Bonita Lehigh at the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies on Main Street in Farmington is launching a tiny house project to address youth homelessness in Franklin County. The project will coordinate with entrepreneurial opportunities offered through the center where youth have launched micro-retail businesses offering merchandise such as the decorative signs hung behind Lehigh. Andrea Swiedom/Franklin Journal
FARMINGTON — The nonprofit Center for Entrepreneurial Studies has been awarded $20,000 from the Affordable Housing Challenge Grant to embark on a tiny house project to address youth homelessness throughout Franklin County.
The grant is administered by United Way of the Tri-Valley Area.
“I’ve watched this go on, this homeless youth issue, for eight years,” Center for Entrepreneurial Studies Director Bonita Lehigh said during a Zoom interview.
Lehigh was one of the original coordinators for establishing the closed community shelter at the Living Waters Assembly of God Church in 2013. The shelter took in families and individuals, but was not able to house youth without guardians.
When Lehigh started teaching business classes at Mt. Blue High School she was confronted even more with the dire need to offer solutions for homeless youth. She met students who were drifting from house to house, depending on strangers for transportation, shelter, food and often falling prey to manipulation and drug and sexual abuse.
“If they’re bouncing from house to house, where are they and who are they with? It’s too dangerous for these kids,” Lehigh said after describing a failed attempt to petition the Maine Department of Health and Human Resources to intervene with one student for whom she had sought help.
According to a 2020 Department of Education report, “in Maine, approximately 60% of homeless children are doubled up in shared housing, 20-25% are in shelters of transitional housing, 10-15% are living in motels, and 3-5% are unsheltered and staying in cars, temporary trailers, or other similar situations.”
The tiny house project would present what Lehigh described as an “out of the box” solution that would empower youth by offering a safe home they could call their own.
“We’re about getting them the house and we’re about getting them the support, strong supports, that can act as a barrier or shield for these kids and that is going to happen in the purview of the community,” Lehigh said. “It’s just a matter of getting those foster sites established once we have these homes and I think there are plenty of people in the church community that are willing to foster children in a little tiny home outside of maybe their five-acre home.”
Lehigh plans to raise about $72,000 to build two pilot tiny homes that would be hosted on a vetted foster volunteer’s property.
“I’m a good example,” she said. “I have 15 acres in New Sharon. I know I’m going to end up being a foster home to one of these tiny homes, I guarantee it. I’ll probably have a couple of them out there,” she said laughing enthusiastically.
The idea is to loop these tiny home dwellers into a community network that will offer mental health support, access to entrepreneurship and vocational-building opportunities through the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies. Lehigh has already helped several youth establish small businesses through the center on Main Street in Farmington since its establishment last July.
Lehigh also wants the process of building the tiny homes to offer opportunities to local community members by hiring unemployed workers and youth with high ACE scores, a study that assesses the levels of abuse, neglect and household challenges that a child has experienced.
The Affordable Housing Challenge Grant, which was established in response to the Farmington LEAP building explosion to address long-term housing needs, is the first contribution toward Lehigh’s vision. She plans to raise the remaining startup costs among community members and within her network with building to start this spring.
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