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There are many causes of Maine’s affordable housing shortage. They include outdated zoning rules that often favor sparse, spread out residential development. A long-term slow-down of home building coupled with a recent influx of new Maine residents has driven up home prices, as have rising prices of land and construction materials.
There is also a common, and troubling, theme across much of the state: local resistance to affordable housing proposals.
Recently, seven part-time residents on Mount Desert Island went to court to try to stop a small workforce housing project in their community. The seasonal residents of Northeast Harbor asked the Maine Supreme Judicial Court to overturn the town’s approval of a plan to build six housing units that are targeted to teachers, firefighters, bank tellers and other workers in the community.
As housing prices have risen, many communities on MDI have seen their year-round populations shrink, while towns off the island, such as Ellsworth and Lamoine, have grown. This shift has left some island communities to grapple with declining school enrollments while many workers on MDI face long commutes from communities where they can afford housing.
MDI is not alone.
Residents in Cumberland, Cape Elizabeth, Kingfield and elsewhere have also opposed affordable housing plans for their towns. Some proposals were rejected through referendum votes. Some were pulled from consideration by developers when opposition formed.
The result of this and other factors in much of Maine is rising home purchase prices and rents, leaving many Mainers unable to afford housing in communities in or near where they work.
Simply put, Maine needs more housing. According to a recent report from Maine Housing, 76,400 to 84,300 homes will have to be built statewide by 2030 to support both existing and future residents.
To reach this target, housing production needs to nearly double. An average of 4,800 Maine homes per year were permitted in recent years. According to the study, an additional 3,700 to 4,500 homes will need to be permitted each year, which is between 77 percent and 94 percent more than current levels.
For this to happen, many communities and their residents need to be more open to new construction, particularly workforce housing.
“There’s a mismatch between statewide goals and needs and what’s happening at the local level, and we need to have housing policy that aligns those,” Laura Mitchell, the executive director of the Maine Affordable Housing Coalition, told the BDN in March.
Changing and developing housing policies to overcome that mismatch, as much as possible, must be a priority for state lawmakers and municipal officials. Changes, like those in LD 2003, a law that eased some housing restrictions statewide, can begin to help. But, Maine is a state with a strong tradition of local control, so local approval remains vital.
Without changes in both policy and attitudes to allow more housing, especially affordable workforce housing, too many Mainers will be shut out of the housing market, which will ultimately harm the state’s employers and our communities.
