CARIBOU, Maine — About a dozen students from the Loring Job Corps Center in Limestone have been hard at work helping to build four duplexes for homeless veterans in Caribou.
The duplexes are part of a project led by United Veterans of Maine President John DeVeau, and will be part of the Dahlgren-Skidgel Farm of Hope. According to DeVeau, the completed facility, located on 358 Washburn Road, will not only give homeless veterans a place to stay, but a chance to work, earn money, and leave with a renewed sense of purpose.
DeVeau said he worked with Loring Job Corps students on the shelter’s main office building last year, and that this is the second iteration of students who have offered to donate their time for the project.
“It’s been great working with them,” DeVeau said on Nov. 9. “They take advice, listen closely, and implement everything.”
When DeVeau spoke late morning Thursday, he and the students had been working since 8:30 a.m., and planned on continuing throughout the day.
“They were out helping yesterday and got a lot of work done,” DeVeau said. “They’re working on putting up T1-11 siding outside the building right now, and the priority is getting the front finished so we can get the doors in.”
With the National Weather Service in Caribou forecasting a storm with a couple inches of snow for Friday, DeVeau said the plan was to have the first duplex’s exterior taken care of that Thursday so students could work inside the building on Nov. 10.
Job Corps student Michael St. Peter, who has been in the carpentry program for three months, said working on the duplexes has been a “great learning experience.”
“It’s nice being out on the job site,” he said. “It’s better than just sitting in the shop.”
Loring Job Corps student Keyla Terry of New Jersey works on Nov. 9 putting up the interior walls of the first of four duplexes, intended to house two homeless veterans each. (Christopher Bouchard)
St. Peter was working with DeVeau and two other students on cutting the T1-11 siding, which he said will protect the building throughout all seasons.
“It’s pressure-treated so it can withstand the weather and all the seasons in Maine,” said St. Peter, who has been helping with the project since early October. “I never knew how to install this type of siding before, but now I know how to cut it and put it together.”
Moving forward, St. Peter said he and his classmates will work on putting up sheetrock and flooring once they complete the outside of the building.
While St. Peter and a few classmates worked on the siding, Job Corps student Keyla Terry was in the first duplex putting up cedar plank walls.
Terry has been in the carpentry program for five months, and said she enjoys the work.
“It’s a lot of fun,” she said. “I get to use a nail gun, and this type of work keeps you in shape so you don’t have to diet as much.”
Terry’s plan after completing Job Corps is to eventually buy and resell houses, and said this experience will help her renovate a cheap house on her own, instead of saving up money to hire a contractor to do the work.
“I was thinking that instead of hiring someone to help, I could just learn these skills,” Terry said. “I could buy a house that’s completely destroyed, then fix it up and flip it.”
Terry, who came up from New Jersey to join the Job Corps program, said if someone told her seven months ago that she’d be building houses for homeless veterans in Maine, she’d think they were crazy or on drugs, adding that she truly enjoys the work.
“Once we hit our groove, it goes along well,” she said. “This is a good program for me. I’m a hippie at heart and I just want to help people, and this let’s us help people.”
Job Corps Carpentry Instructor James Hayes also is proud of the work he and the crew are doing, adding that the weather is the only negative aspect of the project.
“We had about two weeks of washout rain,” Hayes said. “We were working here in the rain trying to get things insulated; it’s been a battle.”
Hayes, who has taught carpentry courses at Job Corps for roughly three years, said he is the most proud of the work his students have done on the Farm of Hope project.
“It’s awesome, my students will come in here and shadow the trade to see if they like it,” Hayes said. “If they do, then they stick around and get a training achievement record, and need about 800 to 1,000 hours to complete the program.”
Once his students finish the program, Hayes said there are numerous career paths they could take, from joining a labor union in New Hampshire, Connecticut, or Massachusetts, to moving onto another training program in areas such as solar panel insulation or asphalt work.
“There are a lot of good paying jobs out there,” he said, “especially if you’re going to New York or New Jersey.”
Hayes added that he was glad to be working on a project that will give local veterans a place to stay.
“God bless the United Veterans of Maine,” he said. “Let’s give these guys a good place to live.”
