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Summer’s done. The west burns, the east floods, and there’s nowhere for working people to live on Martha’s Vineyard. Comparing the worldwide climate crisis to the local affordable housing shortage may seem like comparing the 20-year Afghanistan war to a Saturday night bar fight, but there’s a connection.

The current condition of each requires massive transformation to solve; the fundamental difference is scale. We know how to overcome climate change, but we don’t yet know if we will. We know how to solve the local housing crisis, too, and – lo and behold – there are two indications that we just might. The first is circumstantial; the second is intentional.

Something that is happening right now has never happened before: in each of the six island towns, there is, simultaneously, one or more significant affordable housing projects moving forward. In a recent editorial in the Martha’s Vineyard Times called “Making Progress,” most of the projects were listed. Here they are again, paraphrased for brevity:

1. In Tisbury, Island Housing Trust (IHT) is in the construction phase of a 20-unit pocket neighborhood of affordable apartments at Kuehn’s Way. Proposed mixed-use development at the mini-golf course on State Road would also include affordable housing.
2. Edgartown is planning 36 rentals and four homeownership opportunities on town-owned land at Meshacket Way.
3. West Tisbury voters have approved the transfer of town-owned land at Lambert’s Cove and State Road to their affordable housing committee. And recently, IHT, the MV Land Bank, and developer William Cumming revealed plans for the old Olsen Farm that will include eleven housing units for members of the island workforce, especially teachers.
4. Oak Bluffs is planning 60 units on its eight-acre Southern Tier property, and CapeBuilt plans to include affordable housing in its development on Lagoon Ridge off Barnes Road.
5. Aquinnah and IHT will partner on four units on land abutting the town hall.
6. Chilmark is in the early stages of planning for housing at Peaked Hill Pasture.

Others are being planned. Island Grown Initiative will build four units of farmworker housing at Island Grown Farms in Oak Bluffs. Most significantly of all, perhaps, the MV Hospital and Healthy Aging of Martha’s Vineyard have secured property and much of the funding for a large project for elders. It will house 70 people of mixed incomes at a complex using the innovative Green House model that has been successfully replicated nearly 400 times nationwide.

The combined result of this activity may produce roughly 250 new affordable and elderly housing opportunities. If they are all completed in the next five years, they would satisfy the ambitious Martha’s Vineyard Commission Housing Needs Assessment goal of producing 50 units of new community housing per year.

This unlikely convergence of tremendous parallel efforts is the first indication – the circumstantial one – that we will solve this crisis.

With all this development, there is opportunity to contribute to the solution of that bigger problem: our climate crisis. Buildings (their construction and operation) account for nearly 40% of all carbon emissions. With care, attention, and investment, we can make buildings responsible for significantly less carbon than the norm. It’s even possible to build carbon-neutral (and carbon positive!). We should be doing nothing less.

All of these projects need funding to bridge the significant gap between cost and affordability and to ensure health, comfort, durability, energy efficiency and reduced carbon content.

That brings us to the second indicator – the intentional one.

In November 2020, Coalition to Create the MV Housing Bank (CCMVHB) formed to establish a regional housing bank funded by a 2% transfer fee like the MV Land Bank. The effort has a full head of steam. We have joined forces with a dozen other cities and towns to craft statewide transfer fee legislation and are working with all six towns to pass warrant articles supporting the housing bank. A dedicated funding source producing $7-10 million annually for housing would allow for progress like we have never seen before.

All the projects listed earlier involve development or re-development. The housing bank could support these efforts financially, but it could take other approaches as well.

Think how many campground cottages, Edgartown bungalows, Chilmark colonials, and West Tisbury farmhouses could be purchased, re-furbished, taken off the short-term rental market, and made into stable year-round housing (rather than being demolished and replaced with mega-mansions to rent for a ton of money in the summer and sit empty and dark the rest of the year).

Consider how many people, way short on a down payment for one of the ridiculously priced fixer-uppers on the market today, could walk into the Housing Bank office and say, “How about one of those ‘shared appreciation loans’ for me? I’ll pay it back. I’ll work hard. I always have. You can count on me.”

We probably can, and it sure wouldn’t hurt to try. (Shared appreciation loans would provide down payment assistance to those struggling to enter our inaccessible housing market and would be repaid upon sale or re-financing – with some of the appreciation returning so the funds could be re-purposed in the future).

Our partner, the Land Bank (which has consistently supported affordable housing efforts and has volunteered to collect the housing bank funds using its existing apparatus), has transformed the island for our pleasure, health, stability, and well-being. That is precisely what the Housing Bank could do for people. Land Conservation and People Conservation. Two sides of the same coin. Currency for community. An investment in generations to come.

During the past 25 years, Vineyard non-profits and municipalities have slowed the march of the housing crisis through a variety of important finger-in-the-dike efforts. But if you want to get to Mexico and you’re heading for Canada, just slowing down won’t get you to where you’re going. You need to change direction. The Housing Bank will combine with current efforts to turn us all the way around.

When will the moment come that we see a similar light at the end of the climate tunnel?

When I first learned carpentry, it was part of a seat-of-the-pants effort to create shelter on the communes of the late sixties and early seventies. My teachers were books, occasional mentors (some of whom knew only a bit more than I did), practice, and pure dumb luck.

Later, when South Mountain (SMCo) became a design/build firm on the Vineyard, we hired carpenters of a similar breed – self-taught experimenters like Pete Ives, Heikki Soikkeli, and Steve Sinnett. In the late eighties, we were working on projects of greater complexity and it was time to hire a well-trained carpenter who had the discipline and orderly learning history that we did not.

We cast a wide net around New England and New York. We found some good candidates. The response that stood out came from Billy Dillon, a 32 year-old union carpenter who had graduated from a Hudson Valley apprentice program at 22 and racked up years of on-the-job experience since. He came to visit. We loved his skills and enthusiasm. We hired him.

Next week Billy will complete a wonderful, multi-faceted project at Camp Jabberwocky. It will be his last project at SMCo. Over the course of three decades, Billy has contributed to the company as an Owner, as a member of our Management Committee, and as the on-site lead for many of our most demanding projects.

Perhaps his most meaningful contributions have been made as a teacher. He has taught stairmaking, framing, timber joinery and other skills in a variety of settings, and he has been an extraordinary mentor to our young carpenters. Some of them are not so young anymore, but Billy’s lessons stay with them.

Chris Wike tells this story: ‘Do you know how to make a set of sawhorses? It’s the level cut of a two pitch! Mark the side of the 2by…’. Those were my instructions on day one of my new job. I had been working as a carpenter for many years, and knew my way around a jobsite. As I approached the pile of lumber to begin my task he called out, ‘work right off the pile, we will need the horses right after lunch.’ Eager to do a good job, I dove in. I knew he was testing me at this point and wasn’t just giving me some mundane task. It didn’t matter how many sawhorses I had built before or how great they might’ve been. Everything I needed to know for the task at hand was right there in those few words. He told me exactly how to do it, where to do it, and how long it should take me.

Chris goes on to say,

I learned pretty quickly how to work with Billy. You have to be ready to absorb. Whenever he gives instruction, he speaks deliberately and uses building trades vernacular that is vast, and authentic. There’s always an opportunity to learn while around him. You just have to be listening. He has a particular way for every task and he wants to share it with you, because someone shared it with him, or because he knows from experience it’s worthwhile to repeat. Those who have worked with him recognize that he is someone who is passionate about his work and committed to sharing his knowledge with those who seek it.

Chris is now one of our two next-generation Project Leads.

Although his instructions are crisp and his expectations high, Billy has always been keenly aware of how difficult the work is and how hard expectations are to fulfill. He has never been embarrassed by his own mistakes, and he expects others to make them too. He often says, “The only people who are making mistakes are the people who are working.”

Billy’s a good talent-spotter too. He actively recruited Rocco Bellebuono (our other next-gen Project Lead) to join South Mountain 16 years ago. Rocco tells how the association came to be: I met him in some random down-home eatery in Germany. We were both fresh off the redeye, and somehow connected before the start of a three week intensive drawing program. Dennis [Thulin], Kenny [Leuchtenmacher], and Billy were the first classmates I met. Little did I know how much that moment would change my life. Billy and I took an immediate liking to each other. We both loved to draw. And we both loved complex geometry, and how it could help us build mind-blowing beautiful wooden buildings. We were searching for the same thing.

Before we left Germany, Billy said to me ‘you should come and work with us’. Shortly after, I came to the Vineyard for a visit. It took some time to work out the details, but two years later I joined the South Mountain crew.

Billy has never ceased to be an inspiration for me. He recognizes the importance of giving and sharing the knowledge that he has, and even the knowledge that he doesn’t have! The quest. He has always embraced the arcane, and the elusive. The mystery of craft. He brings a lot of heart and soul to his work.

Carpenters haven’t been the only beneficiaries of Billy’s talents and generosity. Our Director of Finance and Administration, Siobhán Mullin, recently shared the following:

Over the years Billy has become a valued colleague and friend. He has always treated me with respect and shared his wealth of knowledge when I needed to learn something related to the field and his work. He showed me how to use a few tools in the shop, and has even helped me make my own Swedish cheese knife! His generosity with his time when my husband and I have needed advice for our personal building projects has been invaluable; Billy has been a constant resource. Then there are all the ways he has been involved with our family, like sharing his worn Adirondack chair plans with my Dad many years ago and teaching my boys (who he once liked to balance on one hand) how to make apple cider, tap maple trees, collect eggs, and drive a four-wheeler. I’m so happy for him that he is moving into retirement smiling.

Like Siobhán, I too am happy that Billy has chosen his moment, on his own terms, to “stick a fork in it.” That emblematic Billy saying (which means “okay, that’s done, time to move on”) inspired Phil Forest to make the giant fork that gets passed, at each company meeting we have, to a deserving recipient, who keeps it until the next meeting and chooses to whom it will get passed next. Billy was the first recipient years ago.

Billy’s retirement makes five employee-owners who have retired since 2011 collectively representing over 150 years of employment. Billy’s retirement is an exclamation point on the gradual departure of the old guard and transition to the new. Each of those five left us with a lot. Among the many things Billy leaves behind is an appreciation for the trades in our society and economy. In recognition of that, South Mountain is working to establish a scholarship program or contribution, in his name, that will enable young islanders to get the training they require.

It’s bittersweet to see him go, but Billy is embracing the moment, chomping at the bit, and excited about more time and travel with his wife Amy and daughters Lucia and Augusta. He’s got a list of projects a mile long.

For now, we stick a fork in it, but we look forward to continuing to learn from Billy in his retirement. He has plenty left to teach.

The Vineyard is full of narrow dirt roads that wind out along the ponds and into the hilly uplands. Until recently, many of these roads were unmarked; some still are. Years ago we used to make and circulate hand-drawn maps to help trade partners and suppliers – and our own crews – find jobsites.

Sometime in the 1980s we started making red arrows and strategically locating them along the way. The arrows themselves evolved and ultimately became a cut-out. Jim Vercruysse, our Shop Lead, who has been with us 30 years, has probably made and painted hundreds.

We mean to take them down when the job is complete, but many are left behind. In some cases, homeowners request that they remain. They may even paint them a different color. They may even paint them lime green.

In 1998, when we developed our Stoney Hill Road property, which included the development of Island Cohousing (a neighborhood of 16 houses and extensive common facilities) in addition to the South Mountain office, shop, and storage yard, we cut a new access road. We needed a name for the road. At a company meeting we held a brainstorming session to find one. Derrill Bazzy, former Designer and Owner, suggested we name it Red Arrow Road. He remembers, “All of a sudden it just popped into my head, made total sense to me, and when I suggested it to the group, everyone said ‘Of course!’ It was unequivocal.”

It stuck, so that’s how we ended up on Red Arrow Road (where we remain today, two decades later).

The Vineyard’s hundreds of dirt roads have some unusual names, like Pancake Hollow Road, Tar Barrel Road, and Glacier Glen. Some commemorate historic attributes of the particular road, like Blacksmith’s Valley Road, Fulling Mill Road, Oxcart Road, and King’s Highway. Or physical features, like Peaked Hill Pastures, Kettle Hole Lane, Rustling Oaks Road, and Clay Pit Road.

And then there’s Mud Puddle Road (which most of them are this time of year) and just plain Old Dirt Road (love that one), Beaten Path, and Goah Way.

Many clearly have a story behind them, like Pimpneymouse Lane, Robin’s Nest Road, Pennywise Path, and Black Duck Road.

There are even some numbered dirt “streets” along Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road, that go from 3rd Street to 22nd Street, with some random Avenues (10th, 12th, and 13th) thrown in for good measure. This area is particularly bizarre because the numbers aren’t even in order, just helter skelter. What’s that all about? How did it happen? Stoner town planners or developers playing a joke on the rest of us long ago?

Back to Red Arrows. Remember that none of them will lead you to Red Arrow Road. In fact, even your GPS is unreliable for that task. It will lead you up the Edgartown-Vineyard Haven side of Stoney Hill Road – the worst dirt road on the Vineyard, where you are sure to bottom out multiple times.

Stick to the map below. And if you know a good story about how any of those dirt roads were named, let me know.