Christian and Gunjan Gilbert are a young couple with skilled jobs at Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor; they’ve also just started a side business offering authentic Indian food for delivery. They’re just the kind of year-round residents any town on Mount Desert Island (MDI) would covet.
But the Gilberts live off-island in Franklin. When Christian began his home search several years ago, he barely looked on MDI.
“I really didn’t bother,” he said.
They couldn’t have afforded anything on the island without a huge mortgage.
“It’s a bet we were not willing to take,” Christian said.
The Gilberts are not the only ones experiencing MDI real estate sticker shock. In recent years, land and house prices have skyrocketed. Between 2000 and 2003, the median price for a home on MDI jumped 83 percent from $152,000 to $265,000, 77 percent more than the state average in the same span.
Rental rates have risen similarly for many MDI workers. In the 1990s, many year-round rentals on the island converted to more-profitable summer weekly rentals, squeezing the market and driving prices up. From 1990 to 2000, the number of renters who paid at least 35 percent of their income for rent grew by 82 percent on MDI, versus 3 percent statewide.
Although the island’s labor market is expanding, new house construction is not keeping pace. A nine-year housing study revealed that while 1,283 new year-round jobs were created on MDI, only 450 new year-round housing units were constructed.
Many of the homes now being purchased on MDI are for vacationers, not workers. Local real estate brokers estimate that in 2003, seasonal buyers accounted for 60 to 70 percent of all homes purchased. With such an influx of part-time residents, many islanders worry there soon won’t be anybody left on the island in the wintertime.
Marla O’byrne, president of MDI’s volunteer-run Island Housing Trust, said the top concern to come out of a recent island-wide forum was “the hollowing out of our communities of year-round people.”
Both Bar Harbor and Town Hill have passed ordinances offering incentives toward affordable and clustered housing building projects, and Bar Harbor has even exempted workforce housing from a recent subdivision moratorium.
The Mt. Desert Island and Ellsworth Housing Authority, a quasi-public organization that primarily focuses on senior housing, is now working on bringing workforce housing to the island. Housing Authority Executive director Terrance Kelley says workforce housing only seems fair.
“If you work here, you ought to be able to live here,” he said.
Kelley hopes to break ground in the fall on a new workforce subdivision. While the project is still in the permit stage, 25 applicants have already been selected to fill the new homes. Each successful applicant works on the island, prequalifies for a loan and has an income of less than $65,000.
The new houses will sell for around $150,000. Though small, the homes will be built using “green” construction techniques to maximize energy efficiency. They’ll also have hardwood floors and be made largely from natural materials to insure good interior air quality. Most of the construction material will come from wood harvested within a three hundred-mile radius of the construction site.
The Island Housing Trust also plans to begin construction on 15 units of workforce housing within the year. Trust president O’byrne says the proposed subdivision will be clustered and green-designed, with some shared parking to allow for a pedestrian-friendly landscape.
“Our goal is to preserve as much open space as we can,” she said.
If approved, the new housing project will be built on public land donated by the town of Mt. Desert. O’byrne wants to earmark some of the new homes for Mt. Desert residents.
In the future, O’byrne hopes the Trust will fund a rent reduction program to make up the price difference between weekly rentals and year-round rentals. The Trust is also exploring a program to encourage people to donate homes toward workforce housing. In order for these programs to work, the Trust will have to rely heavily on the philanthropy of island benefactors. O’byrne is optimistic.
“There is an awareness of the need and also a sympathy,” she said.
As for the Gilberts, they didn’t apply for either of the new island workforce housing projects. They’re happy enough in Franklin, where they own a home and several acres. Christian says that living in Franklin, they get many of the benefits of Downeast Maine without as much tourist traffic.
“I think life is a little nicer here in retrospect,” he said.
They still work on the island, though, and deliver most of their Indian food to islanders during their commute. So in a way, islanders at least get a taste of what it might have been like to have the Gilberts living there.