PORTLAND, ME - State lawmakers hope a bill called the Green Housing Initiative will help employ some 4,300 Maine construction workers that economists said don't have work. Senate President Libby Mitchell sponsored LD-774, a $60 million bond, that's expected to put unemployed construction workers back to work by creating affordable, energy-efficient housing units like one recently unveiled in Portland's Bayside neighborhood.
Not only is the 20-unit housing complex in East Bayside the color green, it was built with green in mind, replete with solar panels heat the hot water.
Construction jobs in Maine fell drastically from 2008 to 2009, Keithley reported. Mitchell said the bill will create or maintain 5,800 jobs.
"Wouldn't that do a wonderful thing for this awful, rising unemployment rate? We'll put people back to work," she said.
The Green Housing Initiative would also create 5,000 new, affordable, energy-efficient housing units over the next 10 years.
When the Maine Affordable Housing Coalition unveiled the results of an economic impact study, the organization asked Marcia Frank to speak. Frank, a Navy veteran, was laid off soon after she moved to Maine in 2007. She ended up in a women's shelter for a year.
"I had to give away my dog of 12 years, and it tore my heart up as I watched him drive away with the shelter person," she said.
Frank said she believes, as does the state, that if more affordable housing units were available, she would have been able to squeak by without ending up on the streets.
"It would have changed my life because I would have gotten the apartment, and it's extremely difficult to find employment from the homeless shelter," Frank said. "If people find out you're there, they want nothing to do with you. If you use their phone, they know the phone number."
Source: wmtw.com