“There is a level of bureaucratic fuckery that happens … because of the amount of money here.”

Nightmare on Main Street

An exclusive look inside Nantucket’s real-estate crisis reveals the lengths to which private developers have gone to build on the tony island—at the expense of its lower-income residents

By Clara Molot

It’s spring on Nantucket, and kids are riding their bikes down the freshly paved streets. On either side of them, shingled houses sit close together, each with a small lot of freshly cut grass out front.

A car turns the corner. “We see him coming from a mile away,” says Carlese Gumbs, a year-round resident of the island’s Beach Plum Village. “We all run inside. Nobody wants to say hi to him. Nobody wants to even look at him … even the kids,” she says. “Why would you want to speak to someone who has deceived you?”