PORTLAND — New polling from the Maine Affordable Housing Coalition shows 80% of Mainers say the state doesn’t have enough homes the average person can afford to rent or buy.
It’s a major problem awaiting the next governor.
Two of the three people running for that post shared their potential solutions in Portland on Wednesday.
Former Democratic House Speaker Hannah Pingree and state Sen. Rick Bennett, an independent, laid out their plans before a crowd of housing specialists, lawmakers and economic development experts.
Laura Mitchell, executive director of the coalition, said the poll showed that housing and homelessness “is the top challenge that Maine voters have identified.”
“Above healthcare costs, inflation, above taxes,” she said.
Bennett said if he’s elected, he would immediately conduct an audit to see what factors are slowing down production. He also cited a current state program with 2,000 people on a waiting list for help to fix up their homes.
And he said he wants to offer downpayment assistance for first time homebuyers and offer direct mortgage support for those struggling to stay in their homes.
When it comes to production, Bennett offered an all of the above solution that includes mobile homes, manufactured homes and 3D printed homes.
“We need to jumpstart our factory-built housing industry as part of the supply solution,” he said.
And while some of his ideas will require state funding and state borrowing, he’s looking for ways to make it easier for the private sector to build more homes, more quickly.
“We cannot afford to subsidize our way to 80,000 houses, that is impossible,” he said.
Pingree is the former head of the Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future, the office that produced the report indicating that the state needs 80,000 more homes by 2030.
She is proposing to direct $100 million from the state budget to go to housing programs and requiring state agencies to make decisions on permits within 90 days.
“The single most important thing we can do is focus on housing as the top priority,” she said. “I think that nothing else works if we don’t have the housing we need.”
She also pledged to end veteran homelessness in her first year, noting that existing programs are in place and that there are a relatively small number of homeless veterans. She pegged the number at 150.
She said the state needs to ensure that it has a trained workforce to produce more housing and that it will be important for the new governor to set a tone that housing is a critical economic need.
“I do think we need to keep changing hearts and minds,” she said. “There are communities and people who keep saying no to housing but there is a growing body of people saying ‘hey I want my kid to be able to afford to come home to the town they grew up in.’”
Republican Bobby Charles did not attend the forum. His spokesman cited a scheduling conflict.
According to the campaign, Charles proposes to remove “unnecessary regulatory obstacles” and to cut taxes and spending to help raise the median income of Mainers.
He also wants a renewed emphasis on training those who work in the trades and lowering energy costs.
“This is not a problem that government can solve just by throwing money at it,” he wrote. “We have to grow our way out of this, and for eight years we have been moving in the wrong direction.”