Lisa Tissari has lived in her Orono apartment for eight years, with her four-year-old corgi Arlo. It’s a little cramped, but homey, and she knows all her neighbors, and hosts holiday celebrations for Thanksgiving and Christmas in the community room.
“Any one of us at any number of times, has locked themselves out of their apartment, has been locked out, and so they know they can buzz me,” she said. “I’ll come let them in. I’ll call maintenance for them if I need to, and have them come let them in, or whatever. So I do try to watch out for, you know, for my neighbors, especially the older neighbors.”
But when she and her neighbors heard the building could be sold, they worried about losing their homes.
“For me, the anxiety was, where am I going to move to? You know, there’s no affordable housing, very little affordable housing,” she said. “And then there’s the whole idea of first, last, security.”
Tissari was relieved when she learned that the building would instead be purchased by the Housing Authority of the City of Old Town, which had already been managing the property.
It’s one of more than 7,000 affordable housing units in Maine supported by mortgages through the USDA’s Section 515 program, established during the Truman administration in the Housing Act of 1949. It offers reduced mortgage rates to landlords, and provides rental subsidies for tenants, which keeps the cost of living affordable.
“We can keep elderly parents in our community if they move into these units, we can keep disabled family members in our community when they move into these units,” said Rhiannon Hampson, the Maine state director of USDA Rural Development.
She said while the program has been great for rural communities, many of the buildings covered by the program’s mortgages are being finally paid off, and the subsidies are coming to an end.
“In working to transition them to housing authorities and to other nonprofit groups who can maintain the affordability of those units, we’re trying to protect keeping that kind of class of housing, that group of housing that we know we need at that price point in the community,” Hampsons said.
In the next three years 15 mortgages will be paid off in Maine, affecting 375 affordable housing units.
The good news, Hampson said, is that rather than raise rents, or sell to developers once they pay off their loans, many property owners are looking for a way to keep the units affordable.
“We do have several owners who are saying to themselves, and to their families, and even and then to us, ‘Hey, I really like the fact that I’ve been able to provide safe, secure, affordable housing in my community for generations, and I want that to continue, but I’m pretty tired of being a landlord or a property owner,’” she said.
To help guide landlords in this situation, the USDA has contracted companies like the Genesis Community Loan Fund. Executive director Liza Fleming-Ives said Genesis connects property owners with housing authorities or nonprofit buyers. In the last five years, Genesis has facilitated the purchases of five Maine properties — preserving 142 affordable units.
“Our work now is really looking at the future for those properties to continue to have them operate as affordable housing, and one of the ways that we do that is to help get them into the hands of mission oriented buyers,” she said.
That’s just what happened in Old Town, where the local housing authority purchased the building in Orono. Laurie Miller, executive director for the housing authority, said it was the third such property acquired in the area.
Miller said purchases can be made with a new USDA mortgage, meaning that rental assistance for tenants stays in place automatically.
“The tenants are not even not going to know the difference at all,” she said. “The rental assistance is going to stay with them for the whole time. And so it’s preserved again. We have to have it another 40 years. It has to remain affordable, so they don’t have to worry about that for a long time now.”
Which is a comfort to tenants like Lisa Tissari, and her neighbors.
“We have all, I think, breathed a collective sigh of relief that we can stay where we are and that we won’t be priced out of a place to live, a safe place to live at that,” Tissari said.
Nationwide, there were more than 360,000 units being financed with section 515 mortgages through the USDA as of last fall. With limited federal funds, much of the program’s budget has been used to preserve existing properties rather than new construction.
