A home of their own Camden Affordable Housing Organization helps lower-income families make dreams a reality

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At 49, Mary Kendall is buying her first home. And though she describes herself as a self-supporting single-mother, Kendall’s new home is in exclusive Camden, where the median sale price is almost $300,000. Two years ago, the coastal town topped the Maine State Housing Authority’s list of least-affordable communities for housing.

Kendall is so excited about the prospect of putting down roots after renting in the area for the last 13 years that she jokes with her daughter about wanting to be buried in the back yard.

“It’s everything in the world to us,” she said of finally owning a home.

The dream of home ownership is becoming a reality for Kendall, and another woman in Camden in the coming weeks – and for another 10 families over the next two years – through the efforts of the nonprofit Camden Affordable Housing Organization.

The group’s volunteer president, Joanne Campbell, said the organization was formed 11 years ago to address the shortage of houses within the buying range of middle-income workers. Since then, the problem has worsened.

Campbell, a senior vice-president at Camden National Bank, said the skyrocketing cost of housing is the result of that most basic economic principle – supply and demand.

Houses are being gobbled up by out-of-state residents for seasonal or retirement homes. Also, the houses are often improved, thereby driving up their cost when they return to the market.

CAHO just finished building two houses on Mount Battie Street, which are within walking distance of the middle school and the downtown. One will be Kendall’s and the other is being bought by a woman in her 20s, also a single mother of one child who is now living in subsidized rental housing.

The new houses, each situated on a quarter-acre lot, look like modest Cape Cods, but inside have one floor with 1,000-square-feet of living space. To qualify for the housing, a family must earn the Knox County median household income or less, which for a family of four is $41,500.

The two houses, one with two bedrooms and one with three, will sell for $85,000 apiece.

“I think it’s adorable,” Kendall said of the house she will share with her daughter.

Employed by the Hannaford supermarket chain as a supervisor of in-store product demonstrators, she said she is proud of her economic self-sufficiency.

“I didn’t collect a dime of welfare,” she said, even during more lean years.

The basements of both houses are insulated, with drywall on the concrete walls, allowing them to be converted to living space, or at least a comfortable place for children to play. Both houses come with washer, dryer, stove, refrigerator and dishwasher. If sold on the open market, they would probably go for $150,000 apiece, Campbell said.

The organization contracts the building work to Monroe & Goodwin, a Camden firm that strives to keep costs down on the houses.

The homes are built to federal Rural Housing Service specifications, and CAHO helps qualified buyers apply for that agency’s low-interest loans, or to other institutions.

“We don’t provide financing,” Campbell said. Applicants “have to be viable as homeowners.”

Deed restrictions prevent the homeowners from making a killing on the resale of their houses. If a house is sold at market rate, the excess funds must be returned to CAHO.

The lack of affordable housing – defined in Knox County as homes that sell for less than $105,000 – has hit middle-income earners the hardest, Campbell said.

“I have people in the $60,000 household income range,” above the eligible income level, “calling me to see if we can help them,” she said.

About 15 applicants are on a waiting list for CAHO housing, Campbell said.

The housing crunch isn’t limited to Camden.

Nancy Fritz, executive director of Coastal Community Action Program in Rockland, said her organization is focusing more of its efforts on affordable housing as part of its mission. It has taken responsibility for managing the newly formed Knox County Housing Coalition, which is aiming to create more “work force” housing, she said.

Fritz said CCAP is active on many fronts: helping lower-income residents apply for loans, fixing older homes, and, in some cases, providing funding assistance to close the gap between what a buyer can afford and the actual selling price of a house.

CCAP also purchased and rehabilitated six vacant homes in the Knox County area, which it resold at affordable prices, she said.

There is also a critical need for rental housing, she said. Some of the area’s largest employers – such as Northeast Health Inc., FMC, the Samoset Resort and Douglas Dynamics – are reporting that potential employees are turning down job offers because they can’t find affordable rents or housing in the area. Northeast Health and FMC actually maintain a few apartments to give employees a place to live while they search for a home.

“In Knox County, the cost of homes has gone up much more rapidly than incomes,” Fritz said. In Hope, for example, household income has grown by 6 percent over the last three to four years, she said, while the cost of housing has increased by 12 to 15 percent during the same period.

Part of the problem is that contractors are focusing on the high-end market, Fritz said.

Very few single-family homes sell for less than $200,000 in Camden, Campbell said.

And both agreed that the problem was spreading along the coast.

“It’s the whole coastal corridor, from Belfast to Bath,” Fritz said.

Town officials saw the looming problem as long ago as 1990, when Camden’s comprehensive plan of that year called for 30 to 35 affordable housing units to be built by the end of the decade. The goal wasn’t reached, in part, Campbell said, because housing and land prices soared in the mid-1990s, but momentum on the initiative is now building.

In the early 1990s, the town voted to turn over two parcels of land acquired for nonpayment of taxes to CAHO. The lots were divided, and three given to qualified families to use as equity for building new homes. CAHO helped build a house on the fourth parcel.

In the mid-1990s, affordable housing got an assist from credit-card lender MBNA America. The company donated 3 acres of land and two houses to the group. The houses and some of the land were then sold to leverage the purchase of an adjacent parcel on Mount Battie Street.

Last summer, CAHO landed a $311,102 federal grant, co-sponsored by Camden National Bank, which is being used to build a road to connect Mount Battie Street to the remaining MBNA land. In all, the association plans to build four homes on Mount Battie Street and eight more in a subdivision on the MBNA parcel.

The town voted to extend sewer lines to the subdivision at no cost to the organization.

CAHO hopes to complete all 12 houses in that area within the next two years.

Campbell said developing affordable houses clustered in a neighborhood setting is in keeping with the Maine State Planning Office’s goals of reducing sprawl, and the consequent burden on services. With sewer and municipal water available on Mount Battie Street, CAHO was able to shave at least $10,000 from the cost of each house by not having to install septic systems.

While land costs might be lower in outlying towns, she said many applicants have to plan their workdays around in-town daycare centers, or have to manage with one car. The high-density housing is a return to the traditional New England village development model, she said.

“We would love to see other communities take this on as a model,” she said of the affordable housing group, and offered assistance to any town that might want to create such an organization.