2024 MDI Housing Solutions Summary Report

The 2024 MDI Housing Solutions Summit Summary Report is complete. The report includes an overview of the March 2024 meeting along with key takeaways, next steps, and priorities expressed by Summit participants. 2024 Summit participants ranked barriers identified at the 2023 Summit, with the high costs of construction and attitudes towards change ranked as what they perceive as the highest barriers to housing affordability and availability on and around MDI. Limited developable land and vacation rentals tied for third as the perceived highest barrier to housing affordability and availability.

Additionally, participants were asked to reflect on potential contradictions embedded in the housing crisis to encourage moving beyond either/or thinking. Statements expressed include “How is it that we can be a desirable seasonal destination and simultaneously a thriving year-round community?”, “Have cedar shingle & white picket fence aesthetics and Density?”, and “Profit off the seasonal economy and simultaneously profit off the year-round economy?” and offer insight to some of the perceived dichotomies at play. Summit participants worked in small groups to develop a list of shared goals to pursue and once back together ranked those goals using keypad polling. The report concludes with a list of current and upcoming projects that are underway.

The full report is available online.

The MDI Housing Solutions Initiative is not a non-profit organization, but instead envisioned as a community-driven coalition-building effort to find points of collaboration and locally appropriate solutions to the housing crisis in the Acadia Region. This effort is partially funded by a grant from the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development’s Housing Opportunity Program (HOP).