Maine is the oldest state in the nation. Not oldest as in historic. Oldest as in the average age of its people is higher than anywhere else in the country. That matters more than most people realize, and it is worth discussing.
The democratic process, at its most basic, results in people voting their own interests. Politicians follow large groups of voters because that is how they keep their jobs. I get it. I am a voter and I feel this way about plenty of things myself, usually at the national level more than the local. But at the local level, this dynamic has consequences that compound over time in ways that are hard to see until they are very difficult to reverse.
As communities gentrify, for whatever reason—whether it is remote work, retirement migration, rising property values, or just the discovery that a place is beautiful—local politics tend to follow the direction of growth. The momentum builds and continues until either what you were hoping to protect is gone, or enough people recognize what is being lost and decide to do something about it.
An affluent, older community has real benefits. I am not dismissing that. But at some point the public resources required to service it become either untenable or so expensive that members of the younger working class must leave. And when they leave, they take more than themselves. They take their willingness to volunteer, their ability to work part-time around school hours, and their children.
We can already see where this leads. A December 2025 report from the Interlocal Deer Isle-Stonington Housing Task Force found that 46% of homes in Deer Isle and 42% in Stonington are now occupied only seasonally. The same report found that nearly 20% of the island’s workforce commutes at least 100 miles round-trip daily, and that more than a hundred local jobs remain unfilled largely because prospective employees can’t find a place to live.
The volunteer fire and rescue services that coastal communities depend on are feeling this too. A University of Maine study found that the state’s rural fire departments are facing what it called an existential crisis when it comes to recruiting and retaining personnel. When working families leave, they take the volunteers with them. What replaces them are full-time professional services that cost significantly more, if they can be staffed at all.
That can seem manageable at first, with fewer schools, buses, playgrounds, and public facilities to maintain. But it leads in one of two directions: Either higher taxation to cover services that used to be handled by people who lived here and did it because this was their home, or a community that slowly fails because it no longer has a diverse enough population to sustain itself.
This is not just an island problem or a coastal problem. Maine is aging and gentrifying, which are forces bigger than any one town or harbor.
But individual communities can still choose to do something about it. The tools exist, including zoning, housing policy, working waterfront protection, and intentional planning. What is often missing is the will to use them before the window closes.
Or we can wait and see what we are left with.
Steve Train is a lobsterman from Long Island.
