Nantucket Harbor. Photo courtesy of Bobak Ha'Eri / CC BY 2.5
The UMass Donahue Institute examined the proposed zoning bylaw known as Article 60, which will come up for consideration at Town Meeting on May 6, and found it would carry major impacts on the market for rentals in the popular vacation destination.
The measure would require short-term rental properties in residential districts to provide “long-term residential use more than short-term rental use,” unless they are owner-occupied, defined as an owner residing in the property at least six months every year. It’s the third year in a row Nantucket Town Meeting has grappled with a proposal to regulate short-term rentals, which some locals blame for exacerbating the island’s housing costs and other locals say is an important way they make ends meet. Last year, small, high-end rental businesses run by off-island developers emerged as a lightning rod of controversy.
Researchers with the Donahue Institute concluded that only 114 of the 2,293 short-term rentals registered on the island are owner-occupied, and that units “unambiguously compliant” with the proposal “are largely limited to the 114 owner-occupied units.”
The effect, they said, would be to force owners of existing short-term rental property on Nantucket “to choose between renting their home to someone for most the year, moving to Nantucket themselves, selling the home, renting under the table, or renting for 32 days to a group that shares time in the property over the course of a month.”
“The ambiguity of the article’s language means that its eventual impact and enforcement are unclear. However, based on most logical interpretations, owners who cannot spend at least half the year on the island but would still like short-term rental income, can rent out their home to ‘long-term’ renters for most of the year in order to become compliant,” researchers wrote in a summary.
A spokesperson said the Alliance to Protect Nantucket’s Economy, which opposes Article 60, commissioned the study. It was not immediately clear Tuesday how much the group paid the Donahue Institute.
Supporters of the Town Meeting article argue that the regulations will rein in commercial short-term rentals that have swept across the island. Emmy Kilvert, the article’s sponsor, told Nantucket Current that the Donahue Institute study is an “embarrassment.”
“Other than demonstrating what we already know – that STRs are exploding across the island, with a 26 percent increase in the last two years alone – there doesn’t appear to be any meaningful take-away from this report,” Kilvert told Nantucket Current.
