Are We Too Late to Adopt "Community Rules"?

An annotated tax map of downtown Stonington, ME.
The pink dots represent properties owned by non-residents.

 

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated and exacerbated a trend that was already well underway: the sale of our communities to investors and "non-residents" -- people who do not work here, vote here, or live here year round.

The map above shows the impact on the village of Stonington. Only 30% of our downtown properties are owned by residents. And only 15% are commercial enterprises. 

That means 55% of downtown properties are owned by non-residents. And outside of the village, 80%+ of the total Stonington shoreline is the same.

Some call this gentrification: when wealthier people from other areas, in search of a higher quality of life, gravitate toward beautiful, end-of-the-world places formerly populated by people there because of birth or work -- including artists. Because property values and incomes are higher where they originate, their interest in and purchase of local properties in communities such as Stonington drive real estate values beyond the reach of local workers.

Change is inevitable and those who engage with the same place year after year know the glories and the heartaches of these changes. The questions are: can we direct and influence change with community values and actions? Knowing what history has taught us: how could we do this differently? How might incoming property owners show more respect for preserving the cultures and places where they want to spend time, too?

Because in some ways, we might also consider some of these changes as a kind of ongoing colonization. After all, the generational White islanders who make up a majority of today's Deer Isle residents replaced the indigenous people who stewarded and used the natural resources for more than 2,000 years before we asserted our own White European cultures.

Here's a suggested, partial checklist of "community rules" for everyone's consideration -- feel free to add to and share this!

Get to know a place and its people and economies before purchasing property. Buying property in bidding wars "sight unseen" on the internet is no different from being part of a gold rush. And just like previous gold rushes, it's destructive to a place's natural and cultural resources. 

Our community is more than your financial investment. We live here year round, through the cold and muddy grind climbing March hill. We raise children here and struggle to maintain our local schools. We work here and what we harvest and make creates a sustainable year-round community. We vote and volunteer as firefighters and ambulance drivers; we serve on committees and participate in the municipal process, moving the gears to make a livable, sustainable place that can welcome visitors such as you. 

Don't put your own desires above the community's needs. I know this is a tough one given American individualism, but...well...it's not all about you and what you can afford and to what you feel entitled because you happen to have the cash -- or the real estate to attract the cash. Feel blessed by and grateful for your privilege. We didn't allow our "rusticators" of the past to gobble up all the real estate so that workers had no places to live, and they in turn didn't rent their seasonal cottages to others to churn in and out of every three days as if this is a party boat. Love Deer Isle-Stonington? Buy a non-winterized cottage and spend five months here, volunteering for nonprofits while you are here. Or establish a regular rental from a year-round person who needs the income to pay their property taxes. Already doing these things: thank you! Remember that you already own a place and vote and work somewhere else: you don't need to own here, too. 

Be of service, make a positive impact. If you've made it through the first three bullet points and are still determined to buy, sell, or rent a place, consider how you can contribute -- with your time, expertise and heart, in addition to your wallet -- where the community has the greatest need. Some communities add transfer fees to real estate sales to fund needed community projects. Or if you buy and are only going to visit for two weeks of the year, consider renting it for the other 50 weeks to a year-round, working community member. It's not as sexy or as flush with cash as being an AirBNB host, but it will eventually help you to become an actual member of a real and beloved working community.

In the meantime, the Stonington Economic and Community Development Committee is running a Short-Term Rentals Task Force with the objective of lessening the negative impacts some of these are having on our communities. We meet monthly and welcome your input to econdev@stoningtonmaine.org.

Our island is suffering from the top-heavy impact of a new wave of colonizers. Our workers have no places to live and are cut off from the source of their labor and passion on our working waterfront. Our natural resources and infrastructure -- such as Stonington's Sanitary and Water districts -- are stretched beyond their capacity. Our schools don't have enough students to be sustainable, and our teachers and nurses can't find housing. Our beautiful village is dark and empty for great swaths of the year.

What can we do differently?

Losing Our Nonprofit Religion: Bad Boards and Misunderstanding JEDI

Myles Jordan and Kirsten Monke, two members
of the DaPonte String Quartet, in a 2012 concert 
of new music produced by Opera House Arts
at the Burnt Cove Church in Stonington.
Photo by Karen Galella.

This weekend's news about the hostile board takeover of the Friends of the DaPonte -- ousting the founding musicians as salaried employees and changing the organization's name and mission while waving a false flag of "diversification" -- is, I can only hope, the straw on the camel's back of nonprofit board culture gone seriously awry.

The nonprofit sector, and the "culture of philanthropy" that supports it, has been -- like the "fourth estate" of the press -- an important leg of the stool that is the U.S.'s socio-cultural economy.

We all need it to be functional.

The sector's purpose -- to fill unique charitable needs -- is intended to take the capitalist rule of transactionality off the table: experiences and services are not measured solely on attendance and earnings; community relationships are more important than transactions. In the U.S., the sector, like government, exists to serve the common goods of our communities, filling gaps in public services that in other industrialized countries the government often provides more of -- including the arts.

And in the nonprofit cultural sector, some organizations are appropriately leading the way in doing the work of JEDI -- justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion -- centering the voices and work of those who have for so long been excluded, as well as adopting new ways and teams of cooperative, equitable working.

Yet over the last 40 years, in parallel with the "Reagan Revolution" move toward "supply side" economics, we've experienced an increasing amount of dominant, capitalist culture values and strategies creeping into the nonprofit sector, until today our common goods and charitable purposes are awash in a flood tide of transactional programming (services and events without relationships) and egocentric leadership (building individual resumes and prestige). Boards are too often comprised of affluent people suffering from the entitlement of "father knows best" because they've been successful in the capitalist marketplace, and they bring those unexamined, dominant culture values with them.

Nowhere is this more starkly apparent than in the recent actions of the Friends of the DaPonte board.

The DaPonte's uniquely charitable, laudable, and purposefully specific mission was to advance equity for artists. The founders knew that to truly practice and present their craft, strengthening communities through access to live music and music education, they had to create a stable income base. Remarkably, over 30 years they achieved this. 

Now along comes an ambitious new Executive Director/composer and a board that misunderstands not only its governance role to steward the nonprofit's mission but how to pursue JEDI. The result: by changing the name and purpose of this nonprofit and firing the musicians as employees, they are stealing assets that don't belong to them and flying in the face of JEDI values.

Diversification of programming is laudable and necessary. So are equitable pay for artists and good governance values such as respect, listening, relationships, artist leadership, and stewardship. 

It seems clear the ED and board could not get the DaPonte to go exactly where they wanted them to go -- specific programming not being the purview of the board in any event -- so instead pulled the rug out from under them.

The DaPonte are artists who created a nonprofit with a small, singular purpose to sustain their craft and their community impact. If, after discussions with them, the ED and individual board members remained dissatisfied, they had several options open to them -- notably recognizing they are in the wrong place and departing to start their own nonprofit chamber music series. 

Instead, they've chosen the path of theft and disrespect, laying bare the damaging mechanics of inequitable governance run amok. 

Let's hope this incident can, first, be over turned and secondly that it sparks the necessary conversations, awareness, and changes the nonprofit governance model desperately needs.

#nonprofitmaine

#governance

#culture