Christopher B. Summers, president of the right-leaning Maryland Public Policy Institute, wondered why any tenant would want to undertake such a costly agreement.
"I think it's a great deal for the state, but a lousy deal for the individual," Summers said. "Why would you make that investment? You get nothing out of it except a good feeling of living there."
Others question whether the properties should be returned to the tax rolls.
But the hardy group of curators - which includes a sound engineer, a librarian and people in the building trades - share an affinity for old houses and nature. They have the ability to look at a rotting house with buzzards and trees emerging from gaps in the roof and see a picturesque home enveloped in songbirds calling to their mates.
"You have to have a love for it to want to do it," said Kim Troiani, 32, who with her husband, Val, 29, became curators last year near where they grew up. "It's going to be a lot of work."
The Troianis recently removed 4 1/2 tons of debris from the 19th-century fieldstone house in the Fair Hill Natural Resource Management Area in Cecil County - a park Val calls his "5,500-acre backyard" as they embark on their huge undertaking.
The curatorship program started informally in the early 1980s when Agnes and Larry Bartlett grew horrified after learning that a deteriorating house they loved at the edge of Gunpowder Falls State Park was owned by the state, and was not for sale.
"I went down there and stomped my feet. I said 'This house is history,' " Agnes Bartlett recounted.
When the couple, now in their 80s, offered to fix it up if they could live there for free, officials' eyes widened.
The concept was a success, and has since become formalized.
Now, the state DNR lists requests for proposals on its Web site, hosts open houses to show properties, and enters into contracts with curators. Applicants have to show a five- to seven-year plan for restoration, and each contract is approved by the state Board of Public Works. The approval process can take a year.
Then comes the costly, hard work of restoration, with all structural changes subject to state approval.
Bob and Loreto Albiol - he's an anthropologist and she's a doctor - live in a house in Seneca Creek State Park that was built by Martha Parke Custis, granddaughter of Martha Washington. Bob Albiol estimates that refurbishing the 19th-century house, used as a quarry master's home, required an outlay of $250,000, not counting his labor - and he left his job as an assistant dean at Catholic University to finish it.
