The scant 33,000 people who live within Washington County's 3,255 square miles largely derive their living from the bounty of natural resources: the sea, the barrens, the timber, the rivers. But some of the most sustaining industries from the past—shipbuilding, sardine canning, commercial fishing—are gone or in decline. (Lobsters remain one of the more reliable fisheries.) Full-time employment is harder to come by—most people piece together seasonal jobs, like clamming, digging bait worms, and wreath-making. Hard work doesn't always add up to a living, however. Some 20 percent of county residents live in poverty, the highest percentage of any county in the state.

Roberts saw subsidized housing for settled farmworkers as a way to relieve some financial pressure, improve the stock of decent rentals, and help stabilize a workforce that supports some of Maine's oldest indigenous industries. Anyone who derived substantial income from agriculture or aquaculture would be eligible, whether from Maine or Mexico. No one had ever built this type of housing in Maine before. The U.S. Department of Agriculture provides grant money to finance construction—Roberts just needed to find a nonprofit willing to apply for it. She asked around at various state and local agencies—who might be an appropriate sponsor? All pointed her in the same direction: Mano en Mano, Milbridge's tiny social service organization for Latinos.

Mano was not a housing developer. Nor had it ever aspired to be. Hispanic residents knew to go to Mano for help with homework, or filling out paperwork, or finding a doctor. Mano sent teachers out to the raker camps to work with migrant students and invited in the Milbridge community for multicultural potluck socials. Rooted in literacy classes and language exchanges that once took place at the town library, Mano sought to build bridges, not homes. Nevertheless, Mano's board of directors agreed to hear Roberts's pitch. She didn't try to sugarcoat what the development process entailed—the hurdles were high, and community opposition was guaranteed. As generally welcoming as Milbridge had been to Hispanic newcomers, Roberts warned, proposals for farmworker housing often brought out the worst in people, eliciting anti-immigrant sentiments that escalated the usual panic about the "element" affordable housing brings in.

The development plan was modest: six apartments in a single two-story building. But the backlash began almost the instant Mano made its plans public in 2008. A petition arrived in Milbridge town manager Lewis Pinkham's office signed by 48 residents. They wanted to stop the "low-income complex" planned for property on Wyman Road, at the edge of the village center. Their stated reasons included concern that the values of nearby properties would suffer and that low-income residents would burden town resources. And then there was this:

"We know the lobster industry is threatened with the added cost of fuel and all it brings. We wish to protect any jobs they may need in the future, not to be given out to minorities that may move into these units."

The project proved to be the catalyst for people who were angry about a lot of things to get vocal about one thing. At an information session about the project, a crowd of opponents objected loudly, saying they feared an inflow of drugs and crime. Within days after that meeting, in April 2009, town officials were discussing a moratorium on multifamily housing development. The moratorium was potentially fatal to Mano's project—a prolonged delay could potentially cost them their federal grant. And contrary to the claims of town officials, Mano's board didn't believe that the holdup was grounded in concerns about land-use regulations or traffic.

In July 2009, Mano filed a federal lawsuit alleging discrimination under the Fair Housing Act and the equal protection clause of the Constitution. The once welcoming town of Milbridge now stood accused of enacting a multifamily housing moratorium "out of fear that Hispanics and Latinos would move into the development or to appease citizens who had similar fears." Nobody anticipated the full-on firestorm that lay ahead. ~

Adapted from Snob Zones: Fear, Prejudice, and Real Estate by Lisa Prevost '84 (Beacon Press 2013). Excerpted with permission by Beacon Press.

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