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Updated: August 2, 2021

10 trends that shaped Maine in 2020–21

Photo / Tim Greenway Tragedy and protests sparked conversations and introspection among civic leaders and CEOs.
Photo / Jim Neuger Lydia Coburn, community coordinator for Fork Food Lab, has been doing a brisk curbside business during the pandemic.
Zoom screenshot Zoom calls became a part of our lives in the past 18 months.
Photo / Jim Neuger The Downs in Scarborough is one of the hot spots for new home construction. In the past several months, heightened demand has led to soaring home prices and an even greater need for housing.
Rendering / Google Maps Portland’s Bayside neighborhood has seen extensive growth in recent years, and that growth continued unabated in 2020–21.
Map / COURTESY FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION With more people moving to Maine’s rural areas, the need for a stronger broadband network has come to the forefront.
By Peter Van Allen

The pandemic brought on many changes in the workplace and business community, and not all of them were negative.

It was a jolt to many office dwellers to start working from home. The familiar “church-and-state” barrier between work life and home disappeared. Kids tagged along to “work,” dogs barked and wailed during meetings and conferences were planned around people’s home life.

In Maine, we saw housing prices skyrocket, as the pandemic drove urbanites from Boston, New York and San Francisco to find safer, more remote areas. With more people working from home and buying houses further from urban centers, the pandemic also galvanized the need for more extensive broadband. Here are some of the trends that shaped the past 18 months.
 

Working from home — a natural fit

For many, the shift to working from home was as jarring as a new job or even a new career. Most of us had never heard of Zoom and yet it became part of our everyday lives. So, too, did people’s backgrounds and personal lives. Dogs barking, kids wailing for lunch and construction traffic outside the window became constant reminders that this was not business as usual. Yet the work got done. And as 2020 and the pandemic wore on, we became used to working from home. Now, for many, the “office” as we knew it may be a thing of the past. Companies, colleges and nonprofits are all adapting a new, hybrid model of working, allowing employees more flexibility. 
 

DEI came to the forefront

The May 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police galvanized a movement that was already growing, calling attention to systemic racism in America. For businesses, it prompted a discussion of how to communicate with customers but also how to refresh and diversify workforces. The result was the creation of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion departments at a range of businesses. In Maine, many in the business community signed a pledge to make changes. We’ll be able to go back a year from now and determine whether that has worked.
 

Curbside pickup becomes permanent part of business offerings

Retailers and restaurants had to spring into action to meet COVID protocols. As retailers evolved, curbside pickup signs, windows and procedures became a normal part of business. Your regular coffee shop, if it survived, may have required you to pay ahead of time, on an app. It just became a regular part of business — and, particularly in the case of payment systems, will likely remain part of doing business.
 

New people, new ideas

If you think you’re seeing new faces at the coffee shop, you’re not imagining things. Maine’s new arrivals are coming from Massachusetts, New York and Connecticut, as you might expect, but also from California, Texas and Colorado. The pandemic was only part of the reason they’re moving to Maine. Anecdotally, new arrivals are saying they also left states because of skyrocketing real estate prices, fear of wildfires and a desire to have more space around them. Many new arrivals are working their old jobs, remotely. But Maine’s schools are adapting to the new students. And Maine’s influx of residents is not limited to people fleeing the pandemic. There’s also been a wave of immigrants moving to Maine, and the population shift has reflected that as well.
 

Home prices skyrocket

The stampede of fleeing urbanites during the pandemic had a major impact on Maine’s home market, which was already tight going into 2020. But double-digit increases in the price of homes and the lack of inventory have created a feeding frenzy. The median home price reached $305,000, as of May, when sales were up 28%. Existing homes were selling in an average of six days, down from 19 days the year earlier. Particularly in southern Maine towns, sellers are routinely getting bids from a dozen prospective buyers. Never has the art of writing a persuasive letter been more important. The lack of existing homes created more demand for new houses, and the number of building permits issued this year is expected to be the highest since 2006, the peak of Maine’s last building boom. 
 

Broadband for rural areas

Amid the larger stories of the pandemic were the smaller anecdotes of people who had bought their dream home in rural Waldo County or Downeast only to discover that their internet connection wasn’t strong enough to manage their workload. U.S. Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, among others had been banging the drum for broadband investment long before the pandemic, but the effort took on more urgency in the past year. In March 2021, King and the Senate Broadband Caucus urged the Biden Administration to update federal standards for high-speed broadband to reflect modern uses and align those standards across the government. “A high quality high speed connection is now a basic utility in most Mainers’ lives,” Peggy Schaffer, director of ConnectMaine, said at the time.
 

Telehealth and Maine — perfect together

With hospitals converting space to COVID wards and social-distancing protocols in place, elective surgery fell to the wayside. Routine visits and checkups were relegated to Zoom. As patients and health care providers became more comfortable with this arrangement it was obvious telehealth was not only a pandemic solution, but a long-term solution as well. Not for every situation, but for many routine doctor’s appointments. It’s not exactly a Norman Rockwell image, but in the same way doctors once made house calls, there are some similarities to how doctors now treat patients over Zoom. It’s likely a part of the health care process of the past year that will stick around.
 

Home remodeling boom

With more people spending time at home in the past 18 months, there’s been a trend toward remodeling kitchens and bathrooms. Contractors are running flat out. Construction workers are in demand. Getting a new refrigerator can take six months; if you find one, you might find yourself significantly lighter in the wallet. No, that fridge did not come with Super Bowl tickets. 
 

Downtown redevelopment — counter-intuitive in the pandemic

It would seem logical that with more people working from home the downtowns that are supported by office workers would be dying. By contrast, downtowns in Portland, Lewiston, Auburn and Bangor are seeing redevelopment. Portland’s Bayside neighborhood has some 300 new housing units — some of which were in the works before the pandemic. Three new hotels are opening in the Old Port in Portland. A luxury hotel is proposed for the iconic Time & Temperature building in downtown Portland. 
 

Lack of homes forces Maine to finally confront housing shortage

Maine has seen an influx of new residents, but many are coming from more expensive markets and have the ability to plunk down cash for a big-ticket home buy. But with Maine’s median home price now at $305,000, compared to $180,000 in 2008. That’s to buy a home. Finding a rental can be just as tricky. Homes marketed as “affordable” or “workforce housing” are still out of reach of many Mainers. When Maine looks at its lack of housing, it has also had to address wages. Places like Portland that have mandated minimum wage increases also deal with the lack of affordable housing on the flip side. Still, organizations like Avesta and MaineHousing continue to chip away at the shortage, developing new housing. 
 

Vacation homes became staycation homes

Maine has always had second homes on the coast, on the lakes and near the ski slopes. But we saw in the past year many of these homes became primary homes during the pandemic. The effect was more of a year-round community in some places. Many schools saw increases in enrollment. 

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