When a real estate agent showed the young Windham couple the brand-new, three-bedroom townhouse in Lewiston for $80,000, it was no contest. Nothing they’d seen came close to the spacious Maple Street development.

Her in-laws asked what it was like to live in the ‘hood.

After they picked out colors and unpacked, Jessica and Jacob Golder discovered that an open window invited swearing from the street. Police were always at the apartment house next door. Strewn garbage was a constant issue.

They put up with it for a year.

“Then I started to stick up for my neighborhood,” Jessica said.

Drawn to the area four years ago by affordable housing – the townhouses are a Sisters of Charity project that benefited from an Empower Lewiston grant – Jessica is now president of the Downtown Community Action Group.

She serves on a city beautification committee with the executive director of Empower Lewiston and Mayor Larry Gilbert.

In warm weather, the 24-year-old mother of three gloves up and collects sidewalk trash from Maple Street to Knox Street. She reminds kids to respect others’ property and confronts the cursers outside the window.

Jessica has made the state of her neighborhood her business. It’s earned her a nickname: The Warden.

The criterion when they started house hunting, she said, was to be a half-hour drive from family in Windham. In 2004, they had a $100,000 budget. Portland was almost immediately out. She was aware of some stigma associated with the downtown here, but it didn’t keep them from looking. An unexpected bonus: This new unit came with $16,000 in grants, dropping the mortgage to $64,000. If they stay 10 years, those grants are forgiven.

“It was strange moving (to Lewiston),” Jessica said. “Everything was new to us. It took us a week to find Blockbuster.”

She likes that they live on the corner of Bates and Maple, where two roads dead-end. She and the kids, ages 5, 3 and 1, walk to the public library for free activities and to Kennedy Park for the pool in the summer.

She and Jacob take online classes toward associate degrees at the University of Phoenix, he for business, she for human services management. She’d like to work as a children’s advocate someday.

He has an eye toward a home with their own land, a place where he can build a treehouse for the kids.

“Three years ago, I would have said, ‘Yeah, we’ll be out of here real soon.’ Now I’d have a hard time leaving,” Jessica said.

She can tell she’s making a difference.

On a hot night last summer, the couple woke up at 1 a.m. to four rowdy teenagers yelling on the street. The kids had been drinking. She called police and stepped outside. At the same time, two other homeowners called police and popped out of their doors.

“It used to be just me. More people are realizing what type of neighborhood they want.”