The following Dec. 13 letter to the editor announces the halt in progress to develop housing units at Madelyn Lane in Rockport.

After careful ongoing consideration and 1.5 years of passion and hard work, Knox County Homeless Coalition (KCHC), together with our collaborative partners at Hope for the Future, LLC, have made the very difficult decision to step away from renovating 6-7 Madelyn Lane into affordable housing units.

We are grateful this experience has allowed us to educate the community, helping people understand the dire need for affordable housing. The primary factor in our decision however—which is out of our control—remains the increasing project costs.

At the end of the day beyond offering holistic support to individuals, families, and youth who are experiencing homelessness or are housing insecure, it is also our responsibility to be good stewards of every dollar of funding we have—and the current costs put this project out of the realm of good stewardship.

Since the beginning the vision for this project was the beautiful conversion of existing and empty buildings into urgently needed affordable housing. We had all been hopeful that we would find a way to make it work even as the costs continued to increase.

The need remains critical.

We are deeply grateful to our partners at Hope for the Future, LLC, as well as all of our collaborative partners, and the community that rallied behind us in support of this project. We are no less committed to addressing the affordable housing crisis here in the Midcoast.

We will continue to focus on our other housing projects including the collaborative work on the Firefly Field development on Talbot Avenue in Rockland.

In addition we will continue to identify alternatives that may be accomplished at a more reasonable cost in the future. We look forward to your continued support.   

Rick Bresnahan, Ann Bresnahan, Hope for the Future, LLC
Steph Primm, Executive Director, KCHC
Caroline Morong, Board Chair, KCHC