The funding for the project comes primarily from a $300,000 Smart Growth Grant award from the state government, with an additional $36,000 cash infusion coming from the Adirondack Foundation. Adirondack Roots, formerly the Housing Assistance Program of Essex County, plans to work with the Lake Champlain-Lake George Regional Planning Board on the project.

The homes will be split across four communities: two in Essex County, one in Hamilton County and one in Warren County. Adirondack Roots Executive Director Megan Murphy said that the communities haven’t been chosen yet.

“(We have) a list of a number of potential projects,” she said. “We’re starting to contact those entities … to determine which projects make sense.”

The grant is all about owner-occupied homes, Murphy said. This means that a variety of housing styles are a possibility for the project, as long as they are ultimately owner-occupied.

“What we would be looking for is that they would have perpetual affordability,” Murphy said. “So, either those homes would end up in the Adirondack Community Housing Trust or with another developer that would create deed restrictions.”

Adirondack Roots was one of 48 communities and organizations in the Catskills and Adirondacks that received a Smart Growth Grant. Altogether, grant funds totaled $5.4 million and will help pay for surveying, legal costs and environmental reviews and engineering fees, as well as infrastructure improvement and construction of the houses themselves.

“Accessible housing is the number one challenge faced by workers and families in our region,” Murphy said in a statement Wednesday. “We’re slowly making progress in closing the housing gap, and this grant will accelerate our efforts even faster.”

Around the area, Adirondack Roots is engaged in a number of affordable housing projects, including a project that’ll bring four deed-restricted, “permanently affordable” homes to Keene and another that’ll bring six affordable workforce apartments to Wilmington.

The organization received a a $255,563 Access to Home grant from the state in December to make accessibility modifications on homes. The Access to Home grant program funds accessibility modifications on homes for low- and moderate- income people with disabilities. It was also the subrecipient of the $1.25 million from the state Community Development Block Grant Essex County received in December, meaning Adirondack Roots will help administer the grant alongside PRIDE of Ticonderoga.

Available, affordable housing is scarce in the North Country and has been for years. The shortage is due to a variety of factors, but boils down to a small housing stock and premium costs — two pressures that are being felt nationwide, Murphy told the Enterprise in December.

“The causes are similar to some things seen across the country. It’s not just our area that’s experiencing a shortage of housing,” Murphy said. “There was a decrease in the number of building permits over time after the 2008 (financial crisis) and so that is one of the things, is that replacement didn’t really keep up. That is something that’s a trend that’s seen in other areas as well.”

Other localized factors contribute to the shortage, such as the high volume of seasonal residents and second-home owners in the Adirondacks who can afford to pay more for housing as well as the general lack of proper multi-family housing in rural areas. Short-term vacation rentals have “taken certain housing out of the market,” Murphy said — many spaces that could be used as apartments or single-family homes are instead being rented out to visitors.

The gap between the average income of a family and the average cost of a home is what prevents people in the North Country from being able to purchase a home. According to Murphy, in Essex County, the gap between the average annual family income and the average cost of a house is around $80,000, while in Franklin County it is around $10,000 — much smaller, but still prohibitive.