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In April, the Nantucket Planning Board approved three workforce housing dormitories across the island in an effort to provide housing for employees of two local companies—but it was not without controversy.
“It is such a major impact on this neighborhood,” board member Joe Topham said of one proposal. “I just really have a problem with the number of people that would be within this dwelling.”
The project in question would allow an existing single-family home on Waydale Road to be used as workforce housing for up to 16 people—a practical midisland location for workers, but one neighbors worried would bring too much intensity to a residential street.
“I am for housing, we need it for employees, but I really have a problem with just the way this property is being laid out and being utilized, and it’s just a lot on the neighborhood,” Topham said.
It’s the kind of argument echoed in city and town halls across the country: We need more housing—just not here. But on Nantucket, “not here” carries an unusually high cost. Even as the island remains a popular summer getaway, it’s struggling to house the workers necessary to keep it running.
‘We don’t have an operational town’
The island's year-round population of 15,000 swells to nearly 80,000 during peak season.
That seasonality has helped spur the highest concentration of vacation homes in the nation. Roughly 55% of the island’s housing stock is reserved for seasonal or occasional use—about 17 times the national share of 3.3%, according to the latest Luxury Market report from Realtor.com®.
And the homes that are for year-round use don’t come cheap. The median listing price is $4.925 million—again, that’s the median, not the average and not even the local luxury threshold, which starts at $14.1 million.
As a result, more than half of Nantucket’s year-round population struggles to afford housing, and homeownership is out of reach for 90% of year-round residents, according to Housing Nantucket, a local affordable housing nonprofit.
The shortage is taking a significant toll on essential services, enough that some town officials are treating employee housing as one of Nantucket’s most urgent priorities.
In April, Select Board member Matt Fee warned that without it, “we don’t have an operational town.”
The risk is plain enough to see.
Nantucket Cottage Hospital—the only hospital on the island—says housing challenges are now the top reason candidates decline job offers and current employees leave. In a recent employee survey, 58% of hospital workers reported a high degree of housing insecurity, and more than 75% of employees who rent spent over 30% of their gross household income on housing.
Schools are facing the same issue. In 2022, Nantucket Public Schools was trying to fill 46 faculty positions amid a staffing shortage tied to housing.
And across the island, over half of surveyed employers (53%) have lost employees because of housing costs, while 55% said prospective hires had declined job offers because housing was not available, according to a May 2026 survey.
The worker housing under fire
All of that seemed to come to a head in April, as the Planning Board discussed the Waydale Road proposal—one of two projects moving forward under Nantucket’s Neighborhood Employee Housing bylaw, a zoning tool the island adopted in 2001 to ease its housing shortage.
But what made this specific proposal so interesting is that the house was already being used for employee housing. The question before the board was whether to formally permit that use—and how many workers should be allowed to live there.
The applicant initially sought approval for up to 16 employees. But as the board weighed neighborhood concerns, members also considered lowering the cap to 10—a move that would have meant two workers would have lost their lodging.
“I watched a young girl on an electric bicycle come down Waydale Road and get hit by a car that was coming out of their driveway, and there was a van parked on the road so they couldn’t see this bike,” local resident Gail Butler said of the Waydale Road proposal. “The density of the number of employees also concerns me.”
That level of scrutiny appeared to mark a shift, according to planning director Leslie Snell.
“You have permitted these,” Snell said. “They haven’t been that controversial. They certainly haven’t generated this level of discussion or this level of detail.”
The board ultimately approved a lower cap of 12 residents, along with conditions meant to address neighborhood concerns, including no street parking, quiet hours, management requirements, and follow-up review.
The pushback didn't start on Waydale Road
It was hardly the first time neighborhood concerns threatened the future of essential housing there.
In 2009, Nantucket created its Affordable Housing Trust Fund to support affordable housing development and preserve year-round housing opportunities. But even the trust’s own strategic plan acknowledged that it had “not been easy” to secure support for affordable housing programs.
Some residents, the plan said, did not understand the island’s need, disagreed over what kind of affordable housing Nantucket should provide, or questioned whether affordable housing was a local responsibility at all.
The same report warned that Nantucket shares with the state’s most affluent towns “the high risk” that affordable housing approvals will be appealed by residents—year-round or seasonal—who can afford a lengthy litigation process.
It’s a warning that has played out repeatedly.
At 6 Fairgrounds Road and 4 Waitt Drive, voters had affirmed support for developing affordable rental housing for Nantucket’s workforce on town-owned land. But the 64-unit Ticcoma Green project still faced a neighbor appeal in Land Court after winning Planning Board approval.
Surfside Crossing has become the island’s longest-running and most visible housing fight. First proposed in 2018, the 156-unit development off South Shore Road would set aside 25% of its condos as affordable housing under the state’s Chapter 40B law.
But the project has spent much of the past eight years tied up in hearings, appeals, and litigation. After state housing officials approved it again in 2026, neighbors, the town, and the Nantucket Land & Water Council moved to challenge the decision in court.
Why every worker housing fix becomes a land-use fight
So what's driving the resistance when the need is so clear? Nantucket is short an estimated 892 to 1,081 renter-occupied units, according to Housing Nantucket’s 2025 Housing Assessment. But there are few easy places to put them, and that may be the heart of the issue.
The island itself is only about 48 square miles—the rough equivalent of San Francisco, but with a fraction of the housing. San Francisco fits more than 406,000 housing units, according to U.S. Census Bureau records. Nantucket has about 13,000.
The comparison is imperfect, of course. San Francisco is a dense, job-rich city. Nantucket is a small island getaway. One offers all the conveniences of city life, while the other offers an escape from the accompanying noise. But how the two places zone roughly the same area of land offers a useful insight.
On Nantucket, 96% of land is reserved primarily for residential use, according to the National Zoning Atlas. But two-family housing is prohibited on 94% of it, and all residential land carries a minimum parking requirement.
San Francisco, by comparison, has a much larger share of protected and unzoned land—17% and 26%, respectively. But it allows multifamily buildings with four or more units by right on 91% of land zoned for residential use.
The contrast helps explain why worker housing on Nantucket so often turns into a neighborhood fight. With few places where the island can add housing by right, employee housing often has to move through special permits, employer-backed projects, and one-off approvals.
That turns a shortage measured in hundreds of rental units into fights over individual properties: one house, one street, one parking plan, and one occupancy cap.
