Maine needs more housing of all kinds and especially affordable housing, Ryan Fecteau, speaker of the Maine House of Representatives, said Thursday in Portland.
“There’s a crunch, and we need to solve it,” he said in his keynote address at the Maine Real Estate & Development Association’s annual forecast conference, attended by hundreds in person at the Cross Insurance Arena and remotely.
Fecteau, D-Biddeford, was elected speaker in December 2020, becoming the youngest person to hold such a role in the United States and the first openly gay person to serve as speaker of the Maine House.
He grew up in affordable housing in Saco, raised by a mom who dropped out in ninth grade and worked in a low-income health care job. Fecteau, 29, shared some of his experience with attendees, including photos of the Ledges apartments where he grew up.
Had it not been for the opportunity to live there, he said, “I don’t think I would be on this stage today.” Having a place to call home, he said, meant a safe place to do homework and eat with the family, for example.
“That is the difference housing can make,” providing stability and “the opportunity to work on everything else that happens in life,” and all the things that inevitably go wrong for families living on the margins, he said.
The first member of his family to attend college, Fecteau ran for the Maine State Legislature in his last year at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. He returned home to Maine on weekends to knock on doors before his election to the Maine House in 2014.
Today, Fecteau is a renter in search of his first home, seeing a lot of listings like the former home of Gov. William King, the first governor of Maine, in Bath, currently listed at $825,000 on Realtor.com and $1 million on Zillow. The four-bedroom, 4,758-square-foot home includes its own chapel.
“This is not within the budget of most Mainers,” Fecteau said. “I’m sorry, but castles are not realistic for many folks.”
He also said that rental prices are beyond the reach of many Mainers as well, noting that there isn’t a single county where a full-time worker earning minimum wage can afford a typical two-bedroom apartment.
“Maine is facing an affordable housing crisis,” he told MEREDA conference attendees, noting that housing supply has not kept up with demand. To meet it, he said, Maine needs about 20,000 affordable units, and a goal to build 1,000 affordable units a year, especially given the recent boom in real estate prices.
More voices needed
On the policy front in Augusta, Fecteau referenced recommendations from the House Commission to Increase Housing Opportunities in Maine by Studying Zoning and Land Use Restrictions, a group he chairs with state Sen. Craig Hickman, D-Kennebec.
Among other things, the group recommended eliminating single-family zoning restrictions in all residential zones across Maine, and creating a state-level appeals board to review denials of affordable housing projects made at local level.
Fecteau said that while he expects tension with communities over having a state appeals board, such a body would give developers a second chance to show why a project makes sense for a community.
But Fecteau also told attendees that lawmakers cannot solve Maine’s housing problem on their own.
“We need your voices at the table as well,” he said. “It can’t just be a politician, because no one likes us anyway. It has to be you … We need you to be a part of the conversation of how we solve the problem, because there are too many people depending on us.”
Thursday’s conference was sponsored by TD Bank, whose Maine president Larry Wold noted in introducing Fecteau that “the overlap between real estate development and politics has grown.”
Wold also credited Fecteau with reaching across the aisle to support economic initiatives and critical bond financing.
Later during the event, MEREDA presented Fecteau with its 2022 Public Policy Award. On Friday, MEREDA Board President Joshua Fifield told Mainebiz that Fecteau’s speech demonstrates his understanding of and commitment to the need for more housing in Maine.
“As public health, climate, infrastructure, and labor and wage concerns compete for priority recognition in the legislature, Speaker Fecteau has elevated housing as a core principle for public health and safety as well as economic growth and the long-term prosperity of Maine’s communities,” said Fifield, a vice president and senior account executive with Portland-based Clark Insurance. “We appreciate his efforts in this work and hope to continue to be a part of the conversations to help solve Maine’s housing crisis.”