Don’t Cry for Martha’s Vineyard

Poor Martha’s Vineyard is beset by McMansions that have become so controversial that the people having them built have asked their contractors to sign non-disclosure forms to make sure they don’t talk to the press about the giant homes they are building. Local activists are annoyed that many of these homes are occupied only a few months a year but continue to use electricity to keep them heated year round.

A trailer for a movie about big homes on Martha’s Vineyard.

Don’t feel too sorry for residents of the island off the Massachusetts coast, for they brought it on themselves. In 1974, the state legislature created the Martha’s Vineyard Commission, whose mission is to “carefully manage growth so that the Vineyard’s unique environment, character, social fabric and sustainable economy are maintained.” Among other things, the commission has preserved 40 percent of the island as permanent open space, and would like to preserve the remaining 30 percent that is undeveloped.

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This has naturally created an artificial shortage of land. Currently, quarter-acre lots are going for close to a quarter million dollars, and lots of an acre or more go for well over a million. It’s a general rule of thumb that a house will cost three times as much as the lot it is built on, not because of any laws or regulations but because someone who pays a million dollars for a one- or two-acre lot isn’t going to be satisfied putting a $50,000 tiny home on it.

So by passing land-use policies that made land expensive, the Martha’s Vineyard Commission has made McMansions inevitable. As the Antiplanner has previously noted, it seems to be true of most “boom towns” that the boom was preceded by the passage of a variety of land-use restrictions or purchases of large amounts of open space.

“A community should be able to determine its own destiny,” says one local critic of supposedly oversized homes. That’s what the Martha’s Vineyard Commission is supposed to do. But the people who make up a community need to know that there are always trade offs when they make decisions. Among those trade offs are that, if they pass too many restrictions, they are likely to price themselves out of their own communities.