To help address a severe workforce housing shortage in Mount Desert Island, a nonprofit organization has purchased a Southwest Harbor inn to help house seasonal employees of Acadia National Park.
Friends of Acadia bought the Kingsleigh Inn on Main Street this month. It will be used as housing for 10 seasonal Acadia employees. The group, which supports and advocates for Acadia, paid $1.275 million for the inn, according to FOA President Eric Stiles.
Acadia, like other local employers on MDI, has difficulty filling positions because of the lack of housing on the island, where millions of people visit each summer during Maine’s busy tourist season. Last year, after visitation to the park soared, the park could only fill 116 of its 165 seasonal staff positions because there simply wasn’t enough housing available for its prospective employees.
Stiles said that addressing the park’s staff housing needs has become a top priority for Acadia and the friends group because of the direct adverse impact the shortage is having on the park. If people reject job offers from the park because they can’t find a place to live, then the park will be unable to keep up with vital programs and services.
Stiles said he didn’t realize a year ago, when he was applying for the president’s job with Friends of Acadia, that housing assistance would be among his top priorities. But if there aren’t enough employees to maintain trails or to try to fight the spread of invasive species like the woolly adelgid, he said, the park will suffer and lose its appeal.
“As visitation has dramatically increased, we’ve also encountered a record tight labor market,” Stiles said, adding that all national parks have experienced similar changes. “Housing is increasingly unaffordable and unattainable in gateway communities.”
The goal is not just to make more housing available to seasonal staff on the park’s payroll, but also to seasonal workers whose jobs are directly geared to serving Acadia visitors, such as FOA summit stewards and bus drivers employed by Island Explorer, the island’s free seasonal bus service. Stiles said that last year, Island Explorer could only fill 92 of its 120 driver positions. Of those hired, 10 slept every night in their cars.
“Often, people who are offered jobs walk away” because of the lack of housing. “We can remove a huge obstacle by providing seasonal housing.”
The purchase of the inn is one part of the housing strategy the friends group is pursuing, he said. By making minor upgrades, it has helped increase the number of beds at houses on the island that the park already uses for seasonal employees, he said, and it is seeking to boost that number higher with other development projects.
The park currently has 90 bedrooms for its seasonal employees, but the friends group has set a goal of helping the park add 130 more bedrooms over the next decade, Stiles said. The park’s staffing needs are likely to grow, he said, but it also likely see a decrease in the amount of housing it has now, either because leases it has now won’t be renewed or because the park decides to move to newer housing.
Stiles said that plans by Acadia to work with Bar Harbor to develop workforce housing at a site on Crooked Road in the village of town Hill Will help realize that goal, but that the park also is hoping to develop housing inside the park, at inconspicuous locations that are convenient to nearby towns. With any luck, the park will have new housing totaling 50 or 60 beds within the next five years, he said.
But he added that though the friends group may help meet that goal with the Kingsleigh purchase — and perhaps purchases of other properties that are not currently being used for housing — it is crucial that Congress raise the money Acadia needs to directly address the problem. He said he was not sure how long that might take.
“That is entirely dependent on federal funding,” Stiles said.
