Mayor Jeffrey Harmon tells Mainebiz that while there’s lot of housing development in the city, that may need to be accelerated.
Get Instant Access to This Article
Subscribe to Mainebiz and get immediate access to all of our subscriber-only content and much more.
- Critical Maine business news updated daily.
- Immediate access to all subscriber-only content on our website.
- Bi-weekly print or digital editions of our award-winning publication.
- Special bonus issues like the Mainebiz Book of Lists.
- Exclusive ticket prize draws for our in-person events.
Click here to purchase a paywall bypass link for this article.
In Auburn, longtime residents and newcomers face a shortage of affordable homes. New York City planning consultant HR&A completed a study last fall that said Auburn needs at least 1,300 additional homes by 2030 to meet historic underproduction and future housing demand.
The city is now working to identify specific housing production goals, Mayor Jeffrey Harmon told Mainebiz in an interview.
Mainebiz: How useful is the benchmark of 1,300 dwellings by 2030?
Jeffrey Harmon: The number isn’t really that meaningful when you get down to the municipal level. Let’s say we’ve built 1,200 or 1,300 market-rate dwellings. We wouldn’t have accomplished the goal. Because the need isn’t a specific number of dwellings.
There are needs at a more granular level: How much senior housing do we need? How much market-rate housing? Of market-rate, how many apartments and how many homes? How much low-income housing and what types and sizes? In general, the city has been working toward this number of new buildings. Now we’ve taken that report and identified targets for various housing types. We’ll be bringing that in to the city council in the next month or so.
MB: At the same time, we hear that Auburn has numerous housing developments in the pipeline.
JH: There’s a lot of housing development in the city because housing is needed. But in order to reach the goals, we need to be able to continue the rate of development and probably accelerate that some.
MB: What’s driving the need for housing?
JH: Big picture, two things. One is past under-production. I don’t think that’s any different than anywhere else in the state. The other thing is that, over the past 30 to 40 years, there’s been substantial growth in Greater Portland. As that pushes outward, people’s view of commuting and Lewiston/Auburn is different than it was 20 or 30 years ago. We have people now who routinely commute down the turnpike to Greater Portland. But we don’t have the housing units needed to respond to the natural growth of a city like Auburn.
MB: What are some of the demographic challenges?
JH: We don’t have sufficient options for people who have lived long-term in any type of housing and want to move. They might want to downsize, but we don’t have sufficient senior housing, we don’t have enough rental housing of the type and size that people are now looking for. In some ways, that constrains turnover in the market. You have people who continue to live in houses that are probably more house than they really want, but they don’t have available options.
MB: What’s the status of Auburn’s Housing First project?
JH: The city took the lead on this and found partners with Auburn Housing Authority to run the facility with Spurwink providing on-site service, and Developers Collaborative is the developer. We’re quite a way into the planning process. The design work is done; the site plan review has been approved by the planning board. We’re expecting construction to start in October. The tentative opening date is December 2027.
[Auburn’s Housing First project, Hampshire Commons, is a 32-unit permanent supportive housing development designed to provide affordable, barrier-free apartments and 24/7 on-site services for chronically homeless individuals.]
MB: In 2023, the city offered several of its own properties for sale, with the goal of attracting new housing development. What’s the status of that?
JH: We have an ongoing analysis of city-owned properties and identified several that might be suitable for development to help meet our housing goals. We’ve issued a request for proposals for one site. The concept was a single-family dwelling for moderate-income, first-time homeownership. The challenge with that property is that there’s no water and sewer, so it’s not clear if any developer will offer to build there, given the lack of sufficient labor in the construction industry and tariff impacts on material costs.
We have a couple of other large parcels that do have water and sewer, which this year, we’ll offer in a similar way to developers. I think we’ll get more interest in that.
MB: What's the overall vision?
JH: The city is working hard in conjunction with businesses and with developers to try to align things so we can have appropriate growth to support residents in our community and those folks who would like to move here.
