Thread: Maine Town Is Riven by Housing Dispute

November 15, 2009
Milbridge Journal

Maine Town Is Riven by Housing Dispute

By ABBY GOODNOUGH

MILBRIDGE, Me. — Down a rural road where wood smoke spirals from chimneys in the settling twilight, a five-acre lot thick with spruce trees is the unlikely site of a dream deferred.

This is the intended spot for a small apartment complex for farmworkers, a few hundred of whom are Hispanics living year-round in this remote corner of Down East Maine. They harvest blueberries, process seafood and assemble holiday wreaths, and most live in trailers near the fields and factories where they work.

A local nonprofit group won a $1 million federal grant last year to build the six-unit complex, a first step toward expanding housing options for the immigrant laborers, most of whom come from Mexico and Honduras.

But then ugly words were uttered, a petition was circulated, and voters in this town of 1,300 approved a moratorium on multifamily housing in June, blocking the project.

Now the group, Mano en Mano — Spanish for Hand in Hand — has filed a federal lawsuit alleging discrimination under the Fair Housing Act and the equal protection clause of the Constitution. And Milbridge, which once won acclaim for its efforts to welcome and integrate immigrants, is smarting from accusations of racism.

“We have always been very open and receptive and accommodating,â€

[quote]“I’m brown, dark hair, and it doesn’t matter if I’m a citizen of the U.S.,â€

[quote]Ms. Flores said that during a recent town meeting about the project, the hostility toward it — and toward Hispanics, she said — made her feel like “a cat surrounded by dogs.â€

butterbean is right: so much that is about economics and fairness is constantly twisted into being about some ethnic group and discrimination. From the article:

Quote:
"But Mr. Pinkham said residents were more irked by the fact that Mano en Mano, as a nonprofit group, would be exempt from paying property taxes.

“Everybody feels that everybody should pay their own fair way,â€