Lewiston housing co-op wants its high efficiency buildings to be a model for green development

The resident-owned Raise-Op Housing Cooperative cut the ribbon on two energy efficient buildings in Lewiston’s Tree Street neighborhood earlier this month. 

Residents hope the buildings, which utilize passive house designs that require little energy for heating or cooling, will serve as a model for more green housing construction as the state looks for solutions to its dire housing shortage amid the climate crisis.  

There is currently a shortage of over 20,000 affordable housing units in the state and homelessness is growing.

“We wanted to just pave the path with this super low energy building that’s very simple, in terms of its systems and maintenance needs, and fits really well in a lot of different places,” said Craig Saddlemire, a founder of Raise-Op. “So it’s very replicable in that sense.”

On May 7, the co-op unveiled two buildings with a total of 18 apartments that were built on vacant lots in the city’s downtown at 198 Blake Street and 84 Walnut Street. The new units double the size of the housing collective, which formed in 2008 and is currently comprised of around 50 residents, including Indigenous people and immigrants, which owns 15 apartments in Lewiston. 

The new units will be open to tenants making 60% of the area median income.

The buildings are the first certified passive house buildings in Androscoggin County and just the fifteenth to be certified in all of Maine. Passive house is a rigorous design standard that requires highly efficient energy systems, as well as very high air quality, in order to meet the certification. There were roughly 2,000 projects certified nationwide as of 2021.

The design features solar panels on the roof that generate approximately 50% of the buildings’ energy needs over the course of the year, improved insulation, tight-sealing windows, and solar awnings that hang over the top of each window to limit heating during the summer months.

“Passive house buildings use only one-third of the energy, per square foot, of the average home in Maine,” explained Evan Carroll, the principal architect of the new building, in a press statement after the ribbon cutting. “With passive house design principles, you have both a very tight building envelope, as well as energy recovery ventilation so that each apartment has its own supply of fresh air all day long, no matter the season.”

Raise-Op is publishing detailed architectural drawings and other plans that were used for the construction on a website (raiseop.com/passivehouse) with the hope of inspiring other developers.

“Almost no air escapes the buildings,” Saddlemire said. “Our construction manager said he has never seen a building as air tight as ours. I think projects like this will help builders learn how to reach that standard.”

Saddlemire said the smaller size of the building will work well in cities and towns that are trying to increase housing density by infilling new buildings on existing lots. He said that outside of Portland, which mandated green-energy standards for new affordable housing in a 2020 ballot referendum, there are few examples of this kind of construction in the state. 

“It’s not the kind that the private market is doing much of,” Saddlemire said. “By doing a proof of concept, by building it, and then being as transparent as we can about the design and how we did it — we hope it settles a lot more questions for developers.”

The development is the result of an investment partnership between Raise-Op and Evernorth, a regional investment syndicator of affordable housing, with financing from MaineHousing, the state’s housing authority.

The project also represents another first, in that it’s the first time in Maine a housing co-op has received funding through the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC). The federal tax incentive program, which is administered by MaineHousing, normally goes to private developers to build housing that must remain affordable for at least 15 years.

As Beacon previously reported, cooperative housing is not a new idea. Unions and community groups have long rehabilitated old buildings and converted them to resident ownership as a means of housing their members. The collective ownership model takes speculation and landlords out of the equation as members purchase shares in the cooperative, which entitles them to a vote in the governance and management of the building, in exchange for resale restrictions, which prevent them from flipping the residence for a profit.

MaineHousing’s funding rules forced some changes onto Raise-Op, as the LIHTC program does not allow resident ownership. Instead, Saddlemire explained, new residents will technically be tenants although they will be able to participate in the governance of Raise-Op and through that have input into the operation of their building.

Still, Raise-Op residents are satisfied with the partnership and are sharing their experience with Maine Cooperative Development Partners, a co-op currently working to develop housing in Portland, so that they can also bring their cooperative model to the LIHTC program.

“The housing crisis and the climate crisis affect us all, and we want to support the widespread creation of more affordable and low-energy homes as much as possible. Sharing information is important to achieve that,” said Raise-Op president Shaad Masood in a statement after the ribbon cutting.