Lower regulatory barriers, tax reform, expanded tariffs and deportations of immigrants are some of the proposals from President-elect Donald Trump that policymakers say would affect Maine housing.
Lawmakers, developers and advocates gathered Wednesday at the Maine Affordable Housing Coalition’s housing policy conference in South Portland said the results of last week’s state and local elections will have a bigger impact on Maine’s housing crisis than the presidential results. But they said it’s also important to consider how federal-level decisions could affect housing here.
“This is an area where I think we really can come together, because [lawmakers] are hearing from their constituents that this is one of their top priorities,” said Jennifer Schwartz, director of tax and housing advocacy at the National Council of State Housing Agencies. “I think that we are going to have a lot of opportunities to push for lower regulations.”
Schwartz believes a Republican-controlled House and Senate will be receptive to cutting regulatory red tape around new construction. Along those lines, her organization — the national trade organization representing state housing financing agencies — will try to persuade lawmakers that affordable housing should not be subject to the Build America, Buy America Act, which requires construction materials used in federally funded infrastructure projects be produced domestically.
Reducing the time and cost of building new housing was one of the most-cited policy ideas Maine Republicans had in a Bangor Daily News candidate survey last month, as well.
Other federal policies Republicans have proposed that could affect Maine housing include promoting homeownership through tax incentives supporting first-time homebuyers, reducing mortgage rates by addressing inflation, making federal lands available for home construction and Trump’s promise to deport millions of immigrants to alleviate demand for affordable housing.
That latter campaign promise, Schwartz warned, would not only fail to address the crux of the nation’s housing shortage — which is a supply issue — it would exacerbate the crisis by negatively impacting the construction workforce.
State Rep. Mark Blier, R-Buxton, told a reporter he’s skeptical Trump will deliver on sweeping deportations.
“I personally don’t see that happening,” said Blier, who served on the Legislature’s housing committee last session. “The manpower you’d need to do that … it’s not probable.”
Other unknowns include how Trump’s promised expanded tariffs will affect the costs of construction materials and whether federal disaster relief will lead to disaster tax provisions. The 2025 expiration of Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will also present an opportunity to advance housing tax priorities next year, Schwartz said.
Policymakers here still say the most important work to be done in solving the housing crisis will be at the state and local levels. Since housing is a top concern for Mainers, there’s broad, nonpartisan support to tackle that.
“There’s some things on the table [federally] that they’ve been working on around housing that would help, and all of our delegation is in favor of that,” Sen. Teresa Pierce, D-Cumberland, said. “But Maine is going to continue to do the work we need to do and move forward on this. [We] make our own destiny here.”
At the state level, voters last week passed $10 million in borrowing aimed at restoring historic buildings owned by local governments and nonprofits. Multiple municipalities, including Camden, Old Orchard Beach, Portland and Rockport, passed initiatives aimed at containing costs and expanding affordable housing options.
In a panel at Wednesday’s conference, Pierce and Blier cited historic investments into affordable housing production and the passage of LD 2003 as major strides towards building the 80,000 homes Maine needs by 2030 to meet demand. But a long-term funding source of housing construction, along with workforce shortages, needs to be shored up this next legislative session in order to keep successful programs like Maine’s rural rental and first-time homebuyer initiatives going.
“Having some formalized way to have consistent funding […] is really an important aspect of this,” said Pierce, who served as the senate chair of Maine’s Legislative housing committee. “It’s important to maintain what we did right. We can’t slide back.”
