Cliff and Mayumi’s story begins at the Pearl restaurant, where Cliff worked as a server. Mayumi, a chef at the Straight Warf restaurant, was out with friends enjoying a rare night off. They were seated in Cliff’s section, where they enjoyed good-natured banter and top-notch service.

Over the course of the summer, Cliff and Mayumi’s paths kept crossing. When the season ended and they had more time for their personal lives, they began “crash dating.” On a whim, decided to go to Peru together. Next, Mayumi joined Cliff in Colorado, where he worked in the winter. By the time they returned to Nantucket, they were looking for housing together.

“It has always been difficult to find the right place,” said Mayumi. “We found a basement apartment, but we needed to keep it year-round even though we were working in Colorado for the winter. We knew if we gave up that place, we wouldn’t find anything else.”

Mayumi and Cliff worked the summer on Nantucket and winter in Colorado. Their professional lives flourished. In 2014, Mayumi won the Rising Star Chef award in recognition of her culinary talents. And Cliff got his dream job: a year-round position at Cisco Brewers. They were officially ready to settle down.

“We knew we wanted to make Nantucket our home,” said Mayumi. “But we didn’t know how we were going to make that happen. We had the American dream of owning our own place, but with housing costs so high on Nantucket, that didn’t look feasible.”

One day, Cliff was approached by a friend whose parents owned a piece of property that had been sitting on the market a few years. The property had a house and cottage, and the parents were considering utilizing Housing Nantucket’s Covenant Program to subdivide the lot. The parents still wanted a foothold on Nantucket, and would maintain the cottage for their own use. They wanted to sell to someone they would get along with, and thought of Cliff and Mayumi as potential purchasers.

Housing Nantucket’s Covenant Program allows a property owner with more than one residential dwelling on a parcel to sell one of those dwellings at a permanently affordable price. The sale and resale of the Covenant home is subject to a price cap, and the purchasers are income qualified by Housing Nantucket. Covenant subdivisions may also be done on vacant land.

Cliff and Mayumi entered a rent-to-buy agreement with their friend’s parents. They would rent the 5-bedroom home for a year, and sublet extra bedrooms.

“Everyone we knew was looking for housing,” recalled Cliff. “Finding friends to rent rooms from us wasn’t a problem. This arrangement allowed us to save money for our down-payment. It was a blueprint of what it would be like for us to own the home and carry the mortgage.”

In the meantime, Cliff and Mayumi assembled their qualification paperwork for the Covenant Purchasers Application. They also completed Housing Nantucket’s First Time Home Buyer class to educate themselves on the process. Twelve months later, Cliff and Mayumi were Covenant homeowners.

“Anyone who is looking for a home and hasn’t looked at Housing Nantucket’s Covenant Program is doing themselves a disservice,” said Mayumi. “There are a lot of opportunities for sellers, too, but they have to be smart. It doesn’t make sense to list a piece of property for the maximum sales price just because you can. Pricing has to be appropriate.”

“We feel strongly that charging reasonable rates for housing is everyone’s responsibility,” Cliff said. “We have barter arrangements with our tenants. It works for us all.”

Cliff and Mayumi demonstrate what happens when people who love Nantucket are able to put down roots. Last season, Mayumi and two business partners re-opened the Club Car restaurant, an island institution, under new management. Mayumi is the executive chef.

“Now that we’re officially committed to this community, I feel like we’ve been given the opportunity to become our best selves,” said Mayumi. “We look forward to continuing to fulfill our dreams.”

“We feel like the luckiest people in the world,” said Cliff. “Housing Nantucket and the Covenant Program helped us lay our foundation here, and we are truly grateful.”

There are currently 73 Covenant homes on Nantucket, scattered in various island neighborhoods. Covenant homes have provided housing for 99 Nantucket households since the first transaction in 2003. Learn more by clicking here.