When David Thomas came to Little Cranberry Island to teach in the Islesford School in August 1973, he rented a room from Cathy and Lucien Poulin before he rented Peter Bently’s house.
He then lived in the Gifford house, moving to David and Audrey Mill’s little cottage on the ledges for the summer. After his first year of teaching, David bought a small boat, knowing that he wanted to stay on the island to start a lobstering career. When the Gilley house came up for sale for $7,000, the local bank would not loan him the money because he had just purchased his boat. Instead, he bought some property from Lee Ham and started to build his own house. In his first two years of living and teaching on Islesford, David Thomas moved 7 times. He and his wife Cindy still live on the island, and both of their daughters graduated from the Islesford School to go on to private high school and college.
Finding a house to rent on either Islesford or Great Cranberry is usually an issue when the school board hires a teacher. They inform candidates that, while it may be fairly easy to find a winter rental, the teacher will probably not be able to find an affordable place to stay during the summer. The weekly or monthly rentals come at a premium in July and August. There have been times when the lack of year-round housing caused a qualified teacher to decide to take a job somewhere else.
At a special town meeting in 1985, Stefanie Alley and Bruce Fernald presented plans to create a second-story teacher’s apartment above the Islesford School. The vote in favor was unanimous and the project went out to bid. The apartment has made a big difference in attracting teachers to Islesford, but when an increased student population creates the need for two teachers, the housing dilemma returns. Finding year-round housing for one person in the Cranberry Isles is difficult. Finding affordable year round housing for a family is even harder.
In 1993, as a Selectman, David Thomas began talking about the need for affordable housing. Only a handful of people shared his vision at the time, and his fellow selectmen were not among them. David kept at it until a vote passed at the 1995 annual Town Meeting to study housing needs on the islands. A year later, the Town of Cranberry Isles voted to approve the formation of the Cranberry Isles Realty Trust (CIRT), and they held their first annual meeting in June 1996. In the next two years, dedicated members of the CIRT board of directors battled bureaucracy to finally receive their 501(c)(3) status from the IRS as a nonprofit organization.
CIRT then started seeking donations from individuals, trusts, and corporations, while also assisting the Town of Cranberry Isles with surveying and tracing ownership of land parcels. They applied for, and received a $300,000 Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) in 1999, to be divided evenly between Great Cranberry Island and Islesford. One challenge of using CDBG funds is that income eligibility is limited to 80 percent of the median income for Hancock County. In past years, when lobster fishing was at its peak, this requirement actually prevented some sternmen and their families from being eligible to rent the CIRT house, even though they did not have the funds to purchase their own home.
CIRT currently owns and rents three houses: the Kane house, on Great Cranberry, which was donated and relocated; the Rice house, also on Great Cranberry, which was bought at less than the appraised value thanks to a charitable donation by the owner; and the Islesford house, a modular house brought by barge and built on town-owned land at the gravel pit. Although the CIRT houses have not always been occupied by families with children, they have more than served the purpose of their original intention; to bring people into the year round community when they could otherwise not afford to stay here.
On Great Cranberry, Blair Colby lives at the Kane house. From driving the snow plow to welding, to working in the woods, to giving numerous cars and trucks an extended life, Blair has been an indispensable part of the year-round population after returning to the island where he grew up.
The Rice house, currently available, has been home to Jennifer and Ginger Cook, Ingrid and Richard Gaither, and John French; all contributing members of the island community and sustaining employees of island boat yards.
Wendy Rackliff moved into the Rice House on Great Cranberry with her children, Paul, Casey, and Joe in 2007 when she was unable to find a place to live on Islesford. The move allowed her to keep her children in the Islesford school. While Wendy no longer lives in the CIRT house, she is still resident of Great Cranberry Island. Paul now attends Mount Desert Island High School and Casey and Joe commute daily from Cranberry to the
Islesford School.
On Islesford, Bill McGuinness and Sonja Moser were the first CIRT house residents. They now own a home on Islesford and are expecting their first baby in October. Their CIRT residency was followed by Margaret Blank who lived there with 4 of her children, enabling Christina, Frances, and Gretchen to graduate from the Islesford School. When Iann and Sheila Krasnow decided to make Islesford their home, they stayed in the CIRT house with their school-aged children, Samantha and Isaac. They are currently building a home of their own on the island and soon the Islesford CIRT house will be available to help someone else join the year round community.
CIRT is not the answer to all of the Cranberry Isles housing issues and their existence comes with a shifting set of challenges. Because of the stipulations of the community block grant money, they must attract tenants who meet the income guidelines. They need to agree on long-term affordability covenants for any future sales of their property, and they need to keep active to find funding from contributions and grants. Since they are addressing a community issue, they are often asked to solve related issues such as transportation and job availability, which they are not set up to do.
The nine-member CIRT board is a group of volunteers comprised of summer and winter residents from both islands. They understand that affordable housing has become an essential aspect of sustaining a year round community. Like any public-minded volunteers or town officials, they end up hearing more comments from a few negative nay sayers, than hearing praise from the majority who are silent supporters.
The next time you see Eric Dyer, Peter Buchsbaum, Katrina Van Dusen, Jason Pickering, Dick Pierson, Eileen Richards, Jeri Spurling, Barbara Stainton, or Chris Wriggins, why not thank them for their time and effort in working to preserve the island community by maintaining affordable housing.