Testify in Support of Governor's Budget Change Package- 5/18, 2 pm
$80 Million Housing Development
The Appropriations and Financial affairs committee will have a public hearing on the Budget Change Packet that provides $80 million to Maine Housing for the following programs to build housing: $35M for Rural Rental Housing; $35M for LIHTC; $10M for Innovative approaches.
See MAHC's draft testimony here. Submit written testimony here.
Talking points:
- Maine is decades behind investing in housing and compared to other New England states has invested far less of it’s Federal ARPA funding in building housing.
- Maine is short more than 20,000 homes for low-income people. As a result, Maine has reached record levels of people living outside, Maine is #2 in the nation for the lowest rental vacancy rate, evictions are increasing, there are 15,000 Maine people on wait lists for housing vouchers, and Bangor area seniors are on a 7 plus year wait list for affordable housing.
- Maine Housing is currently out of funding to build more affordable housing in Maine. Now is the time to support LD226 and this historic investment that will quickly be put to use building homes for Maine people. Maine’s development and construction companies are ready to build affordable housing.
- A recent survey by MAHC of 34 developers, highlighted a pipeline of 2,400+ units of housing in the next 2-3 years. From the construction side, just 5 construction companies had the capacity in the next two years to build 1,100+ affordable homes. We know there are many more builders who have capacity that the survey didn’t capture. There are affordable housing projects across Maine that are ready to begin construction, in Cumberland, in Bangor, in Belfast, and many other towns - if this funding is made available.
- Maine needs to be building at least 1,000 new units of affordable housing a year for Maine’s housing supply to begin to meet the current demand. Maine hasn’t done that since the 1970s. The number one barrier to addressing Maine's housing crisis is a lack of funding to build affordable housing. The policy solution is to invest in building affordable housing.
|
|
