CHEBEAGUE ISLAND — It only took a few days for the 1.5-acre lot to start looking like a home. The modular boxes that will soon become a large duplex for two families went up quickly, like giant wooden Lego blocks stacked atop each other.

The rain, which fell steadily on the mainland, held off on the island and the newly hatched blackflies hadn’t started biting yet. By all accounts, the first day of construction went better than expected.

But it took months of setbacks and false starts to get to that point.

There were unexpected insurance snags. Snow and ice in February prevented the barge from carrying the modules and the crane over a chilly Casco Bay. The crew wasn’t available until mid-March. Then, Chebeague’s roads were posted until May, prohibiting heavy vehicles to protect the roads while the frost worked its way out of the ground.

Finally, on a gray spring morning, the first boxes were placed on the woodland property, a milestone in a years-long effort to add more housing that resident Bob Earnest said is “critical to the survival of a diverse and vibrant year-round community.”

In most Maine towns, the addition of two new rentals is no big deal. But on the state’s 15 unbridged islands, each unit has an outsized impact — and the stakes are high.

Without affordable housing, the islands are at risk of dying off — and if they do, experts say the state would lose not only valuable tourism money but also a uniquely “Maine” way of life characterized by self-sufficient attitudes, working waterfronts and close-knit communities.

Just a few miles away, a small group of volunteers on neighboring Long Island has been trying to add housing to the island for nearly 20 years.

“We’ve probably been the least successful of (the) islands at actually having standing houses that people can move into,” said Mark Greene, president of the town’s year-round housing corporation, as well as the director of maps and assessing.

Long Island received money from a state housing fund in the early 2000s and again in 2022, but neither project ever really got off the ground.

The properties they wanted to develop needed a lot of work and the development costs quickly eclipsed the available funds. Just one of the four units they wanted to build in 2022 would have cost around $500,000, Greene said.

“When push came to shove, we didn’t have enough money to be able to build them, even with a generous state housing grant,” he said. The state funding had a deadline and when that came and went, Long Island petitioned for more time.

As the projects have struggled, so has the island.

Many of the summer workers are imported, Greene said. It’s been a challenge to find enough bodies to serve on town boards or fill important roles including on fire and rescue squads. The school is down to about half a dozen kids.

Long Island recently finished a revaluation, and even though property values have gone up dramatically, homes are still selling for hundreds of thousands more than they were assessed for.

They need to attract more families if they want the community to survive, but “there is just almost no way for younger people to get a foothold here,” Greene said. “It’s gotten dire quickly. Our population is stagnant. It gets one year older every year.”

The median age across Maine’s islands is 56, according to U.S. Census data, more than a decade older than the statewide median age of 44.

But as the consequences of the lack of housing have become clearer, it has also re-energized the efforts.

Finally, after 20 years, the tide has begun to turn. Another, more shovel-ready property became available, drastically reducing the cost. They found a new developer who tweaked the design and found a company willing to build modular homes on the island.

They resubmitted their application to MaineHousing and voters in May approved a funding plan for site development and startup costs. Assuming tariffs and the overall uncertainty around the global economy don’t cause prices to skyrocket, Greene is cautiously optimistic that things could finally come together.

IT ALL COMES BACK TO HOUSING

When Nick Battista talks to island residents about the challenges they’re facing, almost every conversation comes back to housing.

Battista is the chief policy officer for the Island Institute, a nonprofit that works with island communities trying to navigate climate and economic issues.

Maine needs tens of thousands of housing units statewide, and shortages have strained nearly every town in some way.

On the mainland, it can be hard to make the argument that the lack of housing threatens the heart of the community — the school — Battista said, but the need is stark on an island.

“Those two units of housing could be the four kids in the school or it could be the housing for the teacher, without which you don’t have a school,” he said.

And without a school, new families won’t even consider moving to an island “even if we were giving away land,” said Greene, on Long Island.

But the need doesn’t make the hurdles any easier to clear. Development on an island costs more. Many developers aren’t even willing to work out there.

Materials need to be barged over from the mainland, and workers’ hours are dependent on ferry schedules. Lots are often not connected to water and sewer, or sometimes even roads, so there are steep infrastructure costs.

The same house could be built on the mainland and an island, and the island home would cost 30% more, Battista said.

For many of these communities, there’s limited land available, as much of the islands are held in conservation trusts.

There’s also a “finite” set of resources and a lot of projects that need to be completed, Battista said.

Many of the projects are only possible with the help of the Maine State Housing Authority’s Affordable Housing Initiative for Maine Islands, which provides up to $840,000 (or $210,000 per unit, up to four units) in zero-interest, forgivable loans for year-round, affordable rental housing.

The program launched in 2007 and has waxed and waned over the years, with the most recent round of funding announced in 2022. The initiative has funded 49 units across 10 of the islands. It’s not clear when or if more money will become available.

“MaineHousing’s mission includes creating and preserving safe, warm, and affordable housing for Maine people, and that includes ALL of Maine, including our island communities,” spokesperson Scott Thistle said in an email. “These Maine communities and the working families who live there are a special, unique, and important part of the state’s culture and economy. While small in scope, the Island Program, when funding for it is available, can have an outsized impact on these communities and the people who call our islands home.”

‘WE STILL HAVE MORE TO DO’

Battista said the way some of the islands are addressing their housing crises could help inform how the rest of the state addresses the problem.

“You can see innovative solutions coming out from island communities because they have to solve them. They don’t have the ability to say, ‘If we don’t address this housing problem, people can just live in the next town over.’ … Then you don’t have somebody to run the grocery store, you don’t have somebody to work on a ferry.”

Of Maine’s 15 unbridged islands, at least 11 have committees or nonprofits dedicated to establishing more housing, and each island has taken a slightly different approach.

Mark Greene, on Long Island, said some of the efforts on other islands have been “heroic.”

“I think the more desperate you are to save your community, you almost find more has been done,” he said. “We’re moving in that direction.”

Chebeague, Peaks and, soon, Long Island have all pursued multi-unit modular housing, where the pieces are built in factories off-site and then barged over for assembly.

On Cliff Island, an organization purchased a single-family home and converted it into two apartments, one of which is specifically reserved for the school’s teacher.

The Cranberry Isles Realty Trust, a nonprofit dedicated to adding more housing, has spent more than 20 years slowly adding and renovating rental housing and now has 10 units between Great Cranberry Island and Islesford/Little Cranberry Island.

On Isle au Haut, officials are working to adapt a single-family home into a duplex and rehab two single-family homes.

The Vinalhaven Housing Initiative is converting former ferry crew quarters into a three-bedroom home and then building a one-bedroom home.

Monhegan Island has been buying land and selling it to residents at an affordable rate to help encourage them to build.

But while some islands have successfully added to the housing stock, that doesn’t mean they’ve solved the problem.

“It’s not like if you go out to Cliff, or you got out to the Cranberries, they’ll say ‘We got it, we solved it, we’re good,'” Battista said. They’ll say, “We’ve done some really good things, we’ve taken some really good steps … and we still have more to do.”

In many ways, adding more housing is just the tip of the iceberg.

“People have to be able to afford to live there,” he said.

Living on an island comes with additional expenses that Ken Schmidt, president of the Cranberry Island Realty Trust, calls the “island tax.”

It’s not an easy way to live, it’s “rugged” and many people work multiple jobs, he said.

“When people leave the island, they’ll say ‘Well, I’m going to America,'” Schmidt said.

But Mia Boynton, who lives on Monhegan Island, a community of fewer than 50 full-time residents, believes housing is the first and most important hurdle to clear.

“If we can … have people at least have secure housing, then it might make them more willing to overlook things like the fact that you have to rely on a ferry boat to get here,” she said.

‘WE DON’T WANT TO BE A SUMMER COMMUNITY’

Tracy Calder was lucky to find an affordable, year-round rental on Chebeague. She happened to ask the right person at the right time and moved in a little over a year and a half ago.

But Calder, 30, who works at the Chebeague Island Boat Yard, said many of the coworkers around her age haven’t been so lucky. Most of them live off-island and commute every day. A couple are living with their parents, but want to be in their own spaces.

“We’re all kind of struggling with how to live on the island and work out here,” she said.

This is Chebeague’s second go-around with MaineHousing’s Affordable Housing Initiative for Maine Islands. The association built another duplex 13 years ago, which Earnest, the treasurer of the Chebeague Island Community Association which spearheaded the effort to build the homes, said has been consistently occupied.

“We don’t want to become a summer community,” he said.

But Calder, treasurer of the community association, grew up on Chebeague and fears that without more affordable housing, that could become reality.

“There’s no way that financially, I can ever afford (to buy) something out here,” she said. “To think that the working class population is potentially getting phased out … I think that’s the direction it’s going in.”

Chebeague has a rural character that Earnest said makes it special. The town only put in stop signs about a decade ago, and many longtime residents saw it as a “sin” – every few months, some signs go missing and Earnest will find them in the woods. “It’s like whack-a-mole,” he said.

The community of about 400 year-round residents is close-knit. It’s the kind of place where if someone needs something, they’ll all pull together to make sure it happens, Calder said.

A tour from Earnest around the island includes the backstories of almost everyone, from first-time settlers to stolen sweethearts.

Earnest and others want to preserve the rural character and small community feel. But they also know the town needs to grow. There are boards with empty positions. The school, while up and running, is small.

Of the seven homes currently for sale on the island, only three are priced below $1 million, and one of them, listed for $985,000, is close.

So the work continues. The select board recently formed a year-round housing committee that will likely focus on homeownership opportunities because “rental opportunities alone do not address the entire situation,” Earnest said.

There’s no target number for how many units Chebeague needs or how many new residents they need to welcome, but “when nobody is talking about the concern about the viability of the year-round community, that’s when we’ll know we’re finished,” he said.

VINALHAVEN

Dylan Jackson sees the islands as “canaries.”

“Any economic problems come to us first, because we’re already at an extreme,” the Vinalhaven resident said. “In other areas, as housing becomes more valuable, people can move to a nearby town that has a lower tax base or lower value to the housing. There’s a cushion on the mainland that we don’t have, so we feel it right away.”

Five years ago, someone earning Vinalhaven’s median $70,000 salary had plenty of opportunities for homeownership.

But during the pandemic, the character and pace of life on the lobster-heavy island of about 1,100 full-time residents off the coast of Rockland began to draw attention from people “from away,” with higher incomes. They could pay cash for their very own island retreat and suddenly, there went one more house from the year-round housing supply.

The island population swells to about 3,500 in the summertime.

And once a house goes from being year-round to seasonal, it never goes back, said Jackson, president of the Vinalhaven Housing Initiative. Of the island’s 1,300 housing units, about 824 of them are vacant, according to the town’s 2021 housing needs assessment.

Of the 16 homes currently for sale on Vinalhaven, only three are listed below $350,000, the edge of what’s considered affordable to someone making the median salary, and all three need substantial work. Seven homes are priced between $1 million and $4 million.

“We’re in this position where the health of our community is dependent on people who run the gas station or the grocery store of the emergency services or the school,” he said. “Any of these people at the workforce income level are just not able to finance a house.”

The Vinalhaven Housing Initiative is trying to change that.

The organization is using an $840,000 grant from MaineHousing to renovate the former ferry crew quarters, donated by the Maine Department of Transportation, into a three-bedroom home. The home will be moved to a site that already has two apartments, and they also plan to barge a modular home over.

“Nobody here wants us to become just an exclusive gated community-style summer place, but that’s the direction it could go if steps aren’t taken,” Jackson said.

Vinalhaven had been somewhat cushioned from the housing-related pressures that the other islands have been battling for years because the revenue from the lobster industry gave them a source of income independent from the tourism industry. People, including young people, were making enough money to live comfortably.

But once the economics of the island shifted seemingly overnight, the situation became untenable. Now, the heritage industry that has long supported the island is also struggling.

“We see lobstermen hauling solo because there’s nowhere for a sternman to live,” Jackson said. “People are going out fishing by themselves, which is way more dangerous than going out with another person.”

Some lobstermen have built shops with an apartment. Others are parking campers in their driveways.

The industry has become one of the initiative’s biggest supporters, Jackson said.

Bean Maine Lobster, formerly owned by Linda Bean, donated the top floor of its lobster-buying operation as an office for the Vinalhaven Housing Initiative.

“It’s a big enough problem that it has to be addressed collectively, not case by case,” Jackson said.

MONHEGAN 

The 2020 census placed the year-round population of Monhegan Island at about 60 people, but Mia Boynton, who grew up on the mile-long stretch of land about 12 miles off Port Clyde, believes it’s now closer to 40.

“If we lose many more people, it will be hard to really run the town,” she said.

The island can’t afford to lose residents, but it can’t afford to gain many, either. At least not without more housing.

“We have pretty much no new year-round housing available for people,” said Boynton, vice president of the Monhegan Island Sustainable Community Association.

As it is, some existing residents have had to patch together a living arrangement by moving between summer and winter rentals.

“It’s pretty dire,” she said.

Previously, the association would buy houses and sell them back to residents at an affordable rate. But in recent years, home prices have escalated far beyond what the organization can afford and it had to pivot.

Now, according to Boynton, the association focuses on acquiring land (easier said than done on an island largely reserved for conservation), possibly doing some infrastructure upgrades, and then selling that to residents at a lower cost. The recipients can then build a house on the property.

Between the houses the agency used to sell and its two rental units, the group has helped six families, with two others – including Boynton and her partner – having received land.

Boynton has watched her community shrink in the eight years since she moved back to the island. As a child in the 1990s, she estimated there were around 100 people. It had a vibrancy that she said has been missing in recent years.

Now, many of the 40-odd residents are over 60 years old. There are only two children left in the school.

“The community is really kind of in peril,” she said. “It’s gotten smaller and smaller every year … we’re in danger of dying off.”

CRANBERRY ISLES

When Ken Schmidt’s mother was growing up in the Cranberry Isles in the 1920s, the Great and Little Cranberry islands had a combined population of over 400 people and all the houses on their little nine-home lane that leads to the water were lived in year-round.

A few decades later, in the 1950s when Schmidt was a boy, the population had shrunken to about 230 and five of the homes were lived in all year.

By 2000, the population had dwindled even more and the population between the Great Cranberry and its neighbor, Little Cranberry (or Islesford), hit an all-time low of 128, according to the census. The school on Great Cranberry Island closed. Only one home on Schmidt’s street is occupied year-round.

“You start to lose the heart of the community if you don’t have a school,” Schmidt said.

So a group of people formed the Cranberry Isles Realty Trust to create affordable housing  “so the whole community didn’t collapse and just become a summer island because nobody could afford to live there,” said Schmidt, the president and a summer resident.

They cobbled together the funds to buy a small house. Then a few years later, had another built.

“And so it started,” Schmidt said.

The trust currently has six affordable rental properties. Four more are being finished this year, with the help of MaineHousing’s islands program. The trust has also helped three families buy their own homes.

Their efforts have been successful. The year-round population between the two islands is now back up to about 160 and the median age has dropped from 60 to 48. The school reopened in 2016.

Schmidt estimated that about 25% of the Isles’ population lives in a house sponsored by the trust.

That’s not to say the island’s troubles are over. The year-round population is once again slowly declining. It costs $30,000 a year for the trust to maintain its existing units, and members are in the midst of a $1 million capital campaign. There’s still more demand than there are houses — Schmidt received 30 applications for the two houses on Great Cranberry.

Some of them are what he calls “island dreamers” who romanticize what can actually be a harsh, “rugged” life, but he’s optimistic that they’re headed in the right direction.

“It needs to be a year-round community that has a summer population, not the other way around,” he said.