Housing
This section of the BDN aims to help readers understand Maine’s housing crisis, the volatile real estate market and the public policy behind them. Read more Housing coverage here.
A Bangor family who never thought homeownership was achievable will move into their first home later this month with help from a local nonprofit.
Habitat for Humanity of Greater Bangor leaders, volunteers and donors celebrated the completion of the organization’s latest house on Friday. It’s the nonprofit’s 30th house since its founding in 1988.
The single-story house on Thirteenth Street in Bangor has three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a full basement and slightly more than 1,000 square feet of living space, according to Melissa Huston, executive director of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Bangor. It sits across the street from Hayford Park and down the road from Bangor’s Fairmount School.
“We feel very good about this being a home that the two of them can have a little breathing room and grow into,” Huston said. “It’s always special for us when we can keep someone in their own community.”
A single mother and her school-aged son will officially own and move into the house after closing paperwork is completed later this month.
The family has been renting a unit in Bangor for years and assumed they’d never be able to afford a house due to the rapidly rising cost of housing, Huston said.
The single new home does little to work against Maine’s housing production needs goal of at least 76,400 new units by 2030 to make up for historic underproduction and current need. But it gives one Bangor family stability and the ability to build equity, which they didn’t have when renting, Huston said.
“It’s frustrating that we can’t address all of the needs of the families we hear from, but our goal is one house at a time,” Huston said. “Every home is a building block and we know that they are making a huge impact on that family.”
The house is the 10th to be built by students in the Eastern Maine Community College’s Building Construction and Fine Woodworking program. The students built the home on campus in two pieces over the course of the academic year, then the pieces were transported to the lot and installed on the foundation, according to Bob Sherman, construction manager for Habitat for Humanity of Greater Bangor.
More than 40 volunteers and professional contractors then finish building the home and installing all necessary systems, from plumbing to appliances.
The new homeowners have a 30-year mortgage on the house “that’s affordable for them” and Habitat for Humanity “bridges the gap” between what the homeowner can afford and what the house costs, Huston said.
The house, which has an appraised value of $297,000, cost the organization an estimated $260,000 to $270,000 to build. That’s close to the average home value in Bangor, which rested at slightly less than $283,000 as of Friday, according to Zillow.
“That highlights how expensive a very modest home in Bangor is right now,” Huston said.
That’s slightly more than the nonprofit’s typical building costs of $240,000 to $260,000 per house, which is paid for through a mix of corporate and private donations and state and federal funding, among other fundraising.
The organization has already purchased other empty lots in Bangor on which it plans to place future properties and Eastern Maine Community College students have already started building the next house, Huston said.
“Housing is always a need, but particularly now with rising real estate and construction costs and a lot of uncertainty in that area, our mission has never been more important than it is today,” Huston said.