Bob Wheeler’s voice shook with emotion as he spoke of his reasons for stepping down from the board of the Island Affordable Housing Fund.

Mr. Wheeler, on the eve of his departure from Martha’s Vineyard to live on the other side of the country, after years spent “busting my ass” to put Islanders into affordable housing, wanted to say that despite the fund’s parlous financial state, despite the mistakes that had been made, he left “with my head held high.”

He wanted to say a lot more, too. About who was to blame for the state of affairs and who was not, and about the future of affordable housing on the Island.

But the thing that brought him to the apparent verge of tears was the ingratitude of the people he had helped.

“When I resigned from the board — and I want this on the record because it still really gripes me — the real reason was that in that whole issue of us missing that payment to the [Duke County] Regional Housing Authority, over a seven-year period we had pumped about $2.6 million into the rental assistance program. We had put 50 or 60 families into ownership . . . people who otherwise would probably have had to leave the Island,” he said.

“And in that whole controversy, not one person of that 350-family group stood up and said ‘Let’s not cast aspersions because they missed a payment, let’s look at the good and help them out.’ ”

The missed payment to which he referred, of course, was that of November 2009, when, without warning, the fund announced it could not make its regular monthly $20,000 payment to the Dukes County Regional Housing Authority to subsidize 35 rental properties.

Since then, the fund’s problems have only deepened, to the point where it is now on the brink of insolvency, forced to put on the market the property which was going to have been its proudest achievement, the Bradley Square property in Oak Bluffs.

And Mr. Wheeler, copresident of the fund when it all went bad, off the board since February this year, wanted to set a few things straight before he left for a new permanent home in Seattle.

Like how hurt he was by the ingratitude of Islanders.

“That was such an eye-opener to me,” he said.

“I busted my ass. I probably spent 20 hours a week for seven years, working on various aspects of this, and no one came out of the woodwork to say thank you.

“That was a real blow to my ego, but it was also a repudiation of half of my working time for the past six or seven years. It hurt. It still hurts.”

Apart from the ungrateful beneficiaries of the fund’s activities, Mr. Wheeler had a few other targets, too. The media, particularly the Gazette, for one.

The coverage which accompanied the fund’s default on its rent subsidy payments and its subsequent financial travails, he said, only made matters worse.

“Oh, I think there was some crowing like ‘We told you so’” he said.

“The way it was portrayed just cast suspicion.”

He was referring to articles questioning the performance of the fund’s former executive director, Patrick Manning, who quit just before the financial mess became apparent, having spent big on extravagances including a $20,000 dance floor for one fundraiser, and who was employed on a part-commission basis to raise money for the organization.

But were such aspersions not legitimate, given the circumstances of a man who spent big, then blew the Island just as the mess became apparent, leaving behind his house in foreclosure?

“I’m not saying that. Pat was a promoter and we hired him because he was a promoter. He did a great job for us for two or three years,” said Mr. Wheeler.

“Our deal with him was that we paid him less than his predecessor, but we wanted to incent (sic) him.

“She had been raising about a million dollars a year for us, so we said to Pat, the first million dollars is ours and after that, we’ll give you five per cent of anything you raise.

“That was his deal. And he doubled what we had previously been raising for two or three years. I thought then and I still think now, it worked for us.”

Then there was the matter of aspersions he felt were cast about the potential conflicts of interest of certain board members, specifically John Abrams.

Mr. Abrams stepped down also, not long after the fund’s financial troubles came to light.

Said Mr. Wheeler: “John left because he had been doing it for 10 years, and also because he felt he had become a bit of a lightning rod. His continuing presence was hindering the ability of the fund to continue to raise funds.

“I think he felt he was getting criticism because he was the developer the trust had hired, and here he was raising money while he was the recipient of money, and it was being presented as a huge conflict of interest.”

But was that not, in fact, an apparent conflict worth raising? And what about suggestions that Mr. Abrams secured large design fees for his work and was, as it were, doing well by doing good?

“We went out to a number of other builders on the Island — we wanted to keep it on the Island — and John was the only one willing to build at prices we could afford to pay. Keep in mind though that this was at the height of the real estate market,” said Mr. Wheeler.

“He got a design fee. I don’t remember the details. I can’t remember. But everything that John did was fully vetted and approved by the IAHF board and by the [Island Housing] Trust board to the extent it was involved.

“John Abrams may have been making a buck, but we had tried to get other people involved and couldn’t. So what were we going to do?”

As to the two developments which did most to put the fund in its large financial hole — the Jenney Way development in Edgartown and the Bradley Square in Oak Bluffs, they fell prey to unfortunate circumstance, not poor management.

On the Jenney Way development, the fund acted as developer, a departure from its mission as fundraiser (the Island Housing Trust usually acted as developer), a circumstance Mr. Wheeler explained as having been made of necessity.

“John Abrams had been talking with the Jenneys for a number of years about buying their property and developing it for the fund. Those talks predated the separation of the two organizations [the Fund and the Trust].

“The Jenneys were elderly people, and John was concerned that bringing a new entity into the equation might have upset them. So we made the decision out of concern for the Jenneys.

“So we made the decision that the Island Affordable Housing Fund would be the developer, but that it would be the last one that we would do,” he said.

“As a part of the negotiations we had with neighbors — part of the approval process — we had to have one house be a market-rate house. I’m not really sure why. That’s a John Abrams question.

“The timing of the market sale was such that it wasn’t ready to be sold until the real estate market had gone to hell in a handbasket.”

As a result, the fund lost about $50,000, which it them rolled into the mortgage on its other big problem, Bradley Square.

That historic property was bought at very short notice in 2007, amid concern that other developers could buy the property, site of the Vineyard’s oldest African American church. The fund initially raised $200,000 in a weekend for a down payment, but it later became clear they lacked the funds to carry out their own redevelopment plan.

The property was put back on the market a couple of months ago, and now could be torn down. The fund has a $750,000 mortgage still.

“When we acquired it, we thought it was a unique opportunity,” said Mr. Wheeler.

“The Martha’s Vineyard Commission is always pushing the idea of higher density housing. Well, here was a place that was (a) in that kind of an area; (b) in a community that could use some refurbishing; and (c) had the unique characteristic of having the first African American church on the Island on it.

“But it turned out that was at the beginning of the real estate slump.

“In hindsight would we have done it? Of course not.”

But he said some blame should attach to the protracted approval process for Bradley Square.

“It took us 18 months, two years to get the approvals we needed, and by that time we were in the throes of the recession.

“Now people are coming out of the woodwork and saying, ‘We don’t want it flattened.’ Well, maybe they can buy it,” said Mr. Wheeler.

So, there you have the real culprits: the media, the economy, the towns and other outside forces.

And at the end of it all, the fund had a huge problem of perception, he said.

“It’s all perception. And in the papers it was presented in such a way that cast suspicion on the motives, the finances in such a way that the donors said ‘screw it, I’m not giving to that.’ And I think that feeling is still out there.”

Mr. Wheeler did have kind words to say about at least one person: the new executive director of the fund, T. Ewell Hopkins.

“I have the utmost respect for Ewell Hopkins,” he said. “He’s a marvelous human being. Very committed to the Island. He was handed a bucket of crap and he has struggled very hard to rescue the mission.

“But he’s run afoul of the times.”

As to the future of affordable housing on Martha’s Vineyard, Mr. Wheeler also has strong views.

“There’s still a need for affordable housing. In fact it’s growing,” he said.

“The price drops have allowed a few more people to buy houses. But still when you look at [the fund’s development at] Lambert’s Cove, for example, prices were in the $160,000 to $250,000 range. For that you get a nice, energy efficient house. You go into the private market place even now and for that you get a piece of crap.

“There still is a great need for rental housing. And to make that work you need higher densities. To make it work, you need six to eight units per acre. So it really starts at the planning board level. They need to wake up to that fact and so does the commission. The commission is not proactive,” Mr. Wheeler said.

Even beyond that, he sees a problem in the changing nature of the Island population. Where once its wealthy seasonal residents stayed a while and became connected to the community, they do so less and less.

“One of the things I find among the new people who come in and buy the $10 million mansions, is that these people are not involving themselves in the community, though they have the wherewithal.

“They fly in, in their private jets, bring their own food, their own servants, nannies, landscapers, spend a few days and then fly back. They don’t get involved with the community at all,” he said.

Meanwhile the working people, the people who make the place what it is, are being priced out.

“I would comment that unless the Island really tackles affordable housing it will wake up and find the working people have left the Island and there’s no one left to provide all the things they need,” said Bob Wheeler, ex-Vineyarder.