We Need YOUR Help With The
The Islands Committee has been working for about a year and a half on developing "affordable housing" on Chebeague. As land and housing prices and tax assessments on the island have risen, it is harder and harder for people with modest incomes, especially young people, to buy starter homes or to find affordable year-round rental housing. We know this need exists, but in a housing market as small as Chebeague's we have to be careful that "if we build it, they will come". Some other islands have built "affordable" housing that hasn't worked out as they had hoped, though some others have been successful.
With that issue in mind, last year the Islands Committee got help for a preliminary study of housing needs from a group of students at the Muskie School at USM. Based on that study we have now gotten a grant from the state to do a more detailed study of Chebeague"s existing housing, and the market for affordable housing here. We have hired Bruce Mayberry, a housing and planning consultant in Yarmouth to do the study.
The major piece of the affordable housing study will be a survey of all residents of Chebeague, year-round and summer, to find out about their existing housing and their housing needs. We will also be sending surveys to people "off-island" who may have an interest in living year-round on Chebeague. These surveys will probably be sent out this month or early in July. The survey is also sponsored by the Chebeague Island Council and the Town of Cumberland.
We are asking you to help us find "off-island" people who may have an interest in living on Chebeague, so that we can send questionnaires to them.
If you or someone you know might be interested in living year-round on Chebeague but may not be able to afford it, please give us your or their name and address so that they can be included in the "off-island" survey. This could be you,. your children, friends, or acquaintances. Names and addresses can be sent to: Mabel Doughty, 23 Bennett Cove Road, 846-4077 or Beth Howe, 168 South Road, 846-7829; email: mpassano@earthlink.net.
The off-island survey itself will also be posted here on www.chebeague.org if you or they would find that an easy way to respond.
Please help us. The future of Chebeague as a diverse,
year-round community depends on many things. One of them
is an adequate supply of housing that people can afford to live
in.