Rural counties will struggle to meet Maine’s ‘aggressive’ housing goals

Two of Maine’s most rural counties need to exponentially increase their housing production to meet state goals, something that officials say would be virtually impossible under the current economic circumstances.
A state report updated this week calls for a 1,283 percent increase in housing permits in Washington County by 2030. The increase would be 333 percent in Aroostook County. Those assumptions underlie the aggressive statewide goals outlined in a report last year saying Maine needs at least 76,000 new units to meet current and future demand.
While local officials said it’s good to quantify need, some think these goals are unrealistic, and will be impossible to meet under migration patterns that have historically seen people leave Maine’s rural counties. There is also an acute skilled labor shortage hitting these areas hard.
“When I read the report, I just kind of shook my head,” Michael Ellis, city manager of Calais, said. “I mean, it’s a great goal … but to achieve those numbers, there’s going to have to be a lot of things that are going to change.”
In the wake of LD 2003, a landmark housing law that requires municipalities to adopt standards around affordable housing, rural hubs have already made housing development far more straightforward, Tyler Brown, Presque Isle’s city manager, said. In Calais, commercial areas have been rezoned to allow housing, and old buildings were turned into multi-unit residences.
Despite that progress, Aroostook is only permitting an average of 90 new homes a year, and Washington County is only permitting 60, according to this week’s report. That is because of high building costs, the region’s reliance on smaller developers to build new housing and a shortage of people to do the construction work.
One of those contractors, Christopher Page, who owns Middle River Builders of Marshfield, said he is closing his business due to the labor shortage despite a waiting list that has routinely had 25 names or more. He only tackles a dozen projects a year, which are mostly custom-built homes for wealthier out-of-staters.
Most new housing in Maine’s rural counties is being built by small companies like his, he said. That makes upping production difficult, especially when it comes to the affordable rental housing for which there is a huge need among people who already live in the region.
“We don’t have the dollars to drive that,” Page said. “Affordable housing just is not super profitable to build, and there’s no entities to build them.”
In Aroostook, the Northern Maine Development Commission is taking this up directly, partnering with smaller construction companies who “haven’t really dipped their toes into the world of major development” and connecting them with funding sources, Kristen Henry, a development specialist, said. Henry was part of the advisory committee that put together the new report.
MaineHousing, the state housing authority, has also introduced programs that specifically aim to develop rural affordable housing and make headway towards the state’s lofty regional production goals, which are not mandates.
That rural rental housing program has recently resulted in 18 affordable units being constructed in Madison. Another program, funded through the Genesis Community Loan Fund, offers technical assistance to municipalities trying to ramp up affordable housing production.
Local officials are also pointing to increasing enrollment in Maine’s technical colleges as a way to shore up workforce shortages. The prevailing sentiment is that these goals are ambitious and “aggressive,” Brown said, but they are attainable if the construction climate in rural Maine transforms.
“It’s a lot of catching up we have to do, but I definitely feel it’s achievable,” Henry said.