Cutting property taxes, dedicating $100 million to housing construction and streamlining local and state regulations are among the forefront ideas Maine’s three gubernatorial candidates have to solve the state’s housing crisis.
The candidates, Bobby Charles, Rick Bennett and Hannah Pingree, presented their plans for reducing housing prices and encouraging development during the Maine Real Estate and Development Association’s fall conference on Wednesday.
The discussion was organized by the Portland-based nonprofit, which advocates for responsible real estate development, and came less than two months before Mainers will elect their next governor. It also followed years of local and state leaders highlighting how Maine’s housing stock doesn’t meet current or future needs and the homes that are available are often more expensive than what residents can afford.
Each candidate has made the state’s housing shortage a central topic of their campaign and all agreed high asking prices, limited availability and sluggish construction are the central issues that must be solved.
However, each nominee has slightly different proposals for how they would attack the issue if elected. Here’s what they said.
Bobby Charles, Republican
Charles began his speech by noting the median cost of a Maine home has risen to $427,000, which means the owner needs an annual income of $102,000 to afford it. But, the state’s median household income rests at $74,000, he said.
“That’s a disaster,” Charles said.
Charles believes state legislators have been “over-regulatory, over-administrative, over-permitting and overreaching” with their regulatory requirements, which stymied housing production. To fix this, he wants to analyze existing state regulations, find which ones are holding private development back and cut them.
“Government isn’t the solution to the problem, they are the problem,” Charles said.
To ease the financial strain on residents, Charles also promised to lower income taxes, property taxes and reduce energy costs by 40%. Doing so, he said, would put more money in Mainers’ pockets and create “explosive growth” across the state.
Rick Bennett, Independent
Bennett first highlighted that a traditional 20% down payment on the average home in Maine has risen to $80,000 or more, which many families don’t have.
To help young families overcome high housing prices, he proposed offering down payment assistance to first-time homebuyers as well as mortgage support to put monthly fees within reach for more Mainers.
“Too many Mainers are buying their first home in their 40s,” Bennett said. “That’s not a housing market. That’s a flashing warning light.”
While Maine needs more housing of all kinds, Bennett said Maine also has the opportunity to revive and support local manufactured housing efforts, which would help rapidly produce needed housing.
Additionally, Bennett noted the cost to build housing rises over time, and progress is often slowed by the state needing to approve necessary permits. To combat this, he promised to perform an audit to find where viable projects are stalling, and ensure applications are answered by a deadline.
“I will strip out the overlapping reviews, duplicate questions, the reconsideration of issues that were already resolved and coordinate agencies so projects stop getting bounced from desk to desk,” Bennett said.
Hannah Pingree, Democrat
Democratic nominee Hannah Pingree launched her speech by promising to devote $100 million in state funding annually to both finance the construction of new housing developments through tax credits or subsidies and preserve existing affordable homes across Maine.
“This issue of housing, if we can’t solve it, nothing else works,” Pingree said. “Young people are making decisions about whether they’re going to stay in the state and whether they can ever afford housing.”
Roughly 20% of that funding could also be devoted to infrastructure improvements communities need to handle an influx of additional units, Pingree said.
For developers, Pingree acknowledged that cumbersome state and local requirements often act as barriers to new construction. To help correct this, she proposed enacting a 90-day deadline on state permits, such as Department of Environmental Protection approvals.
Rather than leaving municipalities to regulate new projects, Pingree believes there’s an opportunity for the state to encourage regions to work together on the challenge of attracting new housing local employers needs.
Finally, Pingree emphasized her plan to end veteran homelessness within her first year in office.
“We have less than 200 homeless veterans in our state,” Pingree said. “It should be unacceptable to any of us that we have homeless veterans.”