How Times Have Changed
Editors note: Another in our continuing series of guest blogs. Today we hear from Heidi Shott, communications director of the Damariscotta based Genesis Fund, a revolving loan fund that provides flexible, low cost financing and expert assistance to affordable housing and community development organizations across Maine.
In July 1981, my college boyfriend and I drove to New Harbor so he could show me the place he had vacationed with his family as a boy. He said he wasn't sure if he'd ever get back here again so we should go while we had the chance. As we passed through Damariscotta, I thought, "Gee, what a lovely town."
As we meandered down the Pemaquid peninsula, I looked at the homes lining Bristol Road and wondered two things: first, how do people make a living here and second, how much do these great old capes and farmhouses cost?
If someone had told me that within seven years I'd be married to this guy and about to move to Newcastle, Maine, I would have said they were absolutely crazy. But here we are - 26 years, three different house, two great kids and several pets later.
But one problem: If we tried to buy the house we bought in 1997 - a not architecturally pristine 1790's Colonial with 200 feet of frontage on the mill pond at the south end of Damariscotta Lake, we couldn't do it. We're mid forties professional types with below average debt, but we still couldn't begin to touch this place.
And we are not alone. Not by a long shot.
According to the Maine State Housing Authority, between 2001 and 2006 the median home price in Lincoln County rose from $125,000 to $202,233 while the median income rose a mere $3,000 from $41,516 to $44,566.
In central Lincoln County towns with saltwater frontage the gap between home price and income are even more alarming.
Bristol: 2006 median home price - $252,053; 2006 median income - $45,517 or 80% of households (1,074) unable to afford a median priced home.
Damariscotta: 2006 median home price - $285,000; median income - $40,915 or 86.9% of households (855) unable to afford a median priced home.
Newcastle: 2006 median home price - $287,500; median income - $49,375 or 81.4% of households (676) unable to afford a median priced home.
Across Maine the situation is not so dire but still disheartening for many first time home buyers or those who would like to "trade up."
Statewide, the number of households who would, based on their area's median income and its median home price, have to spend more than 28% of their gross income is 370,395. That's household, not people, in a state with only 1.3 million people to begin with.
While Maine does have the 10th highest home ownership rate in the nation (71.6%) and Lincoln County sports a whopping 83%, the housing impact on those at the lowest income levels and increasingly on the middle income young people who would like to live in the towns they grew up in, is intensified because there is such a demand for homes below the median. That's one of the reasons you can drive 15 or 20 miles from New Harbor to Whitefield or Jefferson and see hundreds of lobster traps parked on someones lawn. A lobsterman may have grown up in Bristol or South Bristol, but, unless he inherits a house from a family member, he and his family can't afford to live there.
The homes that were for sale in 1981 in my first trek down Route 130 may have been affordable to young people at the time, but times have sure changed.
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