THERE IS STILL HOPE FOR THE HOUSING CRISIS
by Barbara Gookin Sponsor of Articles 29 & 62
Housing, or the lack thereof, affects us all. Imagine Nantucket in 10 or 20 years if we stay the course we're on. We have done little to guarantee there will be a future for people to reside on Nantucket year-round.

To date, there are more than 10,000 houses on the island and only 1,999 are owner occupied. That number decreases with every home sold by an islander to become a vacation home, employee housing or a seasonal rental. Fewer and fewer home purchases are made by residents, and as a town we are not compensating for that. The result is a dependence on a workforce that commutes here, and an increasing dependence on foreign nationals.

The problem with that scenario is that there are fewer people to contribute to the year-round community in maintaining nonprofit organizations, human services, town boards, committees and the town government itself. We're already having tough time retaining the police force, school employees, etc. The middle class is eroding faster than our beaches. Our state representatives tell us that Nantucket has the most severe need for housing in Massachusetts, and it is no coincidence that we also have the highest percentage of unoccupied dwellings.

Without some sort of guarantee that there will always be housing available to sustain a community, this island will become one big seasonal vacation resort in the summer, and a ghost town in the winter.

The housing crisis is not a completely hopeless situation. So far, we have seen some positive results from the Housing Authority and the non-profit Nantucket Housing office. Its just not enough and we are long overdue for our citizens and our town leaders to take action. The Town can turn this around by formulating a long-term Housing Plan which creates a variety of housing opportunities. The citizens can help by supporting those initiatives and to make funding available to create housing.

This year I have submitted two citizen's articles to address the housing issue. The passage of Article 62 would guarantee an increase in funding for the town or not-for-profit agencies to create housing, and the passage of Article 29 would guarantee that secondary dwellings built in the future would be for the exclusive use of year-round residents. These two things would go a long way toward sustaining the future of a year-round community on Nantucket.

Article 62 is very simple. It changes a number within the Community Preservation Act bylaw that Nantucket adopted in 2001. This bylaw allows Nantucket to collect a three percent surcharge on property transfers and the state matches the funds. The state mandates that the Community Preservation Committee (CPC) use at least 10 percent of those total funds for Historic Preservation, at least 10 percent for Open Space, and at least 10 percent for the creation of Community Housing. The state allows the local Community Preservation Committee to determine how to distribute the remaining 70 percent of funds within those three categories and within that up to 5 percent may be used for administrative costs. My proposed change to this bylaw does not change any of those state mandates, it only determines in advance that the remaining 70 percent be applied toward housing. If voters approve article 62, then from now on 80 percent of CPC funds will go to Community Housing and 10 percent will still go to Historic Preservation, and 10 percent will still go to open space.

The CPC is mandated to study the needs of the community on an annual basis. If you look at this year's spending proposed by the CPC (see warrant article 22) you will see they include very little in the way of housing proposals. There is spending of three percent for administrative costs, 39 percent for Open Space, 43 percent for Historic Preservation, and only 15 percent for Community Housing. That's just barely over the state mandated minimum for Housing, and four times the minimums for open space and Historic Preservation. I think that is a clear statement that the CPC have not studied the needs of our community, which is their charge.

To date, private entities and nonprofit organizations have done a tremendous job preserving Nantucket's history and open spaces. I myself am a great supporter of those efforts and have donated my own time and resources to the Two Centre Street Restoration project, the Land Council's Loring Land campaign and others over the years. There has been, and will continue to be, ways to support these types of efforts, even if the Community Preservation funds cease to exist in the future. Meanwhile, we have an opportunity right now, like never before, to create housing that will provide some permanence in the community.

When the proposal to adopt the Community Preservation Act was brought to Annual Town Meeting by the Nantucket Resident Housing Partnership in 2001, all of the proponents spoke about this being the necessary tool to solving our housing crisis because we could use up to 80 percent of the funds for Community Housing. The voters supported the article and it was adopted. Unfortunately, the local Nantucket committee that allocates these CPC funds has not used the monies in that manner. Housing is a need, which has limited resources. In fact, the Massachusetts General Laws recognize that, and specifically says if a town chooses to appropriate money from the Community Preservation Fund for housing, they may set aside those funds in a housing trust fund for future spending (MGL Chapter 44B, Section 5).

If you vote in favor of Article 62, we will still provide the state mandated funding for both Historic Preservation and Open Space and we will maximize the state available CPC funds for Community Housing.

Article 29

There are approximately 1,775 secondary dwellings on Nantucket Island today. According to the zoning bylaw we have had on record for decades (139-7), the principal purpose of those 1,775 dwellings was to create housing opportunities for year-round residents.

Clearly, this is one bylaw that has been ignored - perhaps because of the way it was worded, or because we wanted to ignore it. Secondary dwellings were not intended to be seasonal vacation rentals, summer worker housing, or even a second vacation home for a vacation home. Some secondary dwellings are rightfully used to house year-round residents who own or rent them, as intended.

Imagine if all 1,775 of them had been created as the law intended, we would not have a housing problem now or in the future. But that's not what happened, and we do have a crisis in the need for year-round housing, partly because we ignored the principal purpose of the secondary dwelling bylaw.

This article proposes to change what the bylaw refers to as its "principal purpose" and make it the only purpose. There is also a section added to make it enforceable. This would only apply to secondary dwellings built after the adoption of this article. By changing this bylaw, it does not take away anybody's right to build a secondary dwelling for their year-round resident family members. The change also does not take away anybody's right to build a secondary dwelling to rent to year-round residents.

If we adopt Article 29, we would guarantee that secondary dwellings built in the future would be for the exclusive use of year-round residents. This means there would

always be a year-round community on Nantucket. I