FARMINGTON – It is home sweet new home for the Phelps family.
As the various agency representatives who helped Kristen Phelps, pictured at left above, build a new home on Osborne Road congratulated her, she smiled and simply said, “We’re very happy to be here.”
‘Here’ for the Phelps family is a new, four-bedroom ranch-style house with a full basement built this spring on a lot where their aging trailer once stood. Kristen Phelps lived and raised her family here for 13 years in an 18-year-old, 14-foot by 72-foot mobile home.
With children Erica, 10, Devin, 12 and Courtney, 14, Kristen Phelps now lives in a new home nearly twice the size of the family’s former home thanks to a USDA Rural Development single family housing loan, grant money from the local Western Maine Community Action Program and help from Maine Housing.
Phelps is grateful not just for the new home but that she moved her family out of the old mobile home after it was found to be unsafe.
More than two years ago, Phelps, who works as a receptionist at the Department of Health and Human Services offices in Farmington, went to Western Maine Community Action and asked for a loan to fix her roof.
“I could tell the roof was leaking and couldn’t afford to fix it,” Phelps said.
Diane Haley of WMCA saw the condition of her aging mobile home and asked her “Do you really want to put money into this place?”
Phelps said “no.” A few months later, she heard about a home replacement program and attended a meeting.
“I said, ‘There are more people who needed it,’ but Diane said, ‘stay, stay,'” Phelps said and she stayed and found out about the application process.
By Thanksgiving 2008, with winter coming and a leaky roof, Phelps moved out of her home and in with her mother Marjorie Savage in West Farmington.
When workers began to deconstruct the mobile home to build the new one on the lot, the wall in the girls’ bedroom collapsed with little help. They told Phelps that the base of the wall had rotted away, giving her more reason to be glad she had moved her family out in time.
To make this all happen, a lot of applications need to be filled out and a lot of people in various agencies needed to step up and help make sure the Phelps home was built.
Rural Development provided a low interest long-term loan that provided low payments each month so Phelps could afford it. WMCA gave the project a grant of $14,000 to boost the project that totaled $147,000.
USDA Rural Development area director, Orman Whitcomb gave the Phelps family a gift basket today, which includes seeds to plant a garden. Seeds, Phelps said, she will be very happy to plant.
“It’s the partnerships that make these possible,” Whitcomb said as Haley presented Kristen Phelps with an azalea.
As USDA Rural Development celebrates June National Homeownership Month, organizers said the event is
an opportunity to celebrate partners and increase public awareness about programs available to assist Maine people in achieving or maintaining the American dream of homeownership.
In Maine, Rural Development programs helped 1,296 families to obtain homes or preserve homeownership through making essential repairs that helped them to remain in their homes last year. This fiscal year the agency is poised to help more families than ever before, with 1,033 families already assisted to date.
USDA Rural Development’s mission is to increase economic opportunity and improve the quality of life for rural residents. Rural Development fosters growth in homeownership, finances business development, and supports the creation of critical community and technology infrastructure. Further information on rural programs is available at a local USDA Rural Development office or by visiting USDA Rural Development’s Web site at http://www.rurdev.usda.gov/me
