Project Home

Need more fun and play in your life? Project Home is looking for volunteers to hang out with some pretty great kids during our Trust gatherings.

Think games, coloring, books, toys, crafts, and playtime while their moms are right next door focused on learning, coaching, peer support, and community.

Help out once, come occasionally, or join us every month—whatever works for you. Each session is just two hours.

Opportunities are available in:

📍Lewiston — 4th Monday, 5–7 p.m.
📍Portland — 4th Tuesday, 5–7 p.m.
📍Saco/Biddeford — 4th Wednesday, 5–7 p.m.
📍Bridgton — 4th Friday, 2–4 p.m.

If you enjoy spending time with kids and can give us two hours, we’d love to have your help.

Learn more and sign up here: https://uwsme.galaxydigital.com/need/detail/?need_id=1301254

Please share with someone who might be a great fit!

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Having a job should provide a pathway to stability. For too many families, it doesn’t.

This is something we see every day at Project Home. The people we work with are employed and doing everything we traditionally associate with financial stability—working, paying rent, caring for their families—and still cannot keep pace with the cost of housing.

As Brian Goldstone writes, the crisis of working homelessness challenges one of our most persistent assumptions: that employment alone is enough to keep someone safely housed.

It isn’t.

That’s why part of addressing homelessness also means intervening before someone loses their home—helping people access housing, prevent eviction, increase their income, and build the stability that work alone may no longer provide.

Brian’s work is an important reminder that homelessness isn’t simply a story about unemployment or individual crisis. Increasingly, it’s a story about the widening gap between what people earn and what it costs to live.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/01/opinion/crisis-working-homeless.html?unlocked_article_code=1.71A.rC6z.b-_zfAaFRIbC&smid=nytcore-ios-share

photo credit: Derek Miller Hurtado

Eviction prevention is homelessness prevention.

Through our Eviction Prevention program, Project Home has helped 1,330 Maine households avoid eviction, keeping 3,458 adults and children safely in their homes.

When a family is already struggling to make ends meet, losing housing can set off a cascade of consequences—disrupted schooling, lost work, worsening health, and, too often, homelessness.

Sometimes the most effective way to address homelessness is to prevent it from happening in the first place.

That’s what housing stability looks like.

A recent Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruling highlights a painful reality: housing instability can put families at risk of being separated.

In this case, a mother’s parental rights were terminated after she was unable to find affordable housing in Maine. The state’s highest court later vacated that decision, recognizing that her inability to relocate reflected the practical impossibility of finding housing—not a failure to meet her responsibilities as a parent.

A lack of affordable housing should not separate families.

Project Home is partnering with Maine DHHS on a grant that, if funded, would allow us to help parents at risk of losing parental rights because of housing insecurity access and maintain stable housing.

Every child and family deserves a safe, stable place to call home—and the opportunity to stay together.

Maine terminated parental rights over a lack of affordable housing Child welfare authorities said the mother’s inability to move from New Mexico to Maine made her an unfit parent. The state’s highest court disagreed with that finding on Tuesday.

We’re hiring!

Project Home is looking for a Housing Intake and Eligibility Specialist to join our team in Portland.

This person will be one of the first points of contact for households seeking help through Project Home’s housing navigation, statewide eviction prevention, and housing stability programs.

The role includes conducting client intakes, reviewing eligibility and documentation, helping applicants navigate the process, and connecting households with the programs and resources that can best meet their needs.

We’re looking for someone who is organized, detail-oriented, compassionate, and comfortable working with a high volume of people experiencing housing instability.

This is a full-time, in-person position in Portland.

Know someone who might be a great fit? Please share this post with them.

Learn more and apply:
https://www.indeed.com/job/housing-intake-and-eligibility-specialist-98b4328d05961858

Over the past several months, a community team working with a professor from the University of Southern Maine and the Lakes Region Recovery Center has developed a Photovoice project featuring photography, storytelling, research, and advocacy by people with lived experience of housing instability.

The project culminates this Friday with an exhibition of participants’ photographs and stories, followed by a screening of the documentary Building Hope: Ending Homelessness.

The event is free, and no ticket or RSVP is required.

We hope you’ll join the Lake Region community for an evening centered on lived experience, storytelling, and the conversation about housing instability in Maine.

A major investment is opening new possibilities for hundreds of Maine mothers and their children.

WMTW recently visited Project Home to talk about the $1.47 million gift that will expand our Trust Program — and about why unrestricted cash is so powerful for families working toward greater stability.

Over the next three years, this investment will help Project Home reach approximately 300 mothers and 600 children across Maine.

We’re grateful to WMTW for taking the time to share the story behind this work.

Watch the 2-minute video and read the full story here:

Anonymous $1.47 million donation will allow Portland nonprofit to help more moms in need An anonymous donor has given Project Home $1.47 million, allowing the organization to reach twice as many families across Maine

We are incredibly excited to share that Project Home has received a $1.47 million gift to expand our Trust Program, which provides unrestricted cash assistance to low-income single mothers.

This transformational investment will allow us to double Trust’s annual reach from 50 to 100 mothers and their children and expand the program into a fourth Maine county over the next three years.

Trust is built on a simple belief: mothers know what their families need.

We are seeing what becomes possible when mothers have greater financial breathing room. Participants are increasing their earnings, pursuing education and training, becoming more financially secure and feeling more confident about the future. Two mothers who completed Trust have gone on to purchase their first homes.

This gift will allow us to bring that opportunity to hundreds more Maine families—approximately 300 mothers and 600 children over the next three years

We are deeply grateful to the anonymous donor whose belief in direct cash assistance, and in the judgment and potential of Maine mothers, made this extraordinary expansion possible.

Read more about the gift and the future of Trust in today’s Portland Press Herald.

Project Home receives $1.5M anonymous donation to help single mothers The anonymous gift will allow the Portland-based agency to expand beyond southern Maine and help an estimated 300 low-income moms and 600 children over the next three years.

Many renters can maintain stable housing but are screened out because of low credit, limited rental history, past eviction records, or income requirements.

Project Home’s lease guarantee helps landlords look beyond those barriers. We reduce their financial risk, connect qualified renters with available homes, and provide ongoing support throughout the tenancy. Renters remain responsible for paying their rent; the guarantee serves as a two-year bridge toward long-term stability.

The result: more doors open, landlords gain trusted partners, and 99% of participating households remain housed through the end of their first lease.

Maine families are working, earning income, and doing everything they can...and still cannot afford a safe, stable home.

A new report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition shows just how serious the gap has become. In Maine, a worker must earn $28.42 per hour to afford a modest two-bedroom apartment without spending more than 30% of their income on housing.

At the state minimum wage, that would require working 86 hours every week.

Project Home helps people overcome the barriers standing between them and the homes that already exist. Through housing navigation, lease guarantees, eviction prevention, healthcare connections, direct cash assistance, and employment support, we help families secure housing, remain stable, and increase their incomes over time.

Many of the families we serve earn too much to qualify for public assistance but too little to keep pace with Maine’s rising housing costs.

Maine needs long-term investment in affordable housing, along with immediate strategies that help working families access and maintain housing today.

We are grateful to the National Low Income Housing Coalition for documenting the challenges facing renters across the country, and to the Maine Affordable Housing Coalition -MAHC for sharing this important data and continuing to advocate for meaningful solutions here in Maine.

Maine minimum wage earners need to work 86 hours a week to afford 2-bedroom apartment A report from the National Low Income Housing Coalition found that a person would need to make more than $32 an hour to afford the average 2-bed apartment.