Jan Dooley rented a home on Islesboro for 19 years. But last year, when the veteran teacher at Islesboro Central School found out that the house she had been renting year-round was to be put up for sale, her only choice was to take a ten-month winter rental and hope something would turn up.

Eventually something floated up, but not accidentally or without a great deal of vision and hard work from many people on Islesboro and beyond. On July 25 a two section modular home arrived by barge at Hewes Point where the road nears the water. The sections were trucked to a prepared building site, a six acre lot that was acquired in 2005 by the nonprofit community group Islesboro Affordable Property (IAP) with help from a loan from the Genesis Fund. The following day a huge crane arrived on the island on an amphibious SeaTruk to set the two sections on the foundation. “The house joined up perfectly, right on the dime,” said Joanne Whitehead, director of IAP.

In February 2006 John Applin, director of the Augusta-based Bread of Life Ministries, took a plan to the Vassalboro Planning Board to build five affordable rental units for homeless families on an 11 acre parcel. From the start the plan met with opposition from neighbors, but the planning board never officially turned the faith-based community services agency down. Hoping to avoid further conflict in Vassalboro, Applin decided to combine the plan with one for an additional 10 units of transitional housing on a parcel on Augusta’s West River Road.

Pending approval for the Augusta project, Bread of Life Ministries approached the Genesis Fund about a loan for the newly conceived 15-unit project. The loan application was scheduled for review by Genesis’ Loan Committee prior to a board of directors meeting on August 4. Despite the need for both permanent affordable rental units and transitional housing for homeless families in the Kennebec region, the Augusta Planning Board denied the proposal at its July meeting, bowing to charges of “incompatibility” by residents of a nearby subdivision. That the Augusta Planning Board recently approved a truck maintenance facility on an abutting property seemed to call the decision into question to many involved in the project.