Housing affordability remains one of the biggest challenges in Maine, with Portland’s home prices outpacing salaries—and for members of the LGBTQ community, housing challenges existed long before the rising cost of living. Today, many LGBTQ members face discrimination and barriers to stable housing. A study by the UCLA School of Law shows that only 50 percent of LGBT adults own their own homes compared to the 70 percent of non-LGBT adults who are homeowners. LGBTQ youth are also affected. According to data from a study by Chapin Hall of the University of Chicago, LGBTQ youth are 120 percent more likely to experience homelessness than their peers.
Many non-profits across the country are working to help solve this problem by providing access to shelter, advocacy, support, and rental assistance. Still, in many instances, the property or shelter itself remains outside of community control. That’s where Portland’s Rabbit Hole Housing Cooperative differs. Rather than creating another non-profit housing program, they have created an opportunity where the asset, the building itself, is under collective ownership. Rabbit Hole offers a lesson to other nonprofits on the conditions needed for communities to gain meaningful control and what it takes for nonprofits to support them.
The Difference Between Serving a Community and Community Control
Traditionally, nonprofit housing services serve the community, whether through temporary housing or access to support services. But while these programs help address the immediate problem, they still leave communities dependent on other people or services. For example, there are grant cycles to wait on, landlords to deal with, long waits on government programs, and more. Public housing and rental assistance grants in the country can take anywhere from months to 10 years, depending on the city and demand.
If organizations want community ownership, they should choose funders whose missions align with this structure.
Rabbit Hole offers an alternative model to conventional nonprofit models: residents become stakeholders in the housing rather than remaining recipients. Community ownership can offer residents better protection from displacement. When communities take property off the market, private or corporate developers can’t access that land. According to the Climate Resilience Project, community-controlled housing can avoid unfair rental increases and the cost of living.
In Rabbit Hole’s case, the asset has now become an important part of community infrastructure.
Mission-Aligned Money Matters
In 2025, Rabbit Hole acquired its 7,215-square-foot property with a loan from Boston Impact (BII), a nonprofit impact-investing fund and certified Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI). Boston Impact’s financing approach differs from conventional market-rate investments, and this was key to Rabbit Hole acquiring capital. BII employs a model of accepting limited financial gains in pursuit of economic justice and community development.
The lesson for nonprofits pursuing collective ownership is that capital need not be neutral. If organizations want community ownership, they should choose funders whose missions align with this structure. BII’s vision is to create a future in which the community has the resources and power to achieve shared prosperity. Choosing funders who are willing to accept structures designed around community is key.
Governance Is the Real Experiment
Rabbit Hole addresses a critical need among the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) queer and transgender community. According to data from Advocates for Trans Equality shared by Rabbit Hole, 20 percent of all transgender people have been discriminated against for housing. In addition, 40 percent of them have experienced housing insecurity, and 10 percent have been evicted due to their gender identity. This project will serve as a community hub and creative outlet for members and the wider Portland LGBTQ+ community. Domenica Good from Rabbit Hole writes that the project empowers the community to take ownership of their housing and deepens the connection between the BIPOC trans and queer community in Portland.
For the model to work successfully, residents need to participate in governance, including maintenance, financial decisions, and conflict resolution.
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Cooperative ownership is not automatically a superior model. There is a tradeoff to be aware of: ownership creates autonomy but also responsibility. For the model to work successfully, residents need to participate in governance, including maintenance, financial decisions, and conflict resolution. Rabbit Hole uses the principles of Sociocracy 3.0 to shape organizational culture. The Sociocracy 3.0 movement was launched in 2015 and focuses on principles like consent, accountability, transparency, effectiveness, and equivalence.
Collective ownership also does not automatically eliminate hierarchy or conflict. Instead, it suggests that shared decision-making is a learned practice. The property will remain accessible and democratically controlled by its residents, with its governance structure requiring an 80 percent quorum for decisions and involving all affected members. Other nonprofits can view Rabbit Hole’s governance model as an experiment in power sharing.
The Portland Housing Ecosystem: Two Models, Two Scales
Rabbit Hole is not operating in a vacuum. There is a much larger effort in Portland to address the housing needs of the LGBTQ community. Consider the Equality Community Center. This is Maine’s first affordable senior housing community for LGBTQ older adults. The 54-unit complex will offer inclusive housing for all, regardless of orientation, and 60 percent of the units will be rented to households earning at or below 50 percent AMI. The complex will also provide LGBTQ residents with access to social services, healthcare, transportation, entertainment, and recreation.
Both projects have the same goal: providing safe and stable housing for members of the LGBTQ community. But they go about this differently. Equality Community Center shows the scale of the institutional machinery needed to provide this level of housing. The community center’s funding comes from Maine Affordable Housing Tax Credits, federal Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC), a commercial bank loan, and a 75 percent TIF awarded by the city of Portland.
Rabbit Hole represents the other approach. Rather than creating dozens of professionally managed rental units, it creates a system of collective ownership in which success depends on residents’ participation in governance and ongoing responsibilities.
What Nonprofits Can Learn From Rabbit Hole
There are many lessons nonprofits can take away from Rabbit Hole. The first is the importance of building relationships with mission-aligned institutions. Projects like Rabbit Hole need capital that recognizes the project’s social value.
The second lesson is that governance must be designed. Don’t just assume that collective ownership does away with hierarchy completely. You need to create a democratic structure with explicit roles and mechanisms for shared decision-making and conflict resolution.
The third lesson involves replicability. The goal shouldn’t be to create a replica, but rather to identify which pieces are transferable for your own project or organization. These pieces could be collective ownership, community-oriented capital, shared governance, and mission-aligned partnerships.
Rabbit Hole is not a universal solution to the ongoing housing crisis, and nor is it replicable by every nonprofit. But it does offer an example of how nonprofits move from serving the community to helping communities build lasting assets.
