The BDN Opinion section operates independently and does not set news policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or on bangordailynews.com
Andrea Steward is a policy advocate for Maine Equal Justice. Josie Phillips is the State Priorities Partnership Fellow at Maine Center for Economic Policy.
Maine should have enough safe, affordable homes for all, including renters. But for many Mainers, a lack of affordable homes and sky-high rents are pulling their bank accounts into the red and threatening the roof over their heads. In 2023, nearly 6,000 Maine households faced eviction, an increase of 16 percent over the previous year, most for non-payment of rent. Among Maine households with extremely low-income, nearly 72 percent pay more than a third of their monthly income towards rent, and 52 percent pay more than half their monthly income to keep a roof over their heads.
While the need to build more has received plenty of focus, there’s a more immediate and targeted solution before the Legislature that lawmakers should fund: rent relief. A rent relief program could immediately ease the financial burden for people whose incomes can’t keep up with rapidly rising rents, and who are not being supported by other programs (like Housing Choice Vouchers, also known as Section 8). This would quickly reduce evictions while more homes are built.
Rents have become out of reach everywhere in Maine, not just in Portland and on the coast, and it’s plain to see that cities and towns are struggling for solutions. Fortunately, the state has a significant surplus. Gov. Janet Mills proposes to stash away $107 million of that surplus into a reserve fund for future budgeting needs — on top of the already full rainy day fund balance of nearly $1 billion. Instead, Augusta should target funds toward rent relief to ease affordability for thousands of households and drastically reduce evictions, among many other benefits.
A rent relief program would help with some of the effects we’ve seen from our troubled housing market. For businesses, schools, and local governments, higher and higher rents are showing up as trouble hiring and retaining workers, student homelessness, and increased demand for support for unhoused individuals and families. Maine is not the only state dealing with high housing costs and homelessness, but we have the terrible distinction of being the state with the greatest increase in families with kids who lost their home between 2020-2022.
The housing crisis is spilling over in many less visible ways, too. Mainers who are spending a bigger and bigger chunk of their budgets on rent are looking for help affording food, heat or electricity, or basics for their kids. Many may earn too much to qualify for public benefits, but they’re living one emergency — a car breakdown, a medical bill, a few missed days of work — away from eviction.
Rent relief can also alleviate growing pressure on emergency shelters and local General Assistance programs. Once someone becomes unhoused, the costs multiply quickly for families and for society. Rent relief helps prevent these damaging outcomes, and can cost between half and a fourth as much on a per-person basis as emergency services for people experiencing homelessness. It is not a substitute for shelter or housing first programs, but it’s a critical missing measure of prevention.
Mainers who could benefit from rent relief, who earn around $28,000 a year, include many single parents and caregivers, Mainers with disabilities, older Mainers on fixed incomes, workers who do essential but low-paying jobs and students. These rent-burdened Mainers will have to wait years or even decades for enough affordable housing to be built to meet the needs of our state. That’s too long to wait when you are on the precipice of eviction and unfortunately, that housing is only affordable for people well above their income.
What can lawmakers do to immediately stem a rise in evictions and support families and communities struggling with the effects of the housing crisis? Renters have an answer: help us afford to stay in our homes. Maine needs rent relief.