WATERVILLE — In a city with a dearth of affordable housing, a nonprofit organization continues to rehabilitate houses on a shoestring budget to sell to people with low-to-moderate income.

On Tuesday, Waterville Community Land Trust founder and president Nancy Williams was working on a two-story house at 3 Carrean St. in the city’s South End, where the trust has renovated and sold houses at both 3 Moor St., located across the street, and 181 Water St. nearby. The trust also developed a park off Water Street that has a gazebo, benches, trees and flower gardens on the bank of the Kennebec River.

The trust’s mission is to help improve and preserve neighbohoods by developing affordable housing and other community assets. It is run by a board of directors and survives on donations and volunteer labor, although as Williams said Monday, money is scarce.

“Housing is such a big need right now,” she said. “People don’t seem to give, and part of it is, we’re not well-known.”

Founded in 2013, the trust is working to rehabilitate its third house since 2016. With donations, it has been able to buy, renovate and sell the houses while maintaining ownership of the land on which they sit. Whoever buys a house leases the land from the trust and both the trust and homeowner share the appreciated value of the home’s sale. That way, the trust is able to maintain affordable homeownership of a house in perpetuity. The trust sells homes to individuals and families who make 80% or less of the area median income and have credit records acceptable to a bank.

The City Council voted April 1 to issue the trust a $100,000 loan from the city’s Wealth Revolving Loan Fund for major renovations to the house, which was built in the late 1800s. The trust will turn it into a duplex with two-bedroom apartments, one on the first floor and another on the second. The loan must be paid back in 18 months at 4% interest, Williams said. The renovations should be completed in 18 months.

The trust bought the Water Street house in 2016 with a donation, and after renovating and selling it, received a grant to help buy the second house and  develop the Water Street garden. The city also awarded the trust a $50,000 U.S. Conference of Mayors second place award for doing revitalization work in one neighborhood of the city.

Williams said each time the trust sells a house, it loses money. Without donations and volunteers, continuing the work is challenging. Money for such nonprofit housing efforts is hard to come by.

“There is no one supporting community land trusts in Maine,” she said.

Those wanting to donate funds or materials or volunteer for the land trust may do so via its website, watervilleclt.org, she said.

Williams, whose background is in architectural restoration of houses from the 17th and 18th centuries, came to Maine from upstate New York where she headed a conservation land trust. She said hundreds of thousands of dollars were available in New York for such work.

“Here, you get a $100 donation — that’s a nice donation,” she said.

Ware-Butler Building Supply has been generous, selling the trust materials at a good discount and searching its warehouse for materials that may have been returned slightly damaged to sell at a very reasonable price, she said.

Williams and City Planner Ann Beverage, the trust’s treasurer, worked to launch theorganization 12 years ago.

The trust bought the Carrean Street house in March 2024 and volunteers gutted it to make way for further work including insulating, installing new wall board and doors, sanding hardwood floors, installing new kitchens and bathrooms and painting. Two  porches that had been removed from each floor will be added back, said Williams, who noted the house is rare in the South End because it has two full stories, whereas most houses have only 1 3/4 floors.

Some work must be hired out, she said. For instance, the trust will hire a carpenter part time. Dana Labbe from Central Maine Concrete & Jacking of Oakland also was hired and was working Tuesday on repairing the foundation, which was cracked and falling in, Williams said.

On the same day, Peter Moulton who volunteers for the land trust, was working to fix all the windows in the house that were fixable, saving the trust thousands of dollars, Williams said. Moulton is a retired engineer for the state Department of Environmental Protection.

Williams was using a saw to cut 2-by-3/4-inch wood to frame up a doorway inside the house.

“This house is a challenge — I like challenges — and it’s so lovely to be able to give a family their own keys to their own house,” she said.

Located between King and Moor streets, off Water Street, Carrean is a short, one-way street. The house sits on .07 acre.

Williams said the difference between the duplex and the first two houses the land trust renovated is that the apartments will be considered condominium units and the new owners will also own the land on which the building sits. The land trust will control the resale value instead of using a ground lease, she said.

Longtime land trust supporter Kim Hallee, out on a walk Tuesday, stopped by to see the progress.

“I think it’s extraordinary,” Hallee said. “It’s got some great potential. The hardwood floors, the coffered ceilings, the stairwell; that stuff’s beautiful.”

Williams said the work helps to revitalize the area and gives families the opportunity to become homeowners. And when people looking to buy a home see that houses around it in good shape, it is incentive for them to buy.

“It takes investment to encourage other people to invest,” she said.