BIDDEFORD — A newly constructed, affordable home will soon be available thanks to a collaboration between the Biddeford Housing Authority, Biddeford-Saco Rotary Club and Biddeford Regional Center of Technology.
Students in Wayne Hapgood’s building trades class built the home through a program funded by the Biddeford-Saco Rotary, and the BHA will be responsible for selling the building once some additional work is completed.
For at least 15 years, the Biddeford-Saco Rotary Club has partnered with the center in this program, which gives students real world experience in building a home from start to finish. This is the first time the BHA has been involved.
The Rotary Club provided the initial financing, and until now, handled the actual house sale. The money from the sale is used to finance the next house.
In prior years, the homes were sold on the open market, on a first-come basis. But Guy Gagnon, the head of the BHA, hopes the housing authority’s collaboration will continue into the future.
“We’ll try to do something every year or every other year,” he said.
Already, Edward Driscoll’s drafting class has been brought into the mix to come up with a new design that will fit better into an urban landscape.
The home that was built last year and moved to a vacant lot at 49 Green St. was a ranch-style home, which fits better in a suburban environment, said Hapgood.
The new design, he said, will be a narrow house with a higher roof pitch and gable entrance.
“Any time we get a real-life situation like this it’s a win-win,” said Driscoll.
Dan Tanguay, a senior at Biddeford High School who plans to attend Maine Maritime Academy in the fall to study mechanical engineering, has done the majority of the new design for the house to be built next year. Tanguay said the experience collaborating with Gagnon and others on the designs and the specifications has been a good one.
“It gives you a nice, real-world experience,” he said. “I think it’s amazing that something I designed is going to be built.”
Providing students with real world work experience is the reason the Rotary Club decided to finance the project, said Biddeford-Saco Rotarian Frank Dumas.
He thinks bringing the BHA into the mix is a good move.
“We think it’s an excellent opportunity for someone who doesn’t have the means to get into a house,” said Dumas.
The housing authority plans to sell the home to someone who fits within certain income guidelines, and wants to ensure that the home remains affordable in future sales, said Gagnon.
This is a new venture for the BHA.
The authority’s board decided it wanted to get more involved in solving some of the housing issues in Biddeford, said Gagnon. They would like to see “not just affordable housing, but quality affordable housing” on the Biddeford real estate market, he said. “That’s missing in some areas of town.”
The housing authority is also working on rehabilitating a home at 7 Williams Court that will then be sold. The cost of the home was $45,000, which was paid for through federal stimulus dollars under the Neighborhood Stabilization Program. Once that home is sold, the money can be used to purchase more properties, fix them up and sell those, said Gagnon.
The $43,000 cost for the Green Street lot was paid for with funds from the city’s federally funded Community Development Block Grant, he said.
The BHA is also planning on building a four-unit rental facility at a vacant lot at 36 Emery St., which it will continue to own. Gagnon said he is awaiting word on funding from Maine State Housing Authority before construction begins there.
— Staff Writer Dina Mendros can be contacted at 282-1535, Ext. 324 or dmendros@journaltribune.com.
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