In an effort to address the affordable housing crunch, the Maine State Housing Authority has awarded $23.5 million in Rural Affordable Rental Housing funding to build a combined 137 new rental apartment units across nine municipalities.
All housing constructed under the auspices of this program must be made affordable to those earning up to 80 percent of the area median income, its qualifying terms specify.
Funding under this program is intended to increase the availability of housing for both working and retiring or semi-retired Mainers in places where it is demonstrated to be scarce.
The $23.5 million allocation will be combined with $17.4 million worth of loans from the Maine State Housing Authority to complete the construction of these projects.
Over twenty entities submitted proposals under this program, seeking a total of about $50 million in subsidies, more than doubling the amount available in the funding pool.
According to a press release issued Thursday by the Maine State Housing Authority, this funding works to leverage millions more in “private, non-profit, and municipal support for local affordable housing.”
Since the program initial launch in 2022, 229 affordable rental units have been constructed in over a dozen cities and towns throughout the state.
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Including the units set to be constructed a result of this most recent round of funding, the program will have facilitated the development of a total of 366 new affordable rental units in areas “that are not easily served by federal tax credit housing programs,” which the agency suggests are “typically used to generate subsidies in more urban areas for larger affordable housing developments.”
“Our rural communities offer an extraordinary quality of life that should be available to anyone in Maine,” said Gov. Janet Mills (D) in a statement Thursday.
“Since we created the Rural Affordable Rental Housing Program in 2022, it has created hundreds of affordable rental homes, helping to address the housing crunch and our workforce shortage by providing homes for working families,” Gov. Mills said. “I thank the Legislature for their support of this program which is making a real difference for Maine’s rural communities.”
[RELATED: Maine’s Unprecedented Housing Crisis Is Worse Than You Think]
Maine State Housing Authority Director Dan Brennan similarly praised the impact that this program has had on municipalities throughout the state.
“These new affordable homes, spurred by state subsidy that Governor Janet Mills and a bipartisan coalition of Maine lawmakers have backed, is one more step in the right direction as we continue our work to ease Maine’s affordable housing shortage,” said Director Brennan.
“The program has not only helped add housing where it is needed most, it is adding development capacity for all of Maine,” Brennan added. “This peripheral benefit cannot be understated as we move toward a future that will provide housing opportunities that allow more Mainers to live affordably in a community of their choice.”
Click Here to Read the Maine State Housing Authority’s Full Press Release
<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="37848 https://www.themainewire.com/?p=37848">10 Comments
hoping sticky fingers MILLS does not get something from it.
At perhaps 4 persons per unit times 137 units, this will provide 548 people with a rented place to sleep. Goversness Mills has told us that she is working to bring in 75,000 illegal aliens. I was in school back when they still taught math instead of sexual deviance, and there is something about these numbers than does not look like an x = y equation.
So that is how they make housing it affordable, with confiscated money from folks who can least afford it. It is still section 8, just a fancier name.
And WHERE pray tell is all this money going to come from ?
$171,000 per house/apartment before kick-back. $2.30 per after. Watch money will disappear and 0 spaces built just like BBB, its the democrats way.
great more taxpayer funded private rental units getting built for new americans… its almost like a public private partnership or something… id rather see my tax dollars get used to help mainers OWN thier own home rather than renting to a big corporation, from out of state/country… as the government picks winner and losers watch… all the winners are out of state biz…
Deporting all the illegal aliens/bogus asylum seekers would create a housing surplus !
Was that for illegals?
They forgot the part where their friends get the contracts while providing little to nothing to the people.
The taxpayers of Madison and Rangeley can go ahead and fire their French teachers today . Go find someone who speaks Sudanese . Your little towns are about to be inhabited by a herd of third world freeloaders with lots of needy kids . The state will mandate it . You will have NO control over who gets to inhabit these dwellings .
Welcome to Mills World .