Brick sidewalks line homes in Edgartown, Mass. on June 4, 2024. High housing costs on Martha's Vineyard are forcing many regular workers to leave and are threatening public safety.
Landlords stand to make far more money from short-term tourists than from year-round residents. Meanwhile, many island homes remain almost permanently vacant, their wealthy owners uninterested in renting them out between fleeting visits. “So we’ve had a shift in our income distribution. This speaks to the fact that we’re losing year-round residents," said Laura Silber, the island housing planner who wrote the report."We’re losing our low- and moderate-income families. We’re losing our middle class, because we have no housing.”
“It's a vicious cycle," Ogden said. “Every year, we're losing two to three dispatchers because of not only the high cost of living here, but the insecurity of housing.”One trained correctional officer, he said, was forced to instead take cleaning jobs so she didn't earn too much and lose her access to low-income housing.
Jason Merrill, who owns the Martha’s Vineyard Bike Rentals store, said people will often stop to ask him if he’s heard of any jobs that come with housing, or any housing options at all. Olda Deda, an Albanian visiting on a student work visa, said she works three jobs — at a coffee shop and two restaurants — and a big chunk of her wages goes toward her $900 monthly rent. It's about three times higher than she would expect to pay in Europe, she said, and the housing costs came as a shock to her and many other seasonal workers.