The Maine Housing Crunch: From Augusta to Auburn, policymakers lay foundation for affordability
Photo / Jim Neuger
Maine House Speaker Ryan Fecteau, D-Biddeford, is an advocate for affordable housing in the state Legislature. He is shown here in Biddeford’s Cathedral Oaks neighborhood.
Tiny homes, accessory dwelling units and zoning reform are some of the issues Maine lawmakers are tackling to bring more affordable housing to the state.
One law enacted last year puts tiny houses on equal footing with traditional single-family dwellings in terms of zoning and code requirements.
More recently, state lawmakers passed a law introduced by House Speaker Ryan Fecteau, D-Biddeford, that reforms zoning by allowing property owners to build accessory dwelling units, often called mother-in-law-apartments, in residential areas, and allow up up to two units on lots zoned for single-family housing.
“We are empowering Mainers to contribute solutions to the housing crisis in their own backyards,” Fecteau said after the April vote. The bill was signed into law by Gov. Janet Mills last week.
Portland developer Nathan Szanton, CEO of the Szanton Co., says the law “tames some of the most egregious exclusionary zoning” and gives the Maine legislature a grade of “A” for the year on its plan to address affordable housing. So does Avesta Housing President and CEO Dana Totman, whose marks for municipalities range from “A” to “F.”
In Augusta, the issue is a priority for Fecteau, who grew up in affordable housing in Saco and wrote the bill that created Maine’s new $80 million Affordable Housing Tax Credit program.
A spokesman for the Maine State Housing Authority credits that program with “turbo-charging” existing federal tax credits and substantially boosting the development pipeline. Over 600 MaineHousing-financed developments were created in 2021, up from 350 in 2020.
As more people move to Maine, Fecteau remains concerned about the fact that one-in-five Mainers spend half their income on housing in a state with one of the nation’s oldest housing stocks.
Those issues “are not going to get any better if we don’t continue to be ambitious to address these challenges,” he says.
At the local level, Fecteau credits Auburn’s Republican mayor, Jason Levesque, with removing red tape to new housing in the 23,000-population city by cutting the number of zones for new construction from 32 to eight this year.
“Auburn realized that we need to remove barriers for property owners to enhance their neighborhoods, invest in their communities and build a more sustainable future,” Levesque says. “We were on that track until the 1960s when exclusionary zoning halted our growth and led to a slow degradation of our city core.”
Noting the “monumental amount of work” that goes into rezoning a whole city, Levesque adds, “I hope that business, as well as current and future residents, realize that we are simplifying regulations, providing predictability and eliminating unnecessary roadblocks to development while protecting what is great about Auburn.”
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