This story first appeared in the Midcoast Update, a newsletter published every Tuesday and Friday. Sign up here to receive stories about the midcoast delivered to your inbox each week, along with our other newsletters.
It can be tough finding an affordable home in the midcoast right now.
And if you don’t have handy skills, it can also be expensive to own one, given that inflation has pushed up all the costs to maintain a residence, from heating fuel to lumber to contractors.
But this week, Midcoast Habitat for Humanity hopes to make things a little easier for both groups when it brings back a home construction event targeted to women that it’s been doing for more than a decade.
Since 2012, the midcoast branch has participated in Women Build, an annual national event that gathers women together to learn how to build homes for Habitat for Humanity, said Tia Anderson, the midcoast branch’s executive director. This year’s Women Build event in Rockland is shaping up to be the branch’s largest ever.
Men aren’t necessarily excluded from the build, according to Anderson. But its main purpose is to provide a safe and encouraging space for women to learn how to use tools and build, so that they can develop important skills of their own and potentially join future Habitat events.
“We just want it to be an environment that is comfortable and uninhibited and give them the opportunity to swing a hammer and perhaps use a chop saw or table saw, or, you know, just engage in that way. And then also, building community,” Anderson said.
There’s a great need for Habitat’s services in the midcoast, which has a lack of affordable housing. The group has been working on building homes to help close this gap, including recently finishing construction on a neighborhood with affordable homes and multi-family units called Firefly Field.
For this year’s Women Build event — which will take place May 3, 4, 6 and 7 — about 130 volunteers will come together to construct the frame for one of the two houses that will be built at 47 Lawn Ave. in Rockland. The property was once condemned, but will soon sport two energy-efficient, affordable homes.
The one being worked on by the Women Build volunteers will house a single mom and her son, Anderson said.
Besides enlisting the most volunteers that the midcoast branch has seen for Women Build, it will also stretch across the most days. The event is so popular that Anderson expects the organization will likely hold another in the fall.
She hopes that women who come to the event to learn may become consistent Habitat volunteers once they’re comfortable with the tools, the build site and the community.
“Women can be a force to reckon with,” Anderson said.
In addition, organizers will hold an event called Jazz & Jewels in which locally made jewelery is auctioned off to support the project’s funding. That auction will be on May 9 at the Michael Good Gallery in Rockport.
Registration for the Women Build event is required ahead of time. As of Wednesday, Maggi Blue, the spokesperson for Midcoast Habitat for Humanity, said spots were almost completely full.
Jules Walkup is a Report for America corps member. Additional support for this reporting is provided by BDN readers.