How experts think Maine can meet lofty new housing goals
PORTLAND, Maine — It may take enhanced tax credit programs, repurposing old or empty buildings and growing Maine’s labor force to meet lofty housing targets set in a landmark state report, developers and policymakers said.
The state-sponsored study that found Maine needs to construct between 76,400 to 84,300 new homes by 2030 framed much of the discussion of the acute housing affordability crisis at a conference held by MaineHousing, the state’s housing authority, in Portland on Wednesday.
“The economy is dependent on us solving this problem,” Sen. Teresa Pierce, D-Falmouth, who co-chairs the Legislature’s housing panel, said. “But it didn’t take a short amount of time to get into the situation we’re in, it took decades, so it’s going to take another decade to get out of it.”
Achieving that goal would mean an additional 3,700 to 4,500 homes that will need to be permitted in Maine each year, between 77 percent and 94 percent more than current levels. The state has not allowed nearly that much housing since the bubble of the mid-2000s.
There are no easy solutions to this problem. While Mills and others at the conference touted the Democratic-led Legislature’s passage of a housing reform bill last year and other changes including $285 million invested in affordable housing since the governor’s tenure began in 2019, housing is permitted at the local level and the state has a long history of local control.
The housing overhaul made major changes including allowing two units on lots zoned for one and in-law apartments across Maine, but lawmakers set aside more controversial elements including a prohibition on building caps used by suburban towns around Portland and a state board that could have overrode local planning decisions.
There was scant discussion of next steps on Wednesday. In a speech, Mills suggested the state might look at employing traveling construction workers the way the state does with nurses to grow Maine’s workforce, or repurpose old or empty buildings as housing.
The housing committee will meet in Bangor in a few weeks to discuss the landmark study and what innovations in construction are available to address the acute shortage of homes it shed light on, Pierce said.
Developers agreed that the road ahead will be long and costly. In May 2020, Portland-based property developer The Szanton Company constructed a building in Auburn costing $140 per square foot to build, Nathan Szanton, the company’s president, said. Their latest project to go out for bid is going to come in at $280 per square foot.
Problems include high costs and a shortage of general contractors and construction workers able to take on these projects, meaning jobs that Szanton authorizes are taking 22 months when they used to take 12. Some subcontractors are sending four or five workers to a job site at which eight or nine would have been sent a few months earlier, Szanton said.
Given what developers have been seeing for years around longer wait times and higher price tags, Jason Bird, who works at Bangor-based community action agency Penquis as its housing development director, said no one in his circles was surprised by the report released this week.
Bird thought the goals laid out in this week’s report were achievable by 2030 if Mainers accept more out-of-state laborers to grow the workforce, if the state continues to invest in affordable housing and if municipalities not only look at new construction but at reinvesting in aging stock.
“The development community has known this was coming for years,” he said. “Historically, at a national, state and local level, we’ve underinvested in housing production for decades.”