Affordable island housing

The word “affordable” has a special meaning in a resort community where summer people have bid up the prices to the point where Maine working people can’t afford a place to live. The Cranberry Isles, off the coast of Mount Desert Island, have been gradually losing year-round population, in large part because of rising housing costs. Great Cranberry and Little Cranberry (or Islesford) are among the 14 offshore islands still inhabited all year. There were 300 of them a century ago.

Houses on the islands now sell for anything from $160,000 to millions of dollars, far too much for the fishermen, carpenters and caretakers needed to keep the communities alive and well.

A group of concerned citizens, both summer and year-round people, determined to do something about the situation, have created the Cranberry Isles Realty Trust, known as CIRT. The trust already has acquired or built three houses for new low-income residents. It gets land or houses by gift or else buys them with a $300,000 federal block grant and private contributions.

Finding suitable tenants for this homesteading operation can be tricky. Prospective settlers must be prepared for island life in a community that can be leery of people “from away.” For the islands, “away” means anything off-island. The Islesford Grange once taught a secret hand signal, one hand rubbing the coat lapel, meaning, “Beware, a stranger approaches.”

So the trust requires that an applicant can earn a living, has a trade that will suit island needs, and passes a screening by an island committee. New tenants can rent or buy, but at least one year’s rental is required to see if the new family fits in as a permanent resident. Federal guidelines set a maximum income at $22,000 for a family of two, scaled up to $28,700 for a family of four.

A purchased house on Great Cranberry

is already occupied. Another, donated by a summer resident and moved to town property, awaits conclusion of a lawsuit by a summer neighbor, who objects to the project. A third house, on Islesford, is a modular home that was erected last summer on the reclaimed town gravel pit. It needs additional work to finish the second floor and install utilities and appliances. Residents are raising $32,000 in private funds for that purpose.

The modest Cranberry Isles undertaking can be a model for other Maine communities where rising costs of housing are causing loss of population.