SCARBOROUGH – Scarborough has taken the first steps toward eventual construction of affordable housing on a piece of town-owned property east of the Maine Turnpike on Broadturn Road.

The town and the Scarborough Housing Alliance are working to secure a $10,000 Community Development Block Grant to examine what is possible on the 20-acre site, which borders Saratoga Lane. The town also plans to partner with Habitat for Humanity of Greater Portland on the project.

The town purchased the property from the Maine Turnpike Authority several years ago for the purposes of constructing affordable housing and preserving open space.

“The grant will help us look at the property and see what can be accommodated there,” Suzanne Foley-Ferguson, chairwoman of the Scarborough Housing Alliance, said during a recent Scarborough Town Council meeting. “It will help with outreach to neighbors and the community to get them to buy in to the plan for the property.”

According to Jessica Holbrook, the Town Council liaison to the Scarborough Housing Alliance, “there is a great need for, whatever you term it, affordable housing or workforce housing, in the community.”

The need for affordable housing, Foley-Ferguson said, has only continued to grow since it was last examined several years ago.

According to the 2006 update of the 2004 Comprehensive Plan, there are 1,090 households in Scarborough that made less than $25,414 a year, putting them in the low-income bracket. Another 1,062 households qualified as low-income households because they earned less than $40,662, and 2,081 were designated moderate incomes because they earned less than $76,242 a year.

“Rising housing costs in Scarborough is making Scarborough one of the least affordable communities in the Portland housing market,” according to the affordable housing analysis section of the update. “A household income of $85,000 would be needed to afford the median single home in Scarborough,” for which the price in 2004 was $311,000.

Nearly 60 percent of households in Scarborough fall in the very low income, low income or moderate income designations. Foley-Ferguson said although the grant would only fund the Broadturn Road property, the housing alliance is interested in examining other pieces of town-owned land to see if they would be appropriate for affordable or workforce housing.

“This one,” Foley-Ferguson said, “affords us a lot more space, so we can do much more with this property than other properties the town owns allows.”

Steve Bolton, executive director of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Portland, said the organization is excited about the project as its introduction into Scarborough.

“This would be our first project in Scarborough,” Bolton said. “We have done work in many of the communities around Scarborough: South Portland, Portland, Westbrook, Freeport and other towns around Cumberland County.”

Bolton said a benefit of getting Habitat for Humanity involved is the organization does not seek to make a profit from the home construction. This, in turn, keeps the price down.

“To make a profit, most builders have to sell a home above what most young first-time homebuyers can afford,” Bolton said. “We get a lot of volunteers and discounted services and we are then able to turn that discount over to the families.”

The goal, Bolton said, is to price the houses at $190,000 and sell them through Maine State Housing’s First Time Homebuyers Program. The houses would be 1,200 square feet with three bedrooms and one-and-a-half baths and valued between $230,000 and $240,000.

The $190,000 asking price is in the middle of the price range many people in town are looking for, Foley-Ferguson said.

“What we found is that price point, $180,000 to $200,000, is what a lot of people are looking for, but not a lot are available,” she said.

Another benefit of Habitat for Humanity involved, Foley-Ferguson said, is the organization, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, is powered by volunteers. This, she said, would make the construction of the housing a much more community-based project.

Last year, Bolton said, the Greater Portland affiliate of Habitat for Humanity, one of 10 such affiliates in the state, had 2,400 volunteers help out on projects all across Cumberland County, the area the affiliate serves.

Bolton said he sees the organization as much more than a vehicle to build homes.

“Habitat is not just about house building, it is about community building,” he said. “A big piece to what we do is education. When many of our volunteers get to the job site, they have never built a house. Some have never even swung a hammer. Every morning we instruct the volunteers what we are going to be doing that day.”

Town Manager Tom Hall, who lives near the proposed site, said there would be some infrastructure costs associated with the project, as the parcel is not hooked up to the town sewer line.

The Community Development Block Grant program is a federally funded program aimed at helping communities plan for and implement community development, housing and social service programs and projects. The focus of the program is to provide benefits to low- or moderate-income people and prevent and eliminate slum or blight conditions.

The Town Council gave its support to the grant application.

In 2010 the Cumberland County Community Development Block Grant Program allocated just under $1.85 million to the 25 cities and towns in the county that participate in the program.

Review of applications begins in March with final approval in May.