While testing 1.9 today, we came upon a bug which prevents Help Island from being accessible by new Residents. After discussions with the engineers, we decided it would be best to take Help Island "off the air" until we could find a more permanent solution to the problem (ie: not just hack it together to make it kind of work). The introduction of the new estate tools offers a higher level of control for private estates, such as the one the Orientation Islands and Help Island share. Unfortunately, we were not able to test this in preview and I apologize for this inconvenience.
Therefore for the next few days, Help Island will not be accessible by anyone and will not be offered to new Residents, who will instead be sent to the Welcome Area in Waterhead (Ahern is under construction!). Please note that this is by no means a permanent solution and we will be working on bringing Help Island back up as a high priority for the remainder of the week. I will be sure to post updates here.