Islands with year-round residents need emergency responders, gas station attendants, postal workers, store clerks and teachers. When there’s nowhere for vital workers to live, they turn elsewhere. It’s eroding a storied way of life.
affordable housing
How Maine is creating homes in forgotten and unlikely places
Faced with a vexing housing crisis, Mainers are finding ways to build homes in abandoned and undeveloped spaces. But costs, public opposition and an uncertain economy are impeding progress.
Maine lawmakers give mobile homeowners a leg up in park purchases
Legislators passed a bill to give mobile homeowners the ‘right of first refusal’ when their parks go up for sale.
More money could be headed to help Maine mobile home residents
Lawmakers supported a bill to add $3 million to a fund to help residents purchase their mobile home parks. But its fate hinges on whether it makes it into the budget.
MaineHousing programs to add hundreds of homes, but the money is running out
MaineHousing has in the last month announced more than $30 million in funding to boost construction of single-family homes and apartments.
Housing for families and seniors OK’d for former Augusta police station
Developers Collaborative plans to build two new buildings at the former police station site, providing apartments for senior citizens and families and a child-care facility.
Maine housing advocates warn of coming ‘tsunami’ of USDA foreclosures on rural homes
The Department of Agriculture says it’s clearing a backlog of 400 foreclosures and more than 800 delinquencies left by the Biden administration. But local housing advocates say the crisis was years in the making and that the USDA has always been slow to act when its borrowers default.
Waterville land trust renovates duplex to sell as affordable housing
The old house at 3 Carrean St. is the third one the Waterville Community Land Trust has bought and fixed up in the city’s South End over the last nine years to sell to low- and moderate-income buyers.
Maine lawmakers still betting on accessory dwelling units to help end housing crisis
Following the passage of a landmark law in 2022, a bill seeks to further encourage the construction of small housing units also known as in-law suites.
Maine takes first step toward more accurately tracking efforts to resolve housing crisis
A bill to require Maine cities and towns to report annual home construction data is headed for the House — but without bipartisan support or a mandate that all municipalities participate.