In separate stories this month, we explore aspects of the Maine coast’s housing problem. For a look at the high end, consider the development just proposed for a peninsula on Islesboro. Philip Conkling notes that the first of the big, national real estate developers has arrived in Maine – on Islesboro, to be exact – where it has bought a peninsula for between $8 and $9 million. It plans to develop it into 20 waterfront lots, each two or three acres, to be marketed nationally for a million dollars or so apiece, “making the acquisition price seem quaint.”
At the other end of the spectrum we have the Washington-Hancock Community Agency’s housing development program, which, reports Sandra Dinsmore, buys land in Washington and Hancock counties, subdivides it and makes lots available to first-time home buyers whose gross income cannot be more than 80 percent of the county’s median income. Given low incomes in that part of Maine generally, we’re talking about folks without a lot of money to spend. Families buy lots (no down payment) and help each other build houses.
Leucadia National, the Salt Lake City-based developer doing the Islesboro project, reportedly made $15 million on one project in Florida in 2004. It stands to make something like that on Islesboro. The Washington-Hancock Community Agency doesn’t make a profit on its sales, so comparing balance sheets doesn’t mean much.
But it is productive to compare the results on the land and in the community. The Washington-Hancock Community Agency is doing what it can to decently house low-income people at a time when, even in far eastern Maine, the cost of such housing is escalating. It’s doing so with imagination and with a nod to the communities that will form where this housing is built. Neighbors helping neighbors solve problems – what better way to build community?
The development proposed for the Islesboro peninsula will doubtless be carefully planned. It will conform as closely to state and local laws as high-priced consultants can make it conform, and developers who’ve staked $8 to $9 million aren’t likely to leave much to chance. But will it be a “community” in any sense, and what will it do to the real community that surrounds it? It’s certainly not likely to improve public access to the shore, for example. Anything’s possible, but it’s unlikely that the buyers of such properties would enter into Islesboro’s community life in a meaningful way. They’ll pay lots of taxes, to be sure, but will also place demands on the town for services.
So within a single 100-mile stretch of the Maine coast we find two starkly different approaches to housing: at the eastern end, a nonprofit community agency sets out to help low income people help themselves live better; to the west, a mega-developer sets out to maximize profits by selling lots to people with very deep pockets or extremely good credit.
The success or failure of each will speak loudly of what kind of society we aspire to be.