The western Maine resort town of Rangeley is moving to study its housing market after too few residents expressed interest in joining a committee to examine the issue.
Officials in the resort community are pushing ahead with plans to apply for a housing grant from the state. Town officials said their ultimate aim is to build houses for area workers, a type of unit the market has struggled to provide despite a pandemic-era construction boom.
Rangeley’s predicament is a distilled example of two statewide issues: the pandemic-era swell of second-home buyers that pushed home values up for crucial service workers and a lack of interest in the lower levels of government that are working to solve the problem.
The town saw an influx of part-time residents by fall 2020, when there was a notable bump in the school population, post office box rentals and even trash in the transfer station. By 2022, new subdivisions were sprouting up in the four-season tourism hub. Construction activity remains higher than pre-COVID levels, Town Manager Joe Roach said.
But homes are still out of reach for most here. The typical Rangeley home was valued at $523,000 as of June, up 2.4% over the past year and nearly $99,000 above Maine’s statewide average, according to Zillow. Rangeley’s values have climbed more than twice as fast as the state’s over that span. The median home listed for nearly $645,000 in June.
Last year, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that nearly three quarters of housing units in Rangeley sit vacant. Only 14.8% of residents could afford the median house price last year, down from nearly 52% in 2025, according to data from the Maine State Housing Authority.
It’s not the only similar western Maine town seeking to assess its housing needs. Eustis and Carrabassett Valley, which are tied to the Sugarloaf ski resort, are also looking to build housing. Limited access to homes for teachers and other workers has strained local budgets there.
Only one person had expressed interest in joining the study committee, Roach said. That led selectmen to move forward with a “proactive” approach to studying Rangeley’s housing needs.
He said it is not unusual for local boards to take time to fill up. Other towns in Maine have struggled to fill similar volunteer positions, including Winn, which has considered disbanding after not fielding enough people for the planning board. Many places are even struggling to keep city and town managers.
“Sometimes these are a little slow to populate,” he said. “To people in the business sector and maybe the public at large, they think that two or three months is a long time, but in the government world, it isn’t.”
Rangeley’s town officials expressed interest in surveying major employers in the area to get a sense of what staffing and wages are like in the area, details that may bolster the town’s grant application.
The town will seek $10,000 from a state housing grant program that provides technical assistance to municipalities updating ordinances and helping meet statewide housing goals. Officials are planning to meet with Donna Kane, their contracted planner, to discuss options on Monday.
Daniel O’Connor is a Report for America corps member who covers rural government as part of the partnership between the Bangor Daily News and The Maine Monitor, with additional support from BDN and Monitor readers.