As the vacation economy heats up, the reality of providing housing on Martha’s Vineyard for those who form the bedrock of our community, never easy under the best of circumstances, is becoming harsher. The stock of modest houses that once might have been rented to year-round residents or seasonal workers has been significantly depleted as owners seek to capitalize on the high-priced short-term summer rental market, or sell to the highest bidder in an increasingly competitive real estate market.
Increasingly, employers across the economic spectrum are feeling the squeeze. It is one thing to offer a job and another to house an employee. And as our workforce ages and retires — the carpenters, teachers, nurses, mechanics, and retail business owners who bought into the Vineyard in the ’70s and ’80s before prices spiked are not getting any younger — where will their replacements find a place to live?
Those on the front lines of the Vineyard’s housing crisis agree that rental workforce housing is what is needed. Barry Stringfellow reports this week on a significant initiative in Oak Bluffs to address that need.
On Friday, all five members of the Oak Bluffs affordable housing committee endorsed a plan to construct 32 two-bedroom modular apartments on nine acres of town-owned land on Bellevue Avenue. OBAHC member Peter Bradford told The Times, “It’s something that can make an actual difference to the 370-plus families that are on the [Dukes County Regional Housing Authority] waiting list right now.”
The Oak Bluffs housing committee understands that significant action to address the housing shortage is needed, and now. More details need to be worked out, but their willingness to partner with a private developer and move forward deserves widespread support, and not just from the taxpayers of Oak Bluffs.
One day, those rental units may provide housing for people who will work in jobs that will benefit the residents of other Island towns: The health care aide who travels to Chilmark, the teacher who works in West Tisbury, the electrician called to a house in Aquinnah may one day live in an Oak Bluffs rental.
For all practical purposes, Oak Bluffs is in a very good position to provide a significant dent in the Island’s regional workforce-housing deficit. If and when the town completes a long-delayed land swap with the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank, it will have a centrally located 24-acre parcel of land, buffered by the Southern Woodlands, off Edgartown–Vineyard Haven Road near the Martha’s Vineyard Ice Arena. Island planners ought to give some thought to a school-funding formula that does not leave Oak Bluffs taxpayers to pick up the entire financial burden that would be associated with a larger-scale development of the type now needed.
With its initial step to create 32 rental units, the Oak Bluffs affordable housing committee has shown a willingness to act. Others must follow suit.
Good job
The Edgartown Post Office was forced to close last Friday when the contractor responsible for the addition of second-floor apartments to the building that housed the Post Office and a branch of the Martha’s Vineyard Savings Bank failed to properly secure the roof. Rain fell and fell, and the resulting damage to the interior left the building unusable.
While the Island’s legion of sidewalk superintendents took to social media to carp, complain, and expound on building techniques and the planning board — news flash: The planning board permits construction, it does not actually construct — and to flay building developer Charles Hajjar for having the temerity to think he could improve his development and meet a need for market-rate rental apartments, Edgartown and postal officials got to work to find a way to provide mail delivery in the short term and solve the problem in the long term.
Town administrator Pam Dolby, the go-to person when things need to get done in Edgartown, got on the phone to postal officials and found the go-to man in the enormous postal bureaucracy, John “Mike” Powers, district manager with responsibility for 450 Post Offices in the Boston region. Chris Scott, Martha’s Vineyard Preservation Trust executive director, and a man for all seasons and dilemmas, stepped up and offered the use of the Carnegie building, despite the attendant red tape that offer entailed.
The Edgartown and Vineyard Haven postmasters and their staffs worked tirelessly behind the scenes to make the best of a trying situation. And on Tuesday afternoon, the Edgartown Post Office was up and running in temporary quarters — well done.
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