NORWAY – A public hearing to discuss a proposed apartment complex for homeless single mothers concluded with a young woman describing her gratitude at being able to find shelter and security, her voice unsteady with emotion.

“I was homeless because I left a severely abusive relationship,” said Jennifer Flynn, a 25-year-old mother of two young children. “Because I have housing I can go school. In two years I will have my bachelor’s degree.”

Flynn was homeless for several months before she moved into an apartment provided by Rumford Group Homes Inc., a social-service agency. She is working on a degree in liberal studies at the University of Maine extension school in Rumford and Mexico and said she plans to became a counselor and advocate for abused women.

Rumford Group Homes has asked permission from the Planning Board to build a small residency for women with situations like Flynn on Hayden Avenue in Norway.

The public hearing for the project Thursday night did not draw many of the neighbors who have been vocally opposed to the project since it was proposed last spring. The complex will include apartments for four families and a manager’s office, as well as a nine-car parking lot.

The housing, which will be permanent, is intended to help women address the issues that brought them to homelessness and give them a chance to move out of poverty.

But the 3.5-acre lot for the project is located on a dead-end road in a quiet, residential neighborhood off Pleasant Street and neighbors have questioned why the home has to be there.

One neighbor, while supportive of the project’s mission, admitted he was a bit selfish.

“I think it is a wonderful, wonderful idea,” Richard Judkins said after the public hearing. “I just wish it were someplace else. We watch the deer come down there.”

Nearby property owners in the past have said they were worried about more traffic, possible devaluation of their homes, and disturbances at the home that would bring police.

At the hearing, Judkins asked about fencing, and Paula Paladino of Rumford Group Homes answered that if there is money left after the complex is built, the organization will invest in a $5,000 fence between it and its two neighbors.

Judkins also expressed a concern about the children playing in neighbors’ yards.

“The [tenants] could live there for 30, 40 years,” said Christine Hmieleski of Rumford Group Homes. “You could be watching children grow up.”

Hmieleski explained that the housing situation will work much like a typical landlord/tenant relationship, with house rules based on the legal rights of both owner and renter.

Planning Board Chairman Dennis Gray has pointed out that without townwide zoning, which could have kept this neighborhood a single-family zone that did not allow an apartment building, there was little the Planning Board could do other than ensure all building codes were met.

The Maine State Housing Authority has provided the Hayden Avenue project, called Pine Woods Supportive Housing, with $547,000 of Department of Housing and Urban Development funds and state money. Additional money was provided by the Maine Statewide Housing Council.

According to the Housing Authority, 261 families or individuals did not have homes in Oxford County in 2004.

“Everyone who has ever hit rock-bottom deserves a chance,” Judkins said during the meeting, after listening to Flynn’s story. “Everyone deserves a chance to come back.”