PROVINCETOWN — Tell me if you have heard this one: A coastal community, remote, popular, seasonal, with a shrinking population because the year-round jobs are disappearing while housing costs climb, driven not by local conditions but by the purchasing power of its second-home owners, while the year-round residents struggle to secure just one. The community isn’t sure what can be done, but tries every avenue open to it. Sound like Provincetown?
It’s not. It’s one of more than a hundred communities along the coast of Maine that are facing the same challenges as we are. The difference between our situation and theirs is that they have a unique community foundation, the Island Institute, to work on these issues.
The institute’s mission is to exchange ideas and experiences to further the sustainability of Maine’s island and coastal communities. Through the Island Institute, year-round and seasonal residents have joined to bridge the divide between locals and second-home owners, a divide that seems to grow as the cost of living continues to rise. Since 1983 the institute has focused locally on the economy, housing and community life, and preparing for climate change, even creating and underwriting a local newspaper.
How do you bridge the gap between the economic extremes, create opportunity, and support a vibrant year-round community? For the Island Institute, it’s a unique program that places interns in individual communities to work for a year on projects that the locals — predominantly the year-round residents — have designated as priorities, underwritten by philanthropy largely by the new money that has helped to alter the local landscape. The top priorities will sound familiar in Provincetown: small business training and support, aquaculture business development, high-speed broadband access, access to affordable renewable energy, and leading coastal resilience efforts.
The institute’s record is impressive. According to its website, 405 businesses have received coaching and training in the past 15 months; 65 communities have been supported in working toward accessible, high-speed broadband; 45 communities have received technical assistance or training for sea level rise flooding resiliency.
The institute’s leaders recognized that locals and second-home owners shared a common love for their towns. As Roger Fisher says in his classic Getting to Yes, one way to move beyond conflict is to find a common problem both parties want to solve. Working together builds trust — maybe not at first but over time. The institute, acting as a bridge, mediated conflicting expectations, found common solutions, and built trust and engagement.
Our core issue is how to bridge the income inequality so present in our community. There are many Provincetowns, and each person’s experience is valid. Each of us in our own way loves and cherishes this town. The question is how we bridge the divides.
The Island Institute has been responsive to local priorities by listening to and helping the year-round resident while leveraging the second-home owner’s good will and philanthropy. There is a lot of money in Provincetown that wants to do good and find ways to be helpful.
It’s not clear that a Provincetown community foundation is achievable. We may be too small, or too contentious to unite before the waters rise. But I believe we can address the growing economic divide by looking at successful models like the Island Institute. Its example proves that there are ways to bring people together. It doesn’t require a group hug or forced pleasantries, but it does require hard work and something like a community foundation acting as an honest broker among factions, committed to community engagement and professional management practices, owned by none and open to participation by everyone.
