Many would-be Harpswell residents haven’t been so lucky, town officials say. They include fishermen and dock workers, essential service providers, young families and older people who can no longer find reasonably priced living spaces within the picturesque Midcoast town.

Harpswell’s lack of affordability is a decades-old problem, but home price increases have accelerated dramatically since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020. The shift has sparked renewed fears that the town could suffer long-term economic stagnation and a loss of essential services.

“There are so many young people working in town who can’t live in town — it’s just unaffordable,” said Kevin Johnson, chair of the Harpswell Select Board. “The average home right now is around $700,000, which, let’s face it, if you’re a 20- or 30-something starting a family, it’s not happening.”

Affordability crisis

Home prices in Harpswell, Cumberland County and Maine have increased rapidly over the past few years, and prices already were rising at a steady pace beforehand.

The median price of homes listed for sale in Harpswell was $735,000 in early December, according to Realtor.com, out of roughly 20 homes available. A family with Harpswell’s 2021 median household income of $81,500 could not comfortably afford a home priced at even half that amount.

Cumberland County as a whole has seen home prices increase sharply since just prior to the pandemic’s onset in March 2020, according to the Maine Association of Realtors. The countywide median sales price for existing single-family homes shot up from $317,250 in March 2020 to nearly $550,000 in October 2023, an increase of more than 73%.

Statewide, the median home price has risen from about $228,000 in March 2020 to $375,000 in October 2023, an increase of more than 64%.

A Maine State Housing Authority report issued in October found that housing production has lagged far behind job growth over the past decade, particularly in coastal areas. The state’s coastal region has seen only 21,300 homes built, it said, compared with an increase of 39,334 jobs.

Maine would need as many as 84,300 additional homes built by 2030 to make up for historic underproduction and meet the population’s future housing needs, MaineHousing estimated.

“Addressing housing supply challenges in Maine will require a comprehensive approach that considers both the local regulatory changes needed to increase housing supply through new construction and the funding needed to reinvest in Maine’s aging homes and create new homes that are affordable to those with lower incomes, including seniors on fixed incomes, households waiting for federal work authorization, and others,” the report says.

Harpswell Anchor illustration by Eric Zelz

Many of Harpswell’s older residents have suffered from the town’s dwindling options for affordable living, said Lili Ott, co-chair of Harpswell Aging at Home, a community-led organization with about 400 volunteers dedicated to helping older residents.

As many of the area’s mid-level homes have been bought up and converted to short-term rentals or demolished to make way for “mega-mansions,” even simple things like the ability to ask a neighbor for help have largely gone away, she said.

“You can’t ask your next-door neighbor for a ride, because the house next door is only used on weekends in the summer when somebody rents it,” Ott said. “So, there’s kind of a loss of neighborhood that’s been happening with housing prices going so high.”

Despite help from local volunteers, many older Harpswell residents feel isolated, she said. For many of them, family members who may wish to relocate nearby can’t afford to do so.

And if an older resident wants to downsize their living space or can no longer manage their home’s upkeep or navigate its stairs, there is often nowhere for them to go except to another community.

“We lose so many people who love Harpswell because they can’t afford housing,” Ott said.

Without more affordable housing options, Harpswell also could face an increased loss of services, greater difficulty hiring essential workers, a rise in business closures and other economic problems, town officials say.

For Matt Gilley, the lobster boat captain, Harpswell’s lack of affordable housing has made it difficult for him to hire local help, because no potential crew members can afford to live anywhere near the town.

“There’s nothing really affordable, I don’t think, within an hour of Harpswell, is there really?” he said.

Catherine Gilley agreed that the current shortage of attainable living spaces extends well beyond the borders of Harpswell.

“Even in the surrounding areas, (prices have) gone up so much that somebody can’t affordably rent a room and things of that sort, even,” she said.

Working on solutions

Concerns about the town’s exorbitant home prices have led Johnson, the Select Board chair, and other municipal leaders to research and propose new policies that could help facilitate the creation of more modestly priced living spaces.

They formed an Affordable Housing Working Group, which has gathered residents’ input with the help of consultant Ivy Vann, of New Hampshire-based Ivy Vann Town Planning and Urban Design. The group issued a report in December offering a range of possible steps Harpswell could take.

Most would require voter approval, and the resulting improvements would likely be modest and incremental. The group’s recommendations are expected to be considered at the next Town Meeting in March.

They include easing zoning restrictions on certain types of housing, encouraging the construction of “accessory dwelling units” for use as long-term rentals, and promoting home-sharing programs that allow older residents to age in place more affordably.

One issue with Harpswell’s current zoning is that it doubles the amount of land per unit required to build a project of three or more units, from 40,000 to 80,000 square feet, said Town Planner Mark Eyerman, who has been helping the Affordable Housing Working Group. That’s a problem for any developer looking to build affordable housing, he said.

“If you have multifamily housing (of) three or more dwelling units, or if you divide a parcel into three or more lots, it’s a subdivision under state law, and the ordinance requires 80,000 square feet per dwelling unit,” Eyerman said. “So, if you want to build a subdivision and create six lots, you have to have 480,000 square feet, or 11 acres.”

The group also has suggested creating an affordable housing trust to provide funding and support for affordable housing projects, or partnering with an existing trust. The trust could be funded via a tax increment financing district, donations and/or town appropriations.

Another possible strategy involves making town-owned land available for affordable housing, similar to the decade-old Hamilton Place project in Harpswell Neck. Potential sites include property between Doughty Point Road and Strawberry Creek, or a portion of the upper meadow at Mitchell Field.

There are also ongoing discussions about whether Harpswell should regulate or restrict short-term rentals, although there is evidence it wouldn’t do much to make homes more affordable.

Rocky road ahead

But there are significant barriers, such as the town’s ongoing gentrification, a paucity of available land, limited groundwater resources, and local ordinances that make the creation of more attainable housing “difficult or impossible,” according to the working group.

Johnson, a member of the working group, said Harpswell’s exclusionary home pricing could lead to a variety of negative long-term consequences, including the closure of the town’s only remaining public school.

“If things keep going the way they’re going, in a few years I could see us possibly closing the (Harpswell) Community School, like we had to do with the West Harpswell School several years ago (in 2011),” Johnson said.

Bob Gaudreau, a retired developer and working group member, believes it will be difficult to significantly increase Harpswell’s supply of modestly priced housing.

For one thing, it simply wouldn’t be feasible to build large-scale affordable housing projects, he said, given the town’s expensive land and lack of water resources.

“(We have) water and sewer restrictions, because we’re on peninsulas,” Gaudreau said. “We’re on rock, and it doesn’t accept regeneration of our water resources and it doesn’t take our sewage very well.”

But there are other options that could add affordable housing units in more indirect ways. One proposal by the working group would make it easier to divide or share larger homes with multiple bedrooms that are currently occupied by only one or two people, which also could be achieved through zoning changes.

“There are many older homes occupied by a single person or a couple. Many of these have three, four, or even five bedrooms,” the working group’s report says. “Under the current zoning rules, if someone wants to reconfigure an existing single-family home to create two smaller units, the home has to be located on a lot with a minimum of 80,000 square feet, about the size of 1.4 football fields.”

Johnson said he thinks Harpswell can achieve its goal of boosting the supply of more modestly priced housing, but that it may require a combination of solutions implemented over a period of time.

Ultimately, the town’s voters will decide how to proceed. Johnson noted that not every resident agrees the lack of affordable housing is a problem.

“I think the town as a whole realizes something needs to be done, even if it’s baby steps,” he said.

Have a comment or news tip? Email J. Craig Anderson at craig@harpswell.org.