Census Tales

More census figures emerged this week, enforcing with numbers the story of growth that has been told on the Vineyard for decades. The population of Dukes County, which includes Martha’s Vineyard, grew more than ten per cent in the past decade, the highest rate of any county in the commonwealth. We are now, give or take, sixteen-thousand, five-hundred and thirty-five people on this relatively small Island.

Other Massachusetts counties took in many more than our roughly fifteen-hundred more residents, but human-for-human, Dukes County felt the biggest impact. This impact was shown in early census figures reported in the Gazette late last year, most starkly in housing. Despite dwellings enough for each of us to have our own home, most remain unoccupied, designated for “seasonal, recreational or occasional use.” Houses, houses everywhere, yet homeless people now here, too.

The issue, not new, continues to vex Vineyarders eking their way through a third winter under the influence of a long recession. We are both a fragile environment and an economy shouldered substantially with construction jobs. Growth has put pressure on our ponds, but sewering, the main remedy, may serve to invite more growth and with it more environmental concerns. Meanwhile affordable housing efforts, some admirable and some flawed, have come to be divisive in our community, hindering progress. The town of Edgartown, however, has pressed on with innovative thinking on the issue. Last night it held its first lottery for qualified residents to win the chance to buy a home on the open market, with help in the form of mortgage subsidies from a town affordable housing fund. This does not add new housing stock to the fragile Island but rather new stability for its residents.

The money comes mainly from the deal allowing the upscale Field Club housing development to provide money rather than affordable housing lots in its neighborhood, a sign, perhaps, of changed norms in our community.

This has long been a seasonal place, but with an unspoken tradition where almost everyone from the more and less wealthy, the year-round and seasonal, were united in how we chose to live here. Whether that part of the story changes will be written by our own choices before it shows up in any numbers.