Genesis awarded $50,000 grant from
Jane's Trust of Boston
Funds will allow Genesis to provide assistance and interest-free loans to island organizations

posted December 18, 2006

On December 11 the Genesis Fund received word that Jane's Trust of Boston approved a $50,000 grant to further the work of sustaining Maine 's year-round island communities. The funds will allow Genesis to make interest-free loans to housing and other community development organizations to finance projects on any of Maine's 14 unbridged islands with year-round residents. The funds will also help Genesis continue to provide expert technical assistance to the island organizations as they plan new projects.

Jane's Trust of Boston has been involved in supporting Maine islands since December 2004 when it awarded a $220,000 grant to the newly created Islands Challenge Fund. An additional $50,000 in matching funds was raised at the end of 2005. So far three Islands Challenge Fund grants of $25,000 each have been made to groups developing much-needed year-round affordable housing on Islesboro, Monhegan and North Haven . Each of the groups has raised at least $25,000 locally to match the grant. Groups on many of the other islands are in the process of developing projects and ideas and benefit greatly from the support and technical assistance that Genesis Fund staff provides.

“While the locally-raised funds and Islands Challenge Fund grants help island organizations to get affordable housing efforts off the ground, many groups need to borrow additional funds to complete the projects. The new Jane's Trust grant will allow Genesis to lend some of that additional capital interest-free and that will really make a difference to these small, mostly volunteer-led groups,” said Liza Fleming-Ives, associate director of the Genesis Fund, who works most closely with the island housing organizations.

“These groups are taxed already by the significant effort involved in raising the capital needed to acquire land and complete construction of projects. This grant from Jane's Trust will allow all funds raised by island organizations to go directly into acquisition, renovation, or construction costs. That's really exciting news,” Fleming-Ives said. “By taking the typical 7% interest rate that a housing organization would pay to us or to an outside lender out of the equation, the groups will be able to keep the money on the island where it can do the most good. We are very grateful to Jane's Trust for this kind of on-going support.”

Fleming-Ives predicts there will be a demand for at least six loans to island housing groups over the next two years. The groups, whose loan requests might range from $25,000 to $100,000, will benefit from a subsidized loan from Genesis.

The need is acute for the subsidized loans, grants from the Islands Challenge Fund and technical assistance to support housing and community facility initiatives. When island residents can no longer afford to live on-island, the departure of every individual and family has a tangible impact on the long-term sustainability of the community. In coastal towns on the mainland a low- to moderate-income person might buy a house ten to twenty miles inland and commute to work on the coast. But this is not possible on the islands. When island populations decrease below a certain threshold, year-round communities die off and a traditional way of life is gone forever.

Support from Jane's Trust has been critical to bringing hope to island residents on the 14 remaining islands with year-round populations that they can, with effort, stem the tide of population decline. This grant and the continuing support will build the needed capacity and connections among island communities to help sustain these efforts of community building long into the future.

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