Twenty-five years ago, residents of Vinalhaven asked the Genesis Community Loan Fund for help. Without local options, their aging neighbors were often forced to leave the island for care in mainland facilities, separating them from their homes and families.
Genesis support helped open the Ivan Calderwood Home in 2001, enabling residents to remain in their island communities.
The project revealed a larger issue Genesis has focused on ever since: Maine’s coastal and island communities need resources to create and sustain affordable and accessible homes for year-round residents—not only for older adults but for individuals and families which include school-age children and service providers and other workers.
Through our lending and guidance, in partnership with MaineHousing, Genesis is helping expand affordable housing throughout rural Maine, including on islands, where neighbors are helping neighbors, often as volunteers. They are organizing, fundraising, identifying housing sites, and overcoming logistical challenges that “unbridged” places face when the only way there is by boat.
With no one-size-fits-all housing solution, they are responding creatively with a diversity of project types.
Islanders with different experiences, skills, and ideas are stepping forward to create plans and projects to ensure their communities can retain services, support, and connections.
With no one-size-fits-all housing solution, they are responding creatively with a diversity of project types: building new homes, rehabilitating existing structures, bringing in modular units customized to fit on ferries, and reusing what works—one example is the former ferry-crew quarters that will become a new home.
This year, with financing and/or guidance from Genesis and funding from MaineHousing, nine of 15 eligible coastal islands have launched or completed projects to create affordable housing for year-round residents. Here are some examples:
• Chebeague Island Community Association’s newest housing project to support island families will be a multifamily building with three-bedroom homes, developed through modular construction.
• On Cliff Island, a project is in progress to rehabilitate two three-bedroom homes to help ensure the community remains accessible to individuals and families at a range of income levels.
• To meet the needs of year-round residents of all ages, Cranberry Isles Realty Trust has led projects that have built two single-family homes on Great Cranberry Island and created four homes on Islesford. New projects will increase the total number of newly created affordable homes on the Cranberry Isles to ten.
• A project on Isle au Haut aims to adapt a single-family home into a duplex, and rehab two single-family homes, including one that has lacked a septic system or running water.
• Islesboro has plans to construct two new single-family homes for year-round residents.
• North Haven plans to expand its year-round housing stock by rehabilitating two existing properties and creating accessory dwelling units (ADUs) to provide flexible housing options.
• On Peaks Island, Home Start has secured a project site to develop a multifamily building offering three homes.
• Vinalhaven Housing Initiative has plans to convert former ferry-crew quarters into a three-bedroom home and construct another one-bedroom home.
Each project showcases the determination of island communities to secure homes that are affordable, accessible, energy-efficient, and climate-resilient. And what’s the even larger goal? To help sustain year-round island communities that have relied on innovation and cooperation for generations.
Across the state and beyond, communities can learn from Maine islanders who are overcoming tough challenges to create housing for their neighbors. Genesis is proud to be a partner in this work.
Liza Fleming-Ives is executive director of the Genesis Community Loan Fund and has worked with island and coastal communities for nearly two decades, helping to bring together resources to create affordable housing.
