You know exactly who they are - your son's second grade teacher, your neighbor whose spouse left last year, the EMT who revived your father last month. It's the regional high school class of 1997.
This is but a snapshot of the nearly 2,000 faces of those unfortunate enough to struggle month after month, year after year with the lack of affordable housing on Martha's Vineyard.
You've heard their stories dozens of times, but do you know just how severe the affordable housing problem is?
Edgartown officials will soon get their foot in the door of every rental property in town, the result of a selectmen-endorsed regulation which forces property owners to license rental properties and allow inspectors to ensure dwellings meet state habitation codes.
Ruling that the dire need for low-cost rental housing trumps traffic
concerns, the Martha's Vineyard Commission voted unanimously last
night to approve the Pennywise Path affordable housing project in
Edgartown.
Bad news if you bought or built a new house on the Vineyard and figured you could cover some of your mortgage by renting it out for a chunk of summer: You weren't the only one with that idea. Now real estate agents say the market is glutted with houses for rent.
"There's a lot of houses out there to rent," said Deborah Hancock, a longtime real estate broker in Chilmark. "We have houses that have never been vacant that are still vacant . . . . It used to be that anything good was gone by January."
After a long, cold winter, Vineyard property owners are getting some welcome news: people are still willing to pay thousands of dollars a week to rent homes on the Island in summer.
"I'd say it's just as strong as last year," said David Cron, a partner at Island Real Estate in Vineyard Haven.
At Tea Lane Associates in West Tisbury, broker Mary Jo Goodrich also reports a strong market, with rents staying about the same.
"We are about on par with where we were last time," said Judy Federowicz of Coldwell Banker Landmarks in Vineyard Haven.
It appears that tenants will be secure at least through January in the four Island towns where rental housing contracts were put in jeopardy two weeks ago, when the Island Affordable Housing Fund could not pay the monthly subsidies.
After a sluggish off-season tied to the sustained national recession and an abysmal June blamed on terrible weather, several real estate professionals this week reported a dramatic spike in weekly rentals just as the weather improved and reports of an August visit from President Obama were revealed.
Applications for affordable rental housing in Oak Bluffs are now available through the Dukes County Regional Housing Authority, on behalf of TRI (The Resource Inc), a private, nonprofit corporation working in conjunction with the town of Oak Bluffs and the state Department of Housing and Community Development.
The new rental housing is in the Noyes building (formerly the Oak Bluffs library) and includes:
One studio apartment; one one-bedroom apartment; and one two-bedroom, fully accessible apartment. Rents range from $850 to $1,030 per month.
In a significant change of direction, the director of the Island Affordable Housing Fund, Ewell Hopkins, is looking to large-scale affordable rental projects rather than home ownership developments as a solution to the Vineyard’s chronic housing problem.
And as money for affordable development from the traditional source, private donations, has dried up, he is turning instead to other sources, specifically the federal government and the largest national nonprofit developer of affordable rental housing.
