Housing

Interested in living in Hand in Hand apartments? Please contact us for an application.

Hand in Hand Apartments

Starting in the early 1990’s the town of Milbridge experienced a rapid influx of migrant farmworkers who decided to leave the “migrant stream” and settle in Downeast Maine. For many families, a lack of available and affordable housing limits one's ability to put down roots in the area. Mano en Mano worked to build Hand in Hand Apartments to address this need.

The first of their kind in Maine, these subsidized apartments house 6 families in which one or more member of the household earns a majority of their income from agriculture or aquaculture. In 2006 Mano en Mano began talks around farmworker housing and the idea for Hand in Hand Apartments took shape. In 2011, after meetings with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and much town-wide discussion, the complex was built in Milbridge with the help of a USDA grant. While finding available and affordable housing still remains an issue in Downeast Maine, especially for immigrant and migrant farmworker communities, Mano en Mano actively works to creatively meet these needs in collaboration with its organizational partners and community connections.

Welcome Home Downeast

Through a partnership with Sunrise County Economic Council (SCEC), the Welcome Home Downeast project is an initiative to enable families new to the area to rent quality, affordable housing and begin the pathway to home ownership in Downeast Maine.

This project was born from a community need for affordable housing, to grow the year-round workforce in Washington County and enable seasonal workers who come and go each year to make deeper roots in Downeast Maine. While populations in rural Maine have shrunk and people move away, the barrier which keeps workers from settling in this region is the lack of good affordable family housing and pathways to homeownership.

The Welcome Home Downeast Initiative has purchased and renovated 5 homes in Milbridge, Cherryfield, and Harrington. Families that have been part of the seasonal workforce were able to rent these single family properties, with the option to purchase the home they were living in while renting.