Workers can’t find housing when job hunting in this Maine region

Even with two incomes, it was “damn near impossible” for Shannon Dennison and her husband to find an affordable home in the midcoast area.

Dennison, 37, is the head housekeeper at the Craignair Inn in Spruce Head. Though Dennison said she makes “well above” Maine’s minimum wage , and her husband contributes his earnings as a machinist at Prock Marine, it was a struggle to find a two-bedroom home or apartment in the region they could comfortably finance.

“Most of the rents in the midcoast go [for] about $1500 a month for a two-bedroom with nothing included,” Dennison said. “Houses are at an extreme, high price, and interest is as well.”

Median home prices are unaffordable to the median household in all but two towns in the midcoast region, a December study found . Housing stock has only increased 1 percent since 2016, though the midcoast’s population grew 3 percent in that time, according to the study .

Scarce housing opportunities have pushed workers, especially those in hospitality, health care, education or municipal services, to either commute long distances or leave the region altogether. It is threatening the economic underpinnings of the region, Shannon Landwehr, president of the Penobscot Bay Regional Chamber of Commerce, said.

“The hospitality industry can barely stay open,” Mathew Eddy, executive director of the Midcoast Council of Governments, said. “We’re not performing at the level we’re capable of performing at. The scary part is [increasing housing] is a matter of maintaining the economy.”

A lack of affordable housing for workers is also stifling growth. Bath Iron Works, one of the region’s largest employers , hopes to add 100 to 200 new jobs –– mostly trades positions like electricians, welders and pipefitters –– annually over the next few years, said Allyson Coombs, BIW’s director of human resources. But there’s nowhere to house them.

“They’re either going to have to travel a long distance, or they’re not going to take the job and [BIW is] not filling that vacancy,” Eddy said.

BIW has cobbled together different vanpools and bus services to help employees commute from as far away as the Lewiston-Auburn and Augusta areas, Coombs said. While that band-aid solution works for now, most employers are not set up to do that, Eddy said.

“Several restaurants in our area closed because they didn’t have staff,” said Greg Soutiea, who with his wife, Lauren, co-owns the Craignair Inn where Dennison works. “We were struggling. My wife and I didn’t have time to run the business. We were working 100 hours a week, covering everything from cleaning rooms, washing dishes, whatever.”

The Soutieas are one of several midcoast employers responding to the housing crisis by taking matters into their own hands and buying homes to rent out to employees. The couple has purchased three multi-family buildings in Rockland since 2021 that they rent out to inn employees, as well as several local lobstermen and nurses who earn around 80 percent of the median income. Both the Bar Harbor-based Jackson Laboratory and Bowdoin College own staff apartments, and Bowdoin even offers staff a home loan program as well.

“It’s really immensely beneficial to the business, being able to know that our staff have security around a place to live,” Greg Soutiea said. “And they know that they’ve got a place, so they’re kind of committed to being a part of the team and our long-term success.”

Also living in Dennison’s employer-owned apartment complex is Megan Russell, 22, the inn’s head bartender. Russell is a Camden native but said she was considering leaving Maine altogether before finding employment –– and an apartment, too –– with the Soutieas.

“I’d been looking for well over two years for a place of my own,” Russell, who makes $18 an hour as well as tips, said. “[Rents] were incredibly high for a single person, it was like, $800 a week. How am I supposed to do that?”

Russell has worked in the region’s hospitality industry since she was 14 and said most of her friends have been making it work by living in trailer parks. But even there, lot rent is quickly increasing and straining budgets.

Employer-owned housing like the Soutieas’ apartments is one way forward, but Eddy said the long-term solution should be to add to the midcoast’s housing stock at all income levels. The region is short 4,700 homes, according to that December study . Until supply meets demand, the midcoast’s economy will continue to grow stagnant, Eddy said, as older Mainers like himself are stuck in place, unable to downsize and free up units for a new generation of workers.

Eddy believes increased investor activity in the region’s market for single-family homes has also constricted supply, with many units converted into short-term rentals. There is no data yet to support that conclusion, he acknowledged, but he is hearing anecdotally from local realtors that 95 percent of homebuyers are paying cash.

“That leaves very few people in the housing market able to compete,” Eddy said. “There are certainly some positive ripple effects in the economy from short-term rentals, but every [one] certainly is taking away from the housing supply.”