More than 100 Maine legislative candidates tackled the question of how to solve the state’s housing crisis as part of a survey for the Bangor Daily News’ 2024 voter guide.
The most-cited ideas from Democrats included expanding tax credits for affordable housing developers and investing in rent relief, while Republicans were more likely to advocate for reducing the time and cost of the permitting process and encouraging more young people to enter the trades.
But there were lots of policy proposals that came from individual candidates that stood out for addressing the housing crunch.
Revitalizing the manufactured housing industry
Sen. Rick Bennett, R-Oxford, who is running for a third term, has been frustrated by the Legislature’s focus on tackling Maine’s housing crisis with programs that build one expensive project at a time, when a state report found Maine needs at least 76,000 new homes by 2030.
“You can spend $5 million helping construct a 300-unit facility, but you’re not actually tackling the 80,000 number,” he said.
Bennett has seen the closure of four manufactured housing plants in Oxford County since the Great Recession. Policymakers on the left and right have called for destigmatizing manufactured homes, which run the gamut from modular that can cost 20 percent less than comparable stick-built homes to mobile homes.
He plans to introduce a bill leveraging taxpayer funding as well as private investment to reinvigorate that industry by reopening closed manufactured housing plants.
“The industry has been dormant for a while, but I think it can grow quickly to help solve this vital need,” he said.
Reuse of state-owned buildings
Candidates surveyed agreed across the aisle that finding ways to adapt and reuse existing older or underutilized structures in Maine will be key to meeting the state’s ambitious housing goals. Maine has one of the oldest housing stocks in the nation, with nearly a fifth of homes built before 1939.
Rep. Bill Bridgeo, D-Augusta, who was a longtime city manager, said there is an “abundance” of underutilized state-owned buildings around Maine that could be repurposed as housing, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic pushed many state employees out of the office and into a hybrid model of work.
“I’m sure around the state of Maine that there is idle property that’s not necessarily state parks or valuable woodlands or or natural beauties,” he said. “I’m talking more about old parking areas and tired office buildings, similar to what we’ve done in Augusta with old schools.”
Using a mixture of financing tools including low income tax credits and historic tax credits, Bridgeo said the state could transform some of these spaces into affordable places to live.
Streamlining the permitting process
Most Republicans who answered — as well as a few Democratic and unenrolled candidates — mentioned streamlining the permitting process for new housing in their survey response. Candidates argue that it takes too much time and money to permit new buildings.
Part of the problem is that zoning and building code requirements differ greatly from municipality to municipality, Rep. Tiffany Roberts, D-South Berwick, who is running for a fourth term, said.
“It’s not giving us a consistent baseline to start from,” she said.
It was a common theme among Republicans. Rep. Dick Bradstreet, R-Vassalboro, who is running for an Augusta-based Maine Senate seat and works as the executive director of a manufactured housing industry group, proposed standardizing Maine Uniform Building and Energy Code, which governs new construction.
Other candidates cite a lengthy permitting process as a problem, and Roberts points out that a lack of elevator inspectors continues to hold larger construction projects back. Many Republicans surveyed said as much as 25 percent of new home costs go toward regulations.
“We need to take a hard look at why these regulations are there, and are they all really necessary,” House Minority Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham, R-Winter Harbor, said in his response.
A legal task force for housing
Several candidates — mostly Democrats — revived the idea of a statewide agency that could override local decisions to vote down new housing. That was proposed as a statewide zoning board of appeals in a housing reform law passed in 2022, but it was controversial and stripped over concerns of overriding local control.
Rep. Marc Malon, D-Biddeford, proposed reinstating that board. Ted Sirois, a Republican running for the House in Saco, wants to go a step further. He’s proposing a temporary “legal task force” inspired by a story out of Mount Desert Island, where wealthy summer residents are fighting a workforce housing project.
As Sirois envisions it, the group would have sweeping authority. It could override “unjust cancellations, delays or other litigation tactics against housing projects” on the request of a municipality or business. It would standardize regulations and permitting and even expedite the probate, tax foreclosure and mortgage default processes to keep vacant homes livable.
“We’re in a crisis,” he said. “We cannot allow housing to stay vacant.”
