From the Editor: Common-sense solutions to Maine’s housing crunch
Maine’s housing crunch didn’t start with the pandemic. The need for housing of all kinds has been part of the discussion for years now.
Issues like the lack of affordable housing, the dwindling market of housing for middle-income families, the need for apartments, the short-term rental market and restrictive zoning have all been issues we’ve talked about for the past decade. They didn’t start with COVID.
In the past two years, we’ve seen the median home price surge to $325,000 in Maine. We’ve seen new residents move here from California, Texas and Massachusetts. We’ve also seen a surge of quiet money coming in — investors who are buying up properties as short-term rentals or providers of passive income.
What used to be one of the more affordable aspects of living in Maine has become a crisis.
The good news is, we can do something about it. In this issue we lay out not only some of the challenges, but also provide some solutions.
Some of the solutions are common sense.
Developer Nathan Szanton suggests that towns with more than 5,000 people designate an area “where one or more four-story buildings, with at least 40 apartments each, could be built on a 1.5 acre parcel of land.”
Tiny Homes of Maine CEO Corinne Watson suggests launching an agency tasked with helping people find homes, jobs and schools.
Auburn Mayor Jason Levesque suggests revising restrictive zoning: “By encouraging simplified and less exclusionary zoning we can promote the replication of some of our older most successful neighborhoods that were only able to be created with less restrictive zoning.”
Derek S. Volk, CEO and owner of Volk Packaging Corp., suggests dormitory-style housing for single people: “It would be helpful to have housing with individual bedrooms with shared kitchens and common spaces. I have never understood why those were not available to people.”
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