One of the first tenants in Bangor’s newly opened tiny home community is a 94-year-old man from Patten who drives to Bangor every day to visit his wife who lives in a dementia care facility on Ohio Street.
The man grew tired of making the roughly 90-mile daily trip and didn’t need much space, so he decided to rent one of the 30 tiny homes at 1337 Hammond St. that were completed last week, said Louie Morrison, one of the developers behind the tiny home park.
“After I showed him the home and I shook his hand, I walked away saying, ‘This is why we do this,’” Morrison said.
The new tenant is one of the nearly 100 people who have applied to live in the tiny home park in the week since the project was finished. The interest in the park’s 30 units shows a continued demand for new housing in a state that has suffered from years of underproduction.
Morrison decided to build the $4 million development — the first of its kind in Bangor — as a way to bring an influx of new housing to Bangor as quickly as possible.
Of those applicants, 17 have signed leases and six to eight more are in the process of finalizing lease agreements, according to Morrison. The youngest tenants of one of the tiny homes are a 23-year-old couple, Morrison said.
Some tenants who have already signed a lease are scheduled to move into the tiny homes this weekend while others won’t move in for several months, Morrison said. All of the new tenants currently live outside of Bangor, though many work in the city.
While the miniature homes received mixed reviews online, Morrison never expected to receive so much interest in the properties. When Morrison lists one of his more than 300 units for rent, he typically receives three or four inquiries, he said.
The homes are 320 square feet, and each unit includes one bedroom, a full bathroom, stainless steel appliances, a small front patio, some of which are covered, and one parking space in front of the home. Some of the tiny homes have a loft space.
Morrison named the development Randall Park after the project’s former contractor, Brett Randall, who died of cancer at age 52 before the development was finished.
Monthly rent for the tiny homes is $1,300 per month with water and sewer included. Tenants are responsible for electricity and internet costs. Each unit has a heat pump for heating and cooling the units, but no laundry facilities. Small pets are allowed for an additional fee.
Morrison is open to applicants with housing vouchers, but no one who has signed a lease yet has one.
