue from short-term rental taxes increased considerably over a four-year period, from about $2.1 million in 2019 to $5.5 million in 2021, and finally, almost $9 million in 2023, according to the Massachusetts Department of Revenue. Short-term rentals were rising post-COVID, and still are. In Edgartown alone in 2024, the Department of Revenue documented 1,505 short-term rentals.
Katama Meadows could have added more than a dozen to that number.
“There’s a huge market nationwide and on-Island for investment properties,” Malkin said. “I don’t think that’s what we want … That does not breed a community.”
Malkin said the Katama Meadows subdivision is “already driving up the price of real estate on the Island, and we would be doing it even more if we’re doing short-term rentals.”
But Oak Bluffs Commissioner Brian Smith disagreed. He said the discourse on short-term rentals is potentially untrue.
“There’s this fallacy out there that big corporations are coming in and buying all the houses. That’s nonsense. You would have to be a very foolish corporation to invest on the Vineyard to make money in rental housing. It’s an eight-week season,” Smith said.
He also pointed to the economic benefit of short-term rentals for year-rounders who participate and the seasonality of the Oak Bluffs community. In the summer, Oak Bluffs becomes a culturally-significant vacation destination for a seasonal Black community who have deep roots on the Vineyard.
He discussed the different caliber of homeownership and seasonality in that town, with the shortened stays viewed as a part of the fabric of the community versus an economic detriment.
“We talk about maintaining the character of the Island. The character of the Island is not suburbanization of year-round residents,” Smith said.
Smith said the Island has been a vacation community for about 150 years. “That’s who we are. That’s our character. That’s what we’re supposed to preserve as the character. And if you tell me that all the summer people who are in Oak Bluffs right now aren’t a community, as you say, I strongly beg to differ. And I think all of them would differ with you as well.”
Malkin pushed back against Smith’s assertion. She said she was strictly referring to properties purchased for the purpose of only renting them, not generations of seasonal visitors. Robinson pointed out that short-term rentals are being nationally studied for their effect on the housing market, and locally, they have a documented impact on life here.
“The owners of these houses that build them, and then collect the rentals, they’re not spending their money on the Island either. And so these short-term rentals create wealth leakage, and they diminish the neighborhoods in which they occur. And that’s why short-term rentals are being looked at across the world in communities where there’s a huge demand for it,” Robinson said.
The motion to restrict rentals ended up passing by majority, with only Smith, Daniel McGinnn, and Peter Wharton, commission chair, voting no. Michael Kim was absent, and Ernie Thomas abstained.
Leakage of wealth? Those short term rentals have house cleaners, maintenance, landscaping, groceries, even gasoline, all purchased on island. And of course, shops, restaurants, liquor stores, all benefit. Not saying I am for or against short term rentals. But, as noted, this has been a resort island for 150 years. We, islanders, live here year round and get the benefits of those seasonal people in our pay and in our taxes. R/E tax is paid, but the house may not be occupied year round. That lowers the cost of the town and spreads out the cost of services.
I think the commissioners are asking some of the right questions, but perhaps the most important one is still being overlooked: How much more development can Martha’s Vineyard reasonably absorb?
We keep examining projects individually — traffic here, wastewater there, housing somewhere else — while rarely considering their cumulative effect on an Island with finite roads, water resources, infrastructure and open space. From what we can already see around us, I believe we passed that point long ago.
There is also something troubling about calling housing a major benefit when, as Commissioner Malkin points out, nobody knows when much of that housing will actually be built. These are lots, not homes. Meanwhile, the impacts of creating a 52-lot subdivision are very real.
At this point, it certainly appears that Katama Meadows is headed toward approval. Commissioner Robinson’s observation may therefore be the most revealing: “We’re trying to fix a project that might not be fixable.”
That raises an uncomfortable question. If a project needs this much fixing before it can be approved, what exactly are we approving?