‘Water doesn’t know property lines’: Where Massachusetts’s climate and housing crises meet

While the winter winds battered away at the south coast of Nantucket, the island hummed along in year-round mode. Around 14,200 people puttered into work, sent their kids to the local schools, hit up the few dozen restaurants open during the off-season, and dodged downtown when the tides rushed in and flooded over brick and cobblestone. 

Before the high summer season roars in, when the population booms to 80,000, the wind and the water will have carved off more of the island, prompting some returning seasonal residents to pace around their properties with a wary eye on the bluff’s edge. 

“If people aren’t there during the winter, and they’re not seeing some of the biggest impacts and changes to the beach,” said Cynthia Dittbrenner, vice president of natural resources for The Trustees of Reservations. “So they come back to this beautiful, occasionally tragic, scene of erosion,” she said. “But if you’re there in the winter, you’re experiencing these incredible storms and the winds, and you see the erosion happening first-hand right in front of you. It’s like an education tool.” 

Across the Cape and Islands – the region with the highest share of seasonal housing in Massachusetts – headlines and eyeballs have been transfixed on the bluff-side luxury vacation homes tumbling into the ocean or threatening to do so.  

The region is already struggling with the workforce impacts of changing housing patterns while trying to maintain the seaside tourist draw that’s essential to local economies. A 2022 state assessment noted that a major consequence of climate change on the Cape and Islands is a reduction in affordable housing availability and tourist attractions and amenities.  

This is creating a housing crunch and a climate crisis at the same time – demand for these sandy, tony shores conflicting with the need to literally shore up the coastline.   

Groundwater is rising, low-lying areas are regularly flooding, and the ocean is slowly turning some peninsulas into islands, but there’s nothing like a house toppling into the sea to drive the point home: plan or paddle. 

And regardless, someone has to pay. 

The anecdotes, at first blush, seem like first-world math problems.

If a $5.5 million home nearly falls off a cliff in Wellfleet, who foots the bill? If a house bought on an eroding beach on Nantucket drops in value from $2.2 million to $200,000, but needs another $200,000 of work before the town finally orders it demolished, was it worth it? If the value of homes across the coast more than doubled during a global pandemic and the water continues to rise, who can afford or be able to live there now?  

The demand for coastal houses is quickly bumping up against the reality of nature, with soaring pandemic prices dropping along some of the more erosion-prone shorelines.  

At-risk houses pose a threat to more than the owners’ wallets. The saga of a controversial 5,100-square foot Wellfleet mansion entered its final chapter this year, after it was purchased for $5.5 million in 2021 despite the fact that wind and water had already clawed the bluffs dangerously near the sprawling house.  

A 2024 report prepared for Wellfleet by Bryan McCormack, a coastal processes specialist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Sea Grant, estimated that the bluffs were eroding at a rate of 3.8 to 5.6 feet a year. The report estimated the house would collapse within three years.  

Cape residents and officials fretted that, should the property fall into Cape Cod Bay, the nearby oyster beds could be physically damaged and poisoned by toxic fiberglass and refrigerant materials. Radio station CAI reported that, after years of back and forth over who would shoulder the cost of demolishing the property, a demolition crew surprised the town by starting to dismantle the house in February.  

McCormack talked to CAI as the home was demolished. “Seeing that this is happening, going into dumpsters and being taken off site, rather than next week in a storm, it is, I think, a preferable outcome for a lot of the people in the town and for the people that use the beach, the people that are eating shellfish out of Wellfleet Harbor, the people that are living all through this system,” he said. 

But the showpiece homes aren’t alone. A 2020 report by First Street Foundation, a climate data organization, found 193,000 properties in Massachusetts face a substantial risk of coastal flooding, which includes more than half of the properties in some coastal towns.   

“Water doesn’t know property lines,” said Leah Hill, Nantucket’s coastal resilience coordinator, as she stared at a grey ocean. Hill was out in the field on a late March afternoon, checking on a stretch of the island’s 88 miles of shoreline, along which perches some of the state’s priciest and most vulnerable real estate.   

A 2021 assessment of Nantucket’s coastal risk, which informed a tailored resiliency plan, slapped a $3.4 billion cumulative annual price tag on doing nothing over a 70 year period. By 2070, some 2,373 structures on the island will be at risk from flooding and erosion, the assessment found, and the costs would rack up through direct physical damage, direct and indirect economic disruption, and direct social disruption for things like relocation and health costs from injuries and mental stress.  

“We’ve got essentially three types of flooding,” explained Hill. “We’ve got flooding from rain, so stormwater flooding. We have flooding from coastal storms, when we get those big nor’easters. And then we get flooding essentially from sea level rise.”   

When sea level rises around the island, it pushes on groundwater, which then pushes fresh water up above ground. This can cause water to settle on areas that were historically dry, expanding wetlands and causing issues like basement flooding far inland. It also causes salt water to intrude into wells and make them undrinkable, Hill said.  

And then of course, there’s erosion. 

“We have one of the highest erosion rates in Massachusetts,” Hill noted. “We are essentially, as you know, a body of sand in the middle of the Atlantic.” 

Nantucket’s climate assessment noted a key tension between “current private development practices and norms” and “a future built environment that is resilient.” It continued, “given these norms, any approach that aims to restrict development is likely to be met with significant opposition and must be carefully crafted to encourage resilient development.” 

There are strains on resources created by “a growing and seasonally fluctuating population,” the assessment further stated. There is more foot traffic, more vehicular traffic, and more demand for services and utilities on one hand. On the other hand, there are more people contributing to the seasonal economy. 

On Martha’s Vineyard, a 2022 climate action plan noted that the island’s south shore beaches are eroding three to five feet every year, threatening more than 700 local jobs that could be lost in vulnerable areas and impacting travel to the island when weather events force the ferry to suspend operations.  

“Shipping, trucking, and ferrying food to the island is becoming increasingly unpredictable,” according to the Martha’s Vineyard plan, and increased demand for local food as the climate changes will be constrained by lack of affordable housing and access to affordable land.

Depending on the time of year, prime waterfront housing on the Cape and Islands is also some of the state’s emptiest.  

About 60 percent of Nantucket units are now only in seasonal, recreational, or occasional use. The island’s part-time percentage is topped only by the Martha’s Vineyard towns Chilmark and Edgartown, both of which are in the high 60s, and Truro near the northern tip of Cape Cod, which is 71 percent part-time homes. 

“We’ve been growing,” Nantucket Select Board member Matthew Fee said of the island where he grew up. “We have more houses, and more bigger and nicer houses, and more people than we’ve had at peak before.” 

Fee wears two hats: select board member running for a sixth term and owner of the local bakery and sandwich shop Something Natural. He’s always been able to tell when a summer is in high demand mode by his “bread index,” that is, how many loaves of southern Massachusetts’ classic Portuguese bread have trundled out his bakery doors. 

The island, like much of the region, has always had a strong vacation season identity. But the savvy economic move for those who want to rent out a house is now to optimize short-term rentals. A one-to-three-bed Airbnb during the prime season can run from $350 to over $1,000 a night, while some eight-bedroom homes on rental listings will still go for around $25,000 a month. 

As state Sen. Julian Cyr puts it, “the real issue is our housing market is valued basically on what a given home or apartment rents for by the night in July and August.”

Fee’s bread index theory “really holds true,” he said of late, “and we are seeing huge spikes now over a Friday-Saturday-Sunday.” 

According to the state’s recent housing needs report, half of all registered short-term rentals statewide are in Barnstable County, despite having only 6 percent of the state’s housing units. From 2009-2019, 5,800 year-round homes on Cape Cod were “lost” – taken out of the normal housing market – to seasonal use or for other reasons. New production made up part of the difference, but not enough to stem the overall loss of year-round units. 

“Thousands of homes are at risk due to increasingly severe coastal and riverine flooding,” the report’s authors wrote. “But a home doesn’t have to be flooded to be lost. … The availability of modestly priced homes and apartments is dwindling as they are acquired and upscaled by investors who sell or rent at a much higher price point.” 

Sale and rental data trackers show a slow but consistent climb for years across these seasonal communities, but the pandemic sent prices into a new stratosphere. Buyers who wanted to spend more time on idyllic shores dropped in with higher budgets, with an eye toward short-term renting or leaving it vacant except for personal vacation use. 

What once was a “life-cycle” of housing is more complicated, Fee said.  

Past a certain price point, the house “usually doesn’t get rented but still demands all the services,” Fee noted, in terms of needing town infrastructure, contractor and staff parking and housing, and utilities to serve the bigger footprints. 

And, the houses that are now being bought, renovated, and kept empty during the off-season are the ones that used to be rented to middle managers, teachers, or town workers. They now have to find somewhere else on the island to live, if possible. Workers on the Cape have a similar issue, often commuting in from the mainland rather than compete for pricey housing where they work. 

“It’s good for business and we rely on it,” Fee said of the seasonal resident ebb and flow, “but it also puts pressures on the island.” 

For Cyr, who grew up in Truro and represents the Cape and Islands, the focus on the billionaire home imperiled by nature is something of a distraction. Coastal erosion risk is “a compounding challenge” to the broader housing crunch, he said.  

“There’s going to be some places that we’re going to have to retreat,” he said, citing locations with severe erosion along the Cape Cod National Seashore in Barnstable or the bluffs of Nantucket. But Cyr and resilience experts noted that erosion is a long natural process, which itself has carved the outlines of Massachusetts’ iconic shape. “This is part of a natural rhythm of a place,” he said, pointing to areas with little development that are eroding as well. 

Martha’s Vineyard beaches have lost more than 1,400 acres since 1897, and Nantucket nearly 1,900 acres, according to the State of The Coasts report from the Trustees, which preserves places of scenic, historical, and ecological value for public use. The islands also have nearly 1,800 acres of marsh at risk from sea level rise. 

In Cyr’s experience, the focus is on the dire day-to-day impacts of places dealing with groundwater issues and ever rising tides. 

“How do you bolster Commercial Street in Provincetown, or Beach Road from Oak Bluffs to Edgartown [on Martha’s Vineyard]?” Cyr said. “How do you deal with the pretty routine flooding that’s occurring now during high tides in Nantucket? That’s what much more of the conversation is, less these bigger, more dramatic examples.” 

Climate and planning efforts in Massachusetts have tended toward the town-by-town, until recently. 

Cyr’s brisk reference to “retreat” connects to a thorny debate over managed retreat, a process of moving infrastructure, people, and property out of vulnerable areas through policies that could include options like voluntary buyouts, relocating roads, and changing zoning districts. 

A 2023 state-wide assessment of coastal communities’ willingness to consider managed retreat, reported on by CommonWealth Beacon, found that there is still significant reluctance to contemplate relocating infrastructure unless absolutely necessary. Chief concerns were the lack of places to relocate to, political feasibility, and a loss of tax revenue – especially when it comes to high-priced real estate. 

Since then, some municipalities have moved ahead with plans to consider significant changes.  

The small coastal town of Hull, a peninsula including the particularly vulnerable Hampton Circle neighborhood, is engaged in planning efforts that include elevating certain homes or planning for a buyout program encouraging homeowners to move out of an area with a particularly high risk of flooding. 

In Falmouth – which considered a plan to make a historic retreat from its iconic Surf Drive coastal roadway in the face of sea level rise, flooding, and other impacts of climate change – there is a desire to push the conversation off as long as possible. According to The Enterprise, town officials recently learned that, because of an eelgrass bed near the beach, the town will no longer be allowed to dump new sand onto Surf Drive Beach to stall erosion and protect the roadway. 

Beach committee chairwoman Barbara Schneider said people need to face the fact that Surf Drive Beach will disappear. “We are no longer talking about saving beach,” Schneider said, according to The Enterprise. “All we’re talking about right now is saving a road and people’s homes.” 

Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, both of which occasionally lose coastal houses to erosion, are working to refine their resilience plans. 

Hill, from Nantucket, is putting out a bid soon for a retreat and relocation program that would incorporate a climate risk assessment and put procedures in place for contacting and technically assisting homeowners if they need to relocate their home – either to a safer perch or for demolition. 

Resiliency advocates are somewhat limited in their efforts because of public-private barriers. Nantucket’s climate plan is only tailored to town-owned land, where it can build up sea walls or beaches. 

“We don’t have control of what private property owners want to do on their property as far as risk management, if anything, unless it’s through a regulation,” Hill said. “So we’re focused on mitigating flooding and erosion out to 2070 on our most critical roadways – the way to get to the Steamship Authority and all of those critical assets.” 

State building code regulations can create some obligations. For instance, if an owner in the downtown Nantucket flood plain wants to do renovations that would cost more than 50 percent of the market value of the structure, the whole building must be brought up to code including flood mitigation measures. But, the parcel-by-parcel process can be unwieldy. 

A new report from Massachusetts’s Unlocking Housing Production Commission on meeting the state’s housing goals recommends creating a separate residential building code so that projects that cost a higher percentage of the total building value will have to meet higher flood protection and other climate requirements, and vice versa. 

Given the speed of erosion on the islands, finding a way to contact owners if their houses are in trouble can be essential. It’s a quirk of the wealthy seasonal community – on some streets the owners of many properties are corporations or LLCs, not a person, so the town will send a letter to the corporate address if there is a structural concern.  

There may be a chance for less piecemeal planning on the horizon; at least, less piecemeal than town-by-town. 

Recent initiatives on coastal climate resilience planning and seasonal housing stressors offer a chance for more coordination between regions. 

In late 2023, the Healey administration launched ResilientCoasts, an initiative that promises a “comprehensive framework” to coordinate local and state efforts. According to public presentations in March, a final draft plan is expected this spring, which will establish coastal resilience districts based on geography, coastal characteristics, and risks, as well as identify strategies to support local and regional efforts to improve resilience coastwide. 

“Climate change presents a unique opportunity to build safer communities – but no municipality can do this alone,” said Maria Hardiman, spokesperson for the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management, in a statement. Though no exact figure is attached to the effort yet, Hardiman said “for every dollar we invest in resilience now, we save $13 in damages and economic impacts in the long run. These investments are critical to protecting public safety and our economy, including the Massachusetts tourism industry and access to beautiful outdoor spaces.”  

Discussion about who should pay for resilience improvements reminds select board member Fee of debates about sewer access decades ago as the island expanded.  

There is a “natural tension,” he said, between the homeowners who need upgraded infrastructure because of modern building demands and those who are adequately served by the older systems.  

“One side says it’s a common good and we all should pay for it, and one side says half the island doesn’t require sewer,” he recalled, so why put them on the hook? After years of debate, the island split the coverage and the tax burden – balancing the costs between the current tax base, those who use the sewer, and areas with expected future users. 

That sewer system, which covers about 60 percent of the island, is now actively endangered by erosion and in need of quick remedial action.  

Similarly, the question of resilience often turns onto a question of “who is this for?”  

Nantucket’s resiliency plan lays out about $1 billion of investments to help the town weather the changing climate, and voters at the annual town meeting approved splitting the island into resiliency districts based on their unique challenges. Town officials have mulled – to residents’ chagrin – imposing fees on property owners who stand to benefit the most from the resilience projects. 

Dittbrenner, the vice president of natural resources for The Trustees, said the communal stakes of preventing climate impacts are rising.  

“We haven’t necessarily had conflicts, but we’ve needed to work more with our adjacent landowners, because some of the impacts of climate change and increased flooding and erosion, of course, extend beyond our boundaries,” she said. 

Property owners can have strong aesthetic feelings that sometimes conflict with conservation interests, Dittbrenner noted. Natural brush can hold a beach in place but look untidy, netting to protect sea bird habitats can seem visually disruptive, and sometimes the solid appearance of a sea wall is more comforting than a natural wetlands barrier that might be more appropriate.  

Given the cost of some erosion interventions, like beach nourishment, groups like The Trustees are trying to find a balance for municipalities when there are overlapping property interests. 

The Trustees co-owns the Coskata-Coatue Wildlife Refuge, some 1,117 acres of rapidly thinning barrier beach that stretches around to create Nantucket Harbor, with the Nantucket Conservation Foundation. 

“We can’t afford to spend millions of dollars to come and place a bunch of sand on the beach just to shore it up in that way, because that is really transient and would only last for a few years and costs a lot of money,” said Dittbrenner. “So the cost benefit isn’t there. But if there are nature-based ways that we can improve the resilience of that buffer and increase the habitat, then that’s a mutual benefit that makes sense.” 

For that sort of project, groups can usually go to the state and federal government. Dittbrenner expects the cost will now fall more to the state given the pullback of many federal funds.  

A state grant will cover the last permitting phase of raising Argilla Road in Ipswich, which is the only road with access to interstate tourist draw Crane Estate and Crane Beach. The road has been flooding frequently on the king tide, which are exceptionally high tides tied to moon cycles. Dittbrenner said The Trustees and the city are partnering to nail down a design for the project, but have secured funding from the state. 

Town budgets are tight, Fee noted, and municipalities with areas of sparse but vulnerable housing can be stuck paying for outdated obligations. 

“The state rules have to catch up with the reality of climate change,” he said. “A town road can’t be abandoned if someone’s [living] on it, but what happens when the road goes into the ocean?”   

Don Vaccaro, a businessman and philanthropist who co-founded Ticketnetwork Inc., had owned a Sheep Pond Road property on an-erosion threatened stretch of Nantucket since 2014 and purchased the house and lot next door a decade later for $200,000, putting about the same amount into renovating and eventually demolishing the property. He demolished the second house at the town’s request just six months after buying it, for a $400,000 loss. 

“I was able to use it one week with my family and kids in both houses, which was a priceless experience, so it was worth it in the end,” he told the Nantucket Current in January. 

Housing dynamics are involved in an awkward push-and-pull with climate and open space interests. Protected coastline and green space are desirable to nearby buyers and renters, but also drive up housing costs by limiting available land. And when the impacts of climate change get too pronounced, the land value tanks. 

The former owners of the small Sheep Pond Road house bought it for $2 million in 1988 and held on for decades as the shoreline receded, imperiling the structure. Even local housing nonprofits weren’t interested after three storms carved out the little remaining beach. When they sold it to Vacarro, they got back just 10 percent of their initial investment.  

“Most of these properties that you see that have this dramatic erosion loss,” Cyr said, pointing as an example to a house that had to be relocated at Ballston Beach in Truro two years ago, “these are seasonal homes. These are second homes. I think I hear much more from concerned constituents who may not be living at the water’s edge, but whose homeowners insurance rates have gone up astronomically, or they can’t get homeowners insurance.” 

The state should be able to step in and offer assistance, said Cyr, who supports efforts to establish a flood insurance market and has filed legislation to offer incentives and encouragement to make home investments that would be more resilient to a changing climate. 

The majority of residents are not scrambling to save million-dollar homes, but demand for housing has made even risky bets seem like a good option if the buyer doesn’t mind a short use window or taking a loss that costs as much as buying a studio apartment in Boston. 

And as in the case of the former owner of the demolished Sheep Pond Road house, buying a home in 1988 with a wide stretch between the house and the beach is no guarantee of safety. When the ocean comes, if it’s every homeowner for themself, the options are demolition or a fire sale.