More than 200 people register for two-day conference in Skowhegan with a focus on housing

SKOWHEGAN, Maine (WABI) - Build Maine has kicked off a two-day conference in Skowhegan today.

More than 200 people registered for the event.

The conference is an opportunity to bring people together to collaborate on ways to solve common problems.

From builders, planners, and financial institutions, one of the big focuses this year is on housing.

Kristina Cannon, Executive Director of Main Street Skowhegan, says she hopes people walk away feeling empowered to do more.

“We’re excited to give people the opportunity to attend to learn some new things and take some tangible things back to their communities that they can then implement,” said Cannon.

Today’s sessions, all of the diversity of people that are here, it gives people a spark to move off of what do I do? How do I get started? Maybe they can get a few building blocks, a few connections, and then they can get started. And then they can find someone to get onto their team and help them out and get going in building a project because we need more housing units, mostly affordable housing units, but all kinds of housing units everywhere across the state,” John Egan with Genesis Community Loan Fund said.

Other topics to be discussed during the conference include public spaces, policy, and land banking.

The conference continues tomorrow.

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