Housing
This section of the BDN aims to help readers understand Maine’s housing crisis, the volatile real estate market and the public policy behind them. Read more Housing coverage here.
Maine legislators have submitted a score of bills aimed at alleviating the state’s acute housing shortage.
Many of those bills correspond to recommendations issued by a new state report that came out last week and outlined some of the barriers to Maine doubling its housing production and meeting lofty state goals.
Here are four of those big ideas you can expect to see debated in Augusta this session.
Cutting red tape around development
One of the big barriers to housing development outlined in that new state report was zoning, and municipalities’ highly restrictive development approval processes that “incentivize higher cost homes” and limit growth.
Republicans have submitted bills that would streamline those processes and cut fees for developers. One would exempt towns with a population of less than 10,000 people from having to abide by Maine’s uniform building and energy code, which the sponsor, Rep. Jack Ducharme, R-Madison, said is overly stringent for small, rural towns who share code enforcement officers.
“We all want to be energy efficient just due to the fact that energy is so expensive. But some of the things written into this code create a lot of difficulties for people building houses, and whenever you create difficulties for people building houses, you increase costs,” Ducharme said.
Two other Republicans have also submitted bills that would amend how towns approach zoning by updating setback variances and limiting impact fees charged for developments.
Permanent funding for housing and homeless shelters
In order to build at least 76,000 homes by 2030 while facing a budget shortfall, state legislators are on the hunt for a permanent source of funding for both affordable housing projects and homeless shelters.
There is at least one bond proposal aimed at housing, and Rep. Traci Gere, D-Kennebunkport, has submitted bills that would create sources of ongoing funding to support projects “that build and preserve affordable and attainable housing,” she wrote in an email.
One bill is taking an inventive approach. Rep. Lynn Copeland, D-Saco, would impose a fee on booking hotels, short-term rentals or RV camping reservations in Maine in order to support the state’s shelters. But Gov. Janet Mills and legislative Republicans have generally stood against these kinds of tax increases.
Better data collection around housing
There is lots of data around home prices and values, especially given the proliferation of the online real estate sites Zillow and Redfin. But local housing data is often spotty. For example, the federal U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development runs a town-by-town database of building permits, but the information is often incomplete and some cities don’t provide it.
Gere, who co-chairs of the housing committee, is submitting a bill that would require municipalities to regularly report building permit data to the state. The hope is that will help policymakers better understand where to focus efforts to ramp up housing production, she said.
Another bill seeks to create a registry of mobile home parks in Maine. Though a list of licenses of manufactured housing dealers is kept online by Maine’s manufactured housing board, it’s hard to sort through and difficult to differentiate between park owners and home dealers.
The measure from Sen. Cameron Reny, D-Bristol, would produce a full list of parks in Maine, opening up the potential to track other metrics across parks like rents and owners.
Promoting manufactured housing
One takeaway from last week’s state report was that Maine is stifling a homemade solution to its housing crisis: ready-made manufactured homes, which used to be big business in Oxford County before the 2008 recession. Lawmakers have submitted bills that would invest in manufactured housing and seek to preserve manufactured home communities.
Two legislators have submitted bills that would implement rent stabilization measures in Maine’s mobile home communities, similar to a referendum passed in Old Orchard Beach last November. Bills from both freshman legislator Rep. Cassie Julia, D-Waterville, and Rep. Cheryl Golek, D-Harpswell, would introduce an annual cap on how much a park owner can increase rent, with an option to appeal to the municipality if one is needed beyond that sum.
The bills have been motivated by fears around out-of-state corporate buyers purchasing Maine mobile home parks and increasing lot rents, placing vulnerable tenants at risk of eviction. Rep. Golek said her bill would exempt resident-owned communities from the rent hikes.
“I’m not against a corporation making an offer, but I think that when these predatory practices come into play, the government should step in and protect the people at that point,” Golek said.
