essay by Robert P. Barsanti
You can rent a house on Milk Street for $45,000 a week. For that money, you could buy, and own, a Camaro or a Mustang or a BMW 2 series. But if you were to go to a realtor and plunk your money down to rent this house on Milk Street, you could spend a week with three queen beds, a pool (of course), and “one of the best and most fun home bars on the island” in case you grow tired of paying $19 for a Negroni among the common people who spend their cash on sports cars.
But you would be too late. The house is fully rented for the summer, to the tune of about $500,000.
With Articles 59 and 60 looming at Nantucket Town Meeting on May 7, and yard signs threatening our jobs, I took a internet cruise through the rental properties on a realtor’s web page. I am as ignorant of island real estate as an oyster is of the craters on the moon. In the space of a jaw-dropping half-hour, I saw hundreds of island properties for rent ranging from $5,000 to $60,000 a week. I’m sure my friends in the needlepoint belts and seersucker jackets have a more precise number for the median and average rents. My Oyster guess is around $25,000 a week.
Our friends on Milk Street have a house in Naples, Florida that has a similar bar, decorated in the signature Hermes Orange that matched the lady’s scarf. While the article in the Wall Street Journal didn’t mention it, I don’t believe they own a scallop rake, a paint-stained ladder, or work shoes.
One island realtor lists hundred of these rentals. I have not done an exhaustive analysis, but I would guess there are many hundreds—perhaps as many as two thousand—of these rental properties on-island. I would be willing to bet that perhaps only a hundred or so are islanders with a collection of prize work-shirts in their closets.
Each of these houses is likely an oil well, pumping sweet crude into the bank accounts of off-island investors and billionaires. They are drinking our milkshake. Their owners don’t line up for the Fourth of July water fight, they don’t visit the St. Paul’s Fair, and they don’t shop at the Hospital Thrift Shop. The owners don’t give out candy at Halloween, they don’t meet the President at Murray’s on Thanksgiving, and they don’t go to winter Paint Nights.
When I think of the Short Term Rentals articles being considered at Town Meeting, I am thinking of this Milk Street house and the $500,000 rent that briefly touched the island before arriving in a Florida bank.
When the Milk Street opportunity arose, an agent wearing pink and green sporting a Breitling timepiece didn’t make the potential home owners aware of the good schools or the child-friendly yard and didn’t think of principal residences or accessory use. No, the agent pointed out the rental history and the trend lines for the island. Milk Street is a singular location near town, with a property awaiting a signature decor. It promised a remarkable return on investment for the right buyer.
The agent was right: it will make $500,000 this summer.
As the lawn signs indicate, the Milk Street property, along with the other multitude of rental properties on-island, bring in jobs for landscapers, pool cleaners, caterers, and other service people. The owners surely pay their taxes. But, I would bet that of the paychecks handed out for the care and maintenance of “one of the most fun home bars” on-island, very few stop in any of the on-island banks (which are really off-island banks). That money buys a sandwich, gets a beer or two, then gets on the boat.
On Nantucket, we look backward into a glorious past. The rental houses we remember had jigsaw puzzles with missing pieces, slightly mildewed beach towels, and wobbly chairs. Families would come over for a week, bring a freezer chest of prepared meals and a station wagon decorated in bicycles. They would drag the kids downtown for ice cream, go out to Le Languedoc for a fancy meal, and buy everyone t-shirts to cover the sunburn. That island ended around the time the Skipper closed.
The folks with the yard signs rightly point out that we can’t go back into the past, and they are correct. However, we need to be clear as day about the present and the anticipated, non-hurricane, future. We live on Hilton Head. Nantucket has become a full-service island resort: the Ritz on a Sandbar. All of us who work here are the staff. We check people in, clean the rooms, life-guard the pool, fix the roof, mow the lawns, and staff the shop. We still own few of the inns and shops. We don’t own the banks, the utilities, the hotels. We just work here.
We can’t go back because we don’t have the same power anymore. We gave up our island for pocket change. The only difference between islanders and the workmen on the Gray Lady is that we haven’t sold our homes yet. If you want to meet a cross-section of Whaler alumni, hand out coffee and donuts on Straight Wharf for the morning boat. Right now, the future needs a commuter book.
Judge Vhay gave us an opportunity to reclaim the oil wells. If we want our children to have homes, lives, and jobs on-island, we need to use the Judge’s ruling to affect some serious changes. I hope that island voters and the Select Board can close the door and use that leverage to make the island something more than a hotel on the beach.
