A series of recently-completed housing plans show a year-round population straining under the weight of rents and mortgages amid prohibitive building costs and the pressures of a seasonal real estate market.
In perhaps the most wide-ranging study of Island housing problems to date, housing production plans were issued this week detailing needs, strategies and obstacles for each Island town.
Low wages and a seasonal economy are a recipe for hardship for those looking for housing on the Vineyard and other resort communities, with high-cost second homes raising prices.
It is important that in the rush to designate the entire Island as a “district of critical planning concern” that we not forget two other issues that have long been neglected on the Vineyard. The first is the urgent need for affordable housing. The second is the need for much more active comprehensive planning so that we will not lurch from crisis to crisis as we have been doing, while growth around us has continued unabated. This letter deals only with the first.
Residents from Edgartown to Aquinnah this week weighed in on an effort to increase the Island’s stock of affordable housing as a series of workshops began.
Working as a group, six Island planning boards have launched an initiative that aims to create hundreds of affordable housing units over the next 10 years.
