PORTLAND, Maine — As Maine continues to experience a lack of affordable housing and child care services, one organization looks to be part of the solution for both crises.
Portland's Youth and Family Outreach, a child care center and preschool, has plans to expand.
Right now, the building on the corner of Cumberland Avenue and Preble Street serves 58 children, according to Director Camelia Babson-Haley. But under a new proposed plan, it will be replaced with a six-story building allowing the center to serve 110 children.
"Every day we have three or four people knock on our door begging, asking for child care," Babson-Haley told NEWS CENTER Maine. "Seeing this project through to completion would mean that our impact on the community can grow.”
The new building would also include 60 apartments, and nearly 50 of them will be affordable housing.
Youth and Family Outreach's doors first opened in 1986, when there was a rise in teen pregnancy at Portland High School, according to Babson-Haley. To this day, the center is committed to helping young parents, and a majority of its children who come from low-income, homeless, and immigrant families.
This summer Portland's planning board will vote on the project, according to Kevin Craft, the city's acting director of planning and urban development.
Babson-Haley said the majority of the $24 million project will be paid for by state and federal funding. The rest will be paid for by money the center raises.