OAKLAND, Maine (WABI) – It was a housewarming party for one Oakland family that is moving in to a new home thanks to Habitat for Humanity and support from the community. <\/p>\n
More than 3,000 volunteer hours and two-and-a-half years of work from volunteers and local businesses helped make it possible for a veteran and his wife to move into a brand-new home in Oakland.<\/p>\n
The Waterville Area Habitat for Humanity, along with the Mid-Maine Chamber of Commerce and other community partners, held a ribbon cutting for the new home. <\/p>\n
Those who organized the event are grateful for the hundreds of volunteers that made it possible and think it says a lot about the Waterville-area that projects like this are possible. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a really strong community here,\u201d answered Waterville Area Habitat for Humanity Executive Director Jonathan Irwin. \u201cA lot of businesses have gotten involved, a lot of people volunteering their time. We\u2019ve seen some growth over this last year. We\u2019ve got a new location we just opened up on K.M.D. in Waterville and we\u2019re starting now to be able to take new projects.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, it was the construction part of it where I spent of my time here building things,\u201d added Waterville Area Habitat for Humanity Construction Coordinator Skip Pratt. \u201cWhen I got done, I always felt good that we accomplished something, and we had good volunteers. Like I said, I didn\u2019t do this alone, and I had a good group of volunteers that helped a lot. So, it\u2019s very gratifying.\u201d<\/p>\n
The family also contributed 300 of their own volunteer hours, and earlier on Tuesday, they were officially signed over the mortgage, becoming homeowners.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 WABI. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OAKLAND, Maine (WABI) – It was a housewarming party for one Oakland family that is moving in to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245948,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144,91313],"class_list":["post-245947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-poll-question-and-results"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}