It’s so hard to find an affordable place to live year-round in Deer Isle or Stonington that, in a recent survey of 33 island businesses, nearly half said they now directly provide housing to their employees.
Still, almost 20 percent of the workforce that commutes to the island travels at least 100 miles round-trip. Some seasonal employees traveled up to 130 miles in a day.
And more than a hundred local jobs remain unfilled, largely because prospective employees can’t find a place to live.
Those are among the findings in a yearlong study a task force in the two towns completed this week, examining how Maine’s housing shortage affects their communities and looking for solutions.
It shows new information about how housing challenges being felt across the state are specifically impacting one island — where leaders last year characterized the housing situation as a “death spiral” that threatens its future — and explores potential solutions. Deer Isle and Stonington are close-knit abutting communities that share an island and can only be reached by boat or a soaring bridge where Route 15 crosses over Eggemoggin Reach.
Left unchecked, the crunch will continue to have cascading negative effects on the island’s economy, schools, population and community fabric, the study concludes.
The island is home to Maine’s busiest lobster port, granite quarries and a robust seasonal tourist industry. It’s long attracted seasonal residents and has worked to fight an affordable housing shortage for years, but a surge of pandemic-era newcomers and rising property values have accelerated its challenges, according to the study.
In Deer Isle, 46 percent of homes are now occupied only seasonally. In Stonington, 42 percent are vacant in the off-season. Data from tracking site AirDNA shows the number of short-term rentals between the towns grew from 232 in 2022 to 246 this year.
Stonington voters enacted a short-term rental registry and some restrictions on their growth several years ago, and Deer Isle’s 2024 comprehensive plan sets goals to regulate them.
Still, Deer Isle-Stonington home prices make the island one of the least affordable communities in the state, according to the study, and are displacing working families. Rents are also increasing.
Many of what the report classifies as the island’s essential workers — fishermen, caregivers, retail, hospitality and seasonal employees — make less than $45,000 annually, too little to afford most housing. A quarter of the island’s population makes less than $25,000 a year.
The task force concludes it will take a range of approaches to create more year-round housing that can stabilize the economy. The island is already on track to add about 45 new units by the end of next year through local nonprofits, including redevelopment of the former Island Nursing Home.
Recommendations include developing owner-occupied homes that can house families, developing both more year-round housing, such as manufactured or mobile homes, and seasonal housing such as campgrounds while encouraging property owners to convert their seasonal units to year-round rentals, rehab old buildings and create accessory dwelling units. Municipal support for developers is important to do so, according to the study.
Financial education for potential homebuyers is also on that list.
To start accomplishing its recommendations, the task force requested the towns hire a part-time position to put them into practice and extend the service term for its current Maine Service Fellow, whose work is focused on housing.
