Incoming Augusta Housing Authority director brings years in affordable development
Courtesy / Augusta Housing Authority
Norman Maze Jr. will take the helm of the Augusta Housing Authority on Aug. 7.
The incoming executive director of the Augusta Housing Authority brings a long career in affordable housing development and management.
Norman Maze Jr. will take the helm Aug. 7. He succeeds Amanda Olson, who stepped down as executive director in March after 10 years.
Maze’s career includes statewide rental assistance program administration, as the former deputy director and housing director of Shalom House in Portland, serving that agency and its clients since 1997. There, Maze oversaw plant maintenance, capital improvements, leasing, program administration, IT and development for the organization’s portfolio of commercial and affordable housing projects.
He is a longstanding member of Maine’s professional real estate management and affordable housing development community.
Key accomplishments over the course of his career include the administration of $11 million in federal rental subsidies annually to nearly 1,000 Maine households homeless prior to being housed and $7 million in state rental subsidies annually to another nearly 1,000 Maine households with family members who live with a serious and persistent mental illness.
In 2022, he facilitated development of a 22-unit affordable housing project in Portland, serving adults with a serious and persistent mental illness, many of whom are coming from homelessness.
As executive director, Maze will lead the Augusta Housing Authority in carrying out its mission to find and maintain and provide decent, safe and affordable housing opportunities under the direction of the board of commissioners, and to serve as its primary agent to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the public.
“Since the Augusta Housing Authority’s mission expanded in 2014 beyond housing vouchers to include the development of new affordable housing, our organization has been very successful in diversifying our programs and funding to create more affordable housing opportunities in Maine’s capital region,” said Brent Hall, chair of the Augusta Housing Service Corp. board of directors, the authority’s development affiliate.
Hall said Maze’s decades of affordable housing development experience and relationships “will be invaluable to furthering this mission.”
Maze also brings extensive nonprofit experience from his many years with Shalom House, where he led the organization’s housing subsidy programs and worked to provide stable, quality affordable housing for individuals living with severe mental illness, said Nathan Cotnoir, chair of the authority’s board of commissioners.
Established in 1979, the Augusta Housing Authority was created to assist low, very low and extremely-low income families with finding and maintaining decent, safe and affordable housing opportunities; to promote family self-sufficiency; and to create and maintain partnerships with customers and with community agencies in order to accomplish its goals and to operate a fiscally sound program.
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