The town of Nantucket is getting ready to launch a pilot program offering year-round deed restrictions on private homes.
The idea is to help support full-time residency on the island.
The town will pay the owner a percentage of a home’s value in exchange for a permanent deed restriction that makes the house year-round-only.
Residents who meet the program guidelines can apply for the restriction in a variety of situations — such as when buying or selling a house, or when a senior citizen is struggling to remain in the home, Select Board Chair Brooke Mohr said in an interview.
“They could potentially sell a deed restriction and take that cash and use it to live off of, and stay in the house … on a promise, a commitment, that they would only sell that house to another year-round family,” she said.
The reduced property value conferred by the deed restriction would make the home more affordable.
“We want to capture those homes and make them affordable to another young, year-round family,” she said. The result would be “a portfolio of year-round, deed restricted housing … only available to people who live and work here 10 months of the year, minimum."
The town aims to create a balance of homes available for seasonal visitors and for full-time residents.
"That's sort of the long-term plan," she said.
A change in state law is allowing the program to move forward.
Last year, the Affordable Homes Act designated Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, and parts of Cape Cod and Berkshires as Seasonal Communities, giving them rights and responsibilities designed to ease the high cost of housing in areas with high tourist demand.
The town had previously sought permission from the state by home-rule petition to use public funds to buy deed restrictions on private homes, but now a home-rule petition is not necessary, Mohr said.
“The ability to do that is a game changer for us,” she said.
Nantucket has authorized $2 million for the pilot program, funded by the town’s Affordable Housing Trust. The trust, in turn, receives funding from a permanent tax override of $6.5 million a year, approved by voters in 2023.
Mohr said the deed restriction program will begin as soon as staff time allows, probably in the first or second quarter of this year.
