Opinion

Nantucket’s leaders did not create the forces reshaping the island, nor did they invent the second-home economy, short-term rentals, remote work, Chapter 40B, private aviation, construction demand or the global fascination with Nantucket. They cannot control every ferry passenger, every real-estate transaction or every person who decides this is where they want to spend the summer.

 

But Town government wrote many of the rules under which those forces were allowed to operate. It established the zoning, recommended density increases, expanded dwelling allowances, approved subdivisions and major developments. It extended infrastructure, and responded to housing pressure by allowing more units, often without ensuring those units would remain available to year-round residents. It studied traffic repeatedly while postponing meaningful limitations on the number of vehicles using an island road system that cannot be substantially expanded.

 

The result is the Nantucket we experience today: roads routinely operating beyond their comfortable capacity, Mid-Island absorbing one development after another, housing construction continuing without resolving the housing crisis, municipal infrastructure struggling to catch up and residents feeling that the island’s quality of life is being traded away one approval at a time.

 

The Select Board and Planning Board have increasingly become targets of that frustration, and citizens are justified in holding them accountable. Not because every approval was improper, or that every development should have been rejected, and not because growth could have been stopped entirely. They should be held accountable because no one in Town government adequately added it all up.

 

This Did Not Happen by Accident

Nantucket didn't wake up one morning and discover that it had become crowded. The present situation is the cumulative result of hundreds of decisions that seemed manageable when considered individually.

 

One zoning change allowed more apartments. Another reduced minimum lot sizes. Another expanded secondary lot provisions. Others permitted a third dwelling, created density bonuses, enlarged a commercial district that also permitted residential units. One major development was approved because its traffic study concluded that the surrounding intersections could technically accommodate the additional trips.

 

Each decision could be defended on its own. Together, they increased the number of people, vehicles, bedrooms, service workers, deliveries, contractors, wastewater connections and daily trips the island was expected to absorb.

 

The Town’s own 2016 Housing Production Plan documents how aggressively Nantucket altered its land-use rules during the first half of the last decade. From 2013 through 2015, Town Meeting expanded apartment allowances in several commercial districts, permitted apartment buildings of up to six units in certain areas by special permit, reduced minimum lot sizes in redevelopment areas, broadened secondary-lot provisions, loosened accessory-dwelling restrictions and permitted third dwellings in numerous residential districts.

 

In November 2015, a Special Town Meeting overwhelmingly approved zoning capable of supporting as many as 325 housing units on 32 acres in the Mid-Island area for what became the Richmond development. The Town pursued the zoning arrangement in part to retain more local control than it might have had under the Chapter 40B process.

 

Again, these decisions were not necessarily irrational. Nantucket desperately needed housing, and many of the changes were promoted as ways to produce affordable, attainable or workforce units. But they were still growth decisions.

 

The central failure was the Town’s unwillingness to treat them that way.

 

Housing Policy Became Growth Policy

Nantucket has a real housing emergency. Teachers, nurses, police officers, firefighters, tradespeople, municipal employees, restaurant workers and young families need places to live. An island cannot function without them. That need, however, created a political environment in which nearly any increase in housing capacity could be presented as progress.

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But a new dwelling unit is not automatically a workforce home. Unless there is an enforceable year-round occupancy or affordability restriction, a new cottage, apartment or secondary dwelling can enter the seasonal market, become a luxury rental, serve as a guest house or increase the value of an already expensive property. It may add housing inventory without adding a single secure home for the people who keep Nantucket operating.

 

The warning signs were present long ago. A 2015 workforce housing assessment found that 64 percent of Nantucket’s 11,650 housing units were seasonal and only 36 percent were year-round. It concluded that homeownership was financially prohibitive for approximately 90 percent of year-round households and that half of year-round households were already burdened by housing costs.

 

The following year, the Town’s Housing Production Plan reported that Nantucket appeared to have lost approximately 160 year-round households since 2010 while gaining more than 400 seasonal housing units, primarily through conversions of year-round homes. That should have changed the direction of local housing policy.

 

The lesson was not simply that Nantucket needed more units, it was that the market was consuming ordinary housing faster than the community could replace it.

 

Instead, the Town continued to rely heavily on production: more units, more density, more accessory structures, more apartments and more developable lots. The 2016 plan itself noted that Nantucket permitted accessory apartments and two dwellings by right on residential lots throughout the island, an allowance it described as highly unusual among small towns.

 

Some of that capacity undoubtedly helped year-round residents. Some produced important affordable housing, but too much new development entered an unrestricted real-estate market powerful enough to absorb almost anything Nantucket allowed.

 

The Town expanded the supply side without adequately controlling the destination of that supply. That was not a housing strategy, it was a development strategy conducted in the name of housing.

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The Town Knew Traffic Was Becoming Unsustainable

The most damaging defense of Nantucket’s leadership is that no one could have anticipated the traffic problem. The Town has been anticipating it for decades.

 

Nantucket completed an Optimal Transportation Carrying Capacity study in 2001. It conducted a Mid-Island traffic study in 2005, a downtown circulation and ferry-access study in 2008, parking and park-and-ride studies in 2010, an Old South Road corridor study in 2017 and additional transportation planning since then. 

 

The island has not lacked studies. It has lacked decisions.

 

During the public process for Nantucket’s current long-range transportation plan, residents and visitors said they disliked congestion, unreliable travel times and deteriorating road conditions. Survey participants supported vehicle limitations and greater priority for residents using the vehicle ferry.

 

The final plan, endorsed in 2023, describes Nantucket’s transportation vision as a system “with vehicle limitations.” Among its formal planning priorities are regulating the number of vehicles on the island and updating the Optimal Vehicle Capacity Study — the study originally completed more than 20 years earlier. That may be the clearest summary of the Town’s failure.

 

By 2023, vehicle limitation was still being described as a future planning priority even though Nantucket had formally studied transportation carrying capacity in 2001. During those intervening years, population and development continued to increase. The official year-round population rose from 10,172 in the 2010 Census to 14,255 in 2020, an increase of roughly 40 percent before accounting for seasonal residents, visitors and the summer workforce.

 

The Town knew the roads were finite. It knew the historic street network could not be widened without sacrificing the character it was supposed to protect. Its transportation plan explicitly warns against solving congestion with conventional automobile infrastructure such as additional lanes and traffic signals.

 

Yet the Town continued approving and enabling land uses that generated more trips while leaving vehicle limitation largely in the realm of aspiration. Traffic was treated as something to mitigate after development rather than a limit that should govern development beforehand.

 

Infrastructure Is Not Neutral

Sewer projects are often described solely as environmental or public-health improvements. In many cases, that is exactly what they are, as Nantucket must protect its groundwater, harbors and ponds. Failing septic systems and nitrogen loading cannot be ignored. But sewer infrastructure also changes development potential.

 

A property constrained by septic capacity may support more intensive use once it is connected to a public wastewater system. More bedrooms, more dwellings, denser development and redevelopment can become possible.

 

The Town’s own Sewer Master Plan acknowledges this relationship. Its planning process considers future wastewater flows from development and redevelopment, areas outside the existing sewer district seeking connection and increased flows from multiple dwellings on individual properties. That does not make sewer expansion wrong. It makes coordinated land-use planning essential.

 

When the Town extends major infrastructure without simultaneously establishing binding expectations for density, occupancy, transportation and cumulative impact, it does more than solve an environmental problem. It creates additional capacity for growth.

 

Nantucket has repeatedly separated those conversations. One board considers wastewater. Another considers zoning. Another reviews a special permit. Another evaluates traffic. Another considers affordable housing. Each decision is technically limited to its own jurisdiction. The island, however, experiences all of them at once.

 

Why the Select Board and Planning Board Are Properly in the Conversation

The Select Board’s stated responsibilities include establishing policy and providing long-term planning. It also serves as the County Commission, Regional Transit Authority Commission, Public Works Commission and Sewer Commission.

 

The Planning Board reviews subdivisions, secondary dwellings and special permits for major residential, commercial and multifamily developments. It recommends changes to the zoning code and is responsible for preparing the Master Plan intended to guide Nantucket’s long-term physical development.

 

These boards are not incidental observers of growth. They occupy the very places where housing, transportation, infrastructure and development policy intersect. It’s true that the Planning Board does not enact zoning by itself. Town Meeting does. It’s also true that the Select Board cannot unilaterally control the Steamship Authority, private property, state housing mandates or every development permitted by Massachusetts law.

 

Chapter 40B can reduce local zoning control when communities fall short of affordable-housing benchmarks. More recently, state law began requiring municipalities to permit qualifying accessory dwelling units by right in single-family zoning districts. Those are meaningful constraints. So are court decisions, vested property rights and the legal obligation to apply existing bylaws fairly. But constraints are not an alibi.

 

For 15 years, Nantucket still had substantial local authority over zoning recommendations, density bonuses, occupancy restrictions, parking policy, infrastructure sequencing, Town-owned land, construction logistics, special-permit conditions, transportation planning and the information presented to Town Meeting voters.

 

The Town could not stop all growth, but it could have governed growth much more deliberately.

 

Town Meeting Shares the Responsibility

Citizens should also be honest about the role of Town Meeting. Many of the zoning changes that expanded Nantucket’s development capacity were approved by voters, including major housing appropriations and infrastructure projects. Residents cannot demand accountability from elected boards while pretending the legislative body had no part in the outcome.

 

But Town Meeting usually acts on proposals developed, reviewed and recommended by the Town’s governing institutions.

 

Boards decide what to prioritize. Staff and consultants shape the alternatives. Official reports define the problem. Recommendations signal which choices are considered responsible. Complex zoning articles are presented to voters who may have only minutes to understand how a few lines of amended language will change development potential across hundreds of properties. Responsibility is shared, but influence is not equal.

 

The Select Board and Planning Board are elected to look beyond the individual article and understand the cumulative direction of the island. That is what did not happen.

 

The Real Failure Was the Absence of a Capacity Policy

Nantucket has plans for housing, traffic, wastewater, coastal resilience, open space, public facilities, parking and economic development. What it hasn't had is a binding framework connecting them.

 

There's been no publicly adopted threshold answering the basic questions:

• How many year-round and seasonal residents can the island’s infrastructure support?

• How many vehicles can the road network reasonably accommodate?

• How much additional development can Mid-Island absorb?

• How many bedrooms can be added before sewer, water, schools, emergency services and solid waste systems require major expansion?

• How should the Town distinguish growth that strengthens the year-round community from growth that merely adds more seasonal consumption?

 

Without such a framework, every project is evaluated against existing conditions, even though existing conditions are partly the product of projects approved only a few years earlier.

 

A traffic study may find that one development will add only a manageable number of trips. A sewer analysis may find sufficient capacity for one connection. A school projection may conclude that one housing project will not overwhelm enrollment. But quality of life is not lost through one project, it is lost cumulatively.

 

It’s lost when the additional trip from one project meets the delivery truck from another, the landscaping crew serving a newly expanded property, the employees commuting to a business that cannot house them, the rental cars arriving for a major weekend and the construction vehicles generated by the next redevelopment.

 

Nantucket’s government has been reviewing individual trees while authorizing the forest.

 

Accountability Is Not Anti-Housing

Criticizing these decisions doesn't require opposing affordable housing or closing Nantucket to everyone who was not born here. Nantucket needs more secure housing for the people who live and work here. It may need additional density in carefully selected locations. It may need apartment buildings, dormitory-style employee housing, Town-owned rentals and smaller homes.

 

But every new unit should not be treated as equally beneficial.

 

Density intended to solve the workforce crisis should be tied to year-round occupancy. Publicly funded infrastructure should be accompanied by land-use limits that prevent environmental improvements from becoming an open invitation to unrestricted redevelopment. Major zoning changes should be evaluated for their combined effect on traffic, wastewater, water, schools, public safety and municipal staffing — not merely their compliance with one section of the zoning bylaw.

 

Most importantly, the Town must stop treating capacity as a future study topic. The vehicle-capacity study should be updated and acted upon. An annual island-capacity report should disclose the number of housing units approved and constructed, the number carrying affordability or year-round restrictions, traffic volumes, ferry vehicles, wastewater flows, water demand, emergency calls and other measurable indicators.

 

Before approving significant new development capacity, Town government should be required to show where the supporting capacity will come from, or what other demand will be reduced. That’s not a moratorium, it is planning.

 

The Island’s Limits Were Visible

Nantucket’s capacity crisis was not caused by one Select Board, Planning Board, developer or Town Meeting vote. It was created through institutional habit. The habit was to approve one more unit, subdivision, zoning expansion, infrastructure extension and development because each could be justified separately.

 

The habit was to address housing without fully confronting the seasonal market, to address traffic without limiting vehicles and to address infrastructure without acknowledging the growth it could enable.

 

The Town’s own documents identified the warning signs: the conversion of year-round housing, the dominance of seasonal units, the accelerating population, the public demand for vehicle limitations and the need to update a carrying-capacity study completed more than two decades ago. The limits were not hidden, they were postponed.

 

Citizens are not wrong to demand accountability from the Select Board and Planning Board. Those boards did not cause Nantucket’s popularity, but they helped determine how that popularity would be accommodated. They helped write the rules, recommend the zoning, sequence the infrastructure and define the official response.

 

Nantucket did not simply outgrow itself, it was repeatedly permitted to grow without an enforceable understanding of where growth should stop.

 

That’s the responsibility of government. And unless the Town finally makes capacity — not development, promotion or property value — the organizing principle of its decisions, the next 15 years will not correct the mistakes of the last 15. They will compound them.