IHT envisions a future where MDI has a significant percentage of affordable year-round housing available to the workforce. History
Island Housing Trust, formerly known as the Mount Desert Community Trust, was founded in 1989 as the Mount Desert Development Trust, based in the Town of Mount Desert. As the Mount Desert Community Trust, the organization completed one workforce housing project through
a 99-year lease on a town-owned piece of land off Route 198 in Mount Desert in 1994 and then was inactive for a number of years. In 2003, following the second MDI Tomorrow initiative, the Mount Desert Community Trust’s Board of Directors was reconstituted and the organization’s mission expanded to include all four towns on MDI. In 2005, the organization’s name was changed to Island Housing Trust to reflect that expanded mission. Through January 2021, Island Housing Trust had completed 46homeownership projects for 137 adults and children on Mount Desert Island since 2008. Among these are nine new, energy-efficient houses at IHT's Ripples Hill workforce housing development in Somesville, 15 Homeownership Assistance Program (HOAP) projects in which IHT provided bridge grants to enable qualified applicants to purchase year-round houses on MDI, four houses in the Sabah Woods workforce housing development in the Thomas Bay area of Bar Harbor, a donated 2.4 parcel of land in Somesville that became the site of a single-family residence, and a partnership project with Maine Coast Heritage Trust that enabled a couple qualified by IHT to purchase a three-bedroom home on Route 3 in Bar Harbor as their year-round home. Including among the 46 homeownership projects completed by IHT over the past eight-plus years are ten successful re-sales of residential properties that carried IHT’s affordability covenants and thus were resold at below market-rate to qualified working families and individuals. In October 2018, Island Housing Trust and Maine Coast Heritage Trust partnered to purchase a 60-acre parcel of land in Bar Harbor, on Route 3, at the head of Mount Desert Island. MCHT protected 30 acres of wetlands, and IHT purchased the 30 acres of uplands for year-round housing, permanently affordable to people earning a median income on Mount Desert Island. IHT plans to have 10 energy-efficient homes, including a duplex, on the site by 2022.
