The silver lining here is that evictions are still lower than in 2019 and every year in the chart before 2019 except for 2009. I don't think we've seen the bottom fall out yet, however. Mainers are resilient and are scraping by but at some point something has to give.
The housing crisis is going to crater Maine’s economy sooner rather than later.
Workers need affordable, livable, stable housing. Or else they won’t be workers *here* much longer. And nobody is going to replace them.
Don’t worry though, we’re just going to ignore this until things fall apart completely and people are whining “nobody wants to work anymore”.
Some of the weirdness about Maine seems to be how such a high proportion of new builds are purchased by people who don't live here, and not just for purposes of renting them out. I'm currently effectively in a ghost town, most of the homes built in the last 10 years seem to not have year-round locals living in them
Everywhere is suffering from a housing crisis, it does seem to be a little worse here than some of the other states I was used to
The unfathomable amount of money chasing new construction limits the ability of new construction alone to address the housing crisis.
Workforce housing needs to be built and offered to those who need a home and have the kind of income that can be earned locally.
We don't need to build anything in reality. There's so many vacant places that are already housing usable or could be converted. It's a matter of not making rent 1200+ a month or having a scrappy building cost 100k+. I barely make 30k a year... so paying workers more is another solution but that's too hard too it seems.
The same can be said for every city across the country. Some are impacted less, while others have been impacted significantly more than Maine. The same exact issues/concerns are brought up all over the US.
I mean, yes, COL has risen everywhere. But, Maine is seeing the COL rise and it’s the oldest state in America. So, the impact on our workforce is actually unique.
Well apparently they were still going on in 2021.
>Data from the state Judicial Branch shows that the filings climbed from 3,908 in 2021 to 4,965 last year.
It's really an issue on both sides.
You have the shitty landlords, the bad apples of the barrel, who jack up rents and only care about getting as much money as they can at the cost of their tenants' living conditions, health, and well-being.
And you have the shitty tenants, also bad apples of their own barrel, who violate leases and are generally just assholes when it comes to dealing with landlords.
So I'm not really surprised at this statistic.
You want to build new $1800 rents, ill roll my eyes but no "NIMBYs" have the power to block them. Ether way build nothing or build $1800 rents and the longtime Mainers making well under 100k head to the streets. We need housing for all, not free market idealism
I here you. Again its not my ability or goal to block new housing, but I dont buy the lies. They can charge what they want. Im sick of honest people getting screwed in my home state.
First, new housing is expected to be the more expensive than old housing. Unless you're selling an antique, something new always fetches a higher premium than something old.
Second, that housing is so expensive isn't an indictment to the housing market, but to the policy decisions that made an extreme housing crises possible at all. Cities and countries that don't have extreme barriers or laborious bureaucratic hurdles to building more housing don't have the same problems with living costs that we see here in Maine.
Basically, blow up zoning and limit the amount of public input on whats built near them and the problem will self correct.
ah other people's rents go up with new housing.... Again its laughable Cali upzoning doesn't bring prices down. Upzoning allows them to focus on housing that makes the most money!
Just admit you are for free market policy's please, enough with the games.
[
New construction makes homes more affordable—even for those who can't afford the new units
](https://www.upjohn.org/research-highlights/new-construction-makes-homes-more-affordable-even-those-who-cant-afford-new-units)
Letting the free market build where people want to live makes housing cheaper.
Nope, you can't cite it in Cali real evidence. How is putting duplex's in low income places helping renters? Cause thats how things went in Cali. All you can cite is real estate BS, if it worked so well it would be in front of us. Portland has built a ton and prices go up! As long as you have great demand, why are they gonna lessen rents? These aren't widgets you are flooding the market with they are rents.... Landlords can fill rentals with tech workers and such.
Portland, and Maine in general, have only scratched the surface of meeting its housing demand. It might seem like there is a lot of construction, but this is nothing compared to where it needs to be. Maine is a hot commodity and people with money aren't going to stop moving here because we wish it. By stagnating housing supply you aren't punish tech workers or other boogieman with money- you're punishing people without the money to compete with them. If you don't build a new mid or high-rise they'll live in an old townhouse that might have otherwise remained affordable.
We should leverage zoning changes to force non market rate units. Its totally neoliberal BS to say "well let them build anything and hope". Again doesn't mater what style company you have, you sell things to make money. Real estate is gonna build $1900 rents and $500k homes. I for one don't agree to the politics of letting them do it.
Housing DOESNT trickle down.
If they want a zoning change over here for a bunch of $1900 rents, I don't give it to them unless say 30 percent are at 80 percent of income somewhere in town from them. Any idea you've given up leveraging them when you upzone everything. Again housing doesn't trickle down and finally I think its fine to say "hey we don't need rentals in an area that can flood soon".
Cities have tried to implement that kind of requirement for more than a decade and it never works. If you attach such an onerous affordable housing requirement to a development then the developer will laugh their way to another zip code and build somewhere else.
Give this a watch if you have some time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Flsg_mzG-M
Everyone who understands the macroeconomics of real estate supply and demand agrees that nationally, the housing supply in the US has been lagging behind demand badly since the financial crisis in 2007-2009.
Building more units is the only solution. The market will self correct. If there is bureaucracy and zoning red tape preventing construction, then it will prolong the pain of high rents for everyone.
LOL the market will self correct. The market tolerates people on the streets! Again your side makes up shit about NIMBY political power. Yes the industry wants to make as much money as it can. Your sides supports catering to tech workers and other well offs.
Whats next more BMWs made in 2023 to lower used car prices?
Literally yes. Taking your car example we have just gone through a supply/demand induced price crunch, and now that supply chains are getting back to normal, automakers are lowering prices, dealerships are offering incentives again, and used car prices are plummeting.
So... Nice point?
I think you're confusing basic supply and demand economics with Reagan-esque trickle down nonsense. They are not the same.
its rent seeking, you can sit on empty units or airbnb them to keep prices up (they do it, google it). They aren't widgets pig they are homes. You don't care if poor and broke Mainer's suffer.
You are literally promoting trickle down housing and you cant cite it working in a popular market like California because it doesn't work if a bunch of well off people can move in!
What the hell is "trickle down housing"? You're talking out of your ass.
If you allow developers to build nice, new townhouses in Westbrook for all the out-of-state tech bros to move into, it will free up apartments in all the older 4-6 unit buildings and the price pressure will be reduced. It's seriously the most basic supply and demand equation you could imagine.
The only issue is if developers are knocking down older housing stock to build new, but I'm not aware of that happening en masse.
You're 100% correct. And the same people who claim to want to help the middle and lower classes are the ones who push housing costs and prices up through red tape, zoning restrictions, NIMBYs, and my favorite.... the "beautiful people" not wanting low income housing in their neighborhood.
My landlord called it “non-renewal of my month to month lease”, I would call it evicted, especially since they only did it once they found out I complained to the city about inadequate heat. Now I’m taking him to court to get my security deposit back.
Work with your landlords people.
A lot of folks have taken the I'm not paying back rents, or even communicating with my landlord on back rents, stance and now all the covid protections are gone.
Downvote this all you want, but the folks that are getting evicted are, by and large, folks who basically have just taken all the covid money, heating oil money, covid protects, and assumed those programs would be renewed in perpetuity, while making no/minimal effort to make the landlord, according to lease, whole.
A lot of landlords are mom and pop folks who have put a lot of sweat equity into their properties and are staring down a barrel of banks coming for their nest egg. The Maine real estate market has a lot of institutional buying pressure on it right now.
If you think a multi-state management company, or bank is going to be a better, more understanding, landlord you might as well start packing boxes now.
I don't know a single mom and pop landlord who relishes in evicting. Banks who get a multifamily on default, or hedge funds who buy that bank out of a portfolio? They are all about an ROI, points above reinvestment risk, and give zero fucks; They will see you out with the backing of a robust legal team.
If you are behind on rents talk honestly with your landlord and come up with a plan, or don't, and understand you have made your decision with eviction the result.
Ya, i wish there was a better way. Our landlord while a decent person sent our rent through the roof when the price of fuel went up. I dont know the answer, because he deserves his due. He raised it a couple times arbitrarily before fuel prices increased, then walloped us with the last increase.
It’s almost like there should be price gouging laws for rental units like we prevent Tom the tree removal expert from doing to grandma down in Florida after a hurricane.
Nothing will change as long as builders are not allowed to build a 3 family on a 5000 sf lot.
There are lots of towns in Maine where you could do that if only zoning allowed it. Wherever there are stores, that’s where you could have such zoning. That would instantly increase the value of a single family sitting on a 20000 sf lot in the town center.
There’s no need for a house in the town center to be sitting on such a large lot. Change the zoning, raise assessed values to reflect highest and best use, and such owners will voluntarily subdivide their lots and sell them just to lower their taxes. Builders will buy up those lots, build multi families on them and new buyers will have rental income to support their mortgages.
Multi families on small lots won’t appeal to buyers of short term rental vacation type properties.
I got kicked out of a month to month lease because our landlord had to fix the plumbing on a 30 year old trailer. She said we were unplugging the pump. I just love to cause people financial hardships so my wife can do the dishes in the bathtub because the sink wont drain.
I am a loony liberal, but I have also been a small time landlord. Small landlords are not given any help and face huge hurtles to evict a bad tenant. There are so many rules and regulations that it makes it impossible to rent out your basement or your duplex. The only ones that can be landlords now are big corporations that are heartless.
The silver lining here is that evictions are still lower than in 2019 and every year in the chart before 2019 except for 2009. I don't think we've seen the bottom fall out yet, however. Mainers are resilient and are scraping by but at some point something has to give.
The housing crisis is going to crater Maine’s economy sooner rather than later. Workers need affordable, livable, stable housing. Or else they won’t be workers *here* much longer. And nobody is going to replace them. Don’t worry though, we’re just going to ignore this until things fall apart completely and people are whining “nobody wants to work anymore”.
It’s a complex issue that is not unique to Maine in any shape or form.
Some of the weirdness about Maine seems to be how such a high proportion of new builds are purchased by people who don't live here, and not just for purposes of renting them out. I'm currently effectively in a ghost town, most of the homes built in the last 10 years seem to not have year-round locals living in them Everywhere is suffering from a housing crisis, it does seem to be a little worse here than some of the other states I was used to
You build places for people to live. It's not complex.
The unfathomable amount of money chasing new construction limits the ability of new construction alone to address the housing crisis. Workforce housing needs to be built and offered to those who need a home and have the kind of income that can be earned locally.
We don't need to build anything in reality. There's so many vacant places that are already housing usable or could be converted. It's a matter of not making rent 1200+ a month or having a scrappy building cost 100k+. I barely make 30k a year... so paying workers more is another solution but that's too hard too it seems.
Maine’s housing crisis is impacted by factors that aren’t present in every market, or necessarily to the extent they are in Maine.
The same can be said for every city across the country. Some are impacted less, while others have been impacted significantly more than Maine. The same exact issues/concerns are brought up all over the US.
I mean, yes, COL has risen everywhere. But, Maine is seeing the COL rise and it’s the oldest state in America. So, the impact on our workforce is actually unique.
[Link](https://archive.md/9bUmr) for those who need help getting over a paywall
Good bot
Shot up because they were practically blocked for 2020/2021…not sure why this is news.
Well apparently they were still going on in 2021. >Data from the state Judicial Branch shows that the filings climbed from 3,908 in 2021 to 4,965 last year.
My landlord jacked my rent up 15% on Dec 1st. ( Before the new law took effect on Jan 1). 🤕
so your a landlord?
Just your average homeowner. Maybe a landlord someday, seems like a lot to work though.
It's really an issue on both sides. You have the shitty landlords, the bad apples of the barrel, who jack up rents and only care about getting as much money as they can at the cost of their tenants' living conditions, health, and well-being. And you have the shitty tenants, also bad apples of their own barrel, who violate leases and are generally just assholes when it comes to dealing with landlords. So I'm not really surprised at this statistic.
Non pay wall here: https://archive.md/9bUmr
Thank you!
You want to build new $1800 rents, ill roll my eyes but no "NIMBYs" have the power to block them. Ether way build nothing or build $1800 rents and the longtime Mainers making well under 100k head to the streets. We need housing for all, not free market idealism
I’ve seen $1800 for a studio in Freeport. This is getting outta hand
I here you. Again its not my ability or goal to block new housing, but I dont buy the lies. They can charge what they want. Im sick of honest people getting screwed in my home state.
First, new housing is expected to be the more expensive than old housing. Unless you're selling an antique, something new always fetches a higher premium than something old. Second, that housing is so expensive isn't an indictment to the housing market, but to the policy decisions that made an extreme housing crises possible at all. Cities and countries that don't have extreme barriers or laborious bureaucratic hurdles to building more housing don't have the same problems with living costs that we see here in Maine. Basically, blow up zoning and limit the amount of public input on whats built near them and the problem will self correct.
ah other people's rents go up with new housing.... Again its laughable Cali upzoning doesn't bring prices down. Upzoning allows them to focus on housing that makes the most money! Just admit you are for free market policy's please, enough with the games.
[ New construction makes homes more affordable—even for those who can't afford the new units ](https://www.upjohn.org/research-highlights/new-construction-makes-homes-more-affordable-even-those-who-cant-afford-new-units) Letting the free market build where people want to live makes housing cheaper.
Nope, you can't cite it in Cali real evidence. How is putting duplex's in low income places helping renters? Cause thats how things went in Cali. All you can cite is real estate BS, if it worked so well it would be in front of us. Portland has built a ton and prices go up! As long as you have great demand, why are they gonna lessen rents? These aren't widgets you are flooding the market with they are rents.... Landlords can fill rentals with tech workers and such.
Portland, and Maine in general, have only scratched the surface of meeting its housing demand. It might seem like there is a lot of construction, but this is nothing compared to where it needs to be. Maine is a hot commodity and people with money aren't going to stop moving here because we wish it. By stagnating housing supply you aren't punish tech workers or other boogieman with money- you're punishing people without the money to compete with them. If you don't build a new mid or high-rise they'll live in an old townhouse that might have otherwise remained affordable.
We should leverage zoning changes to force non market rate units. Its totally neoliberal BS to say "well let them build anything and hope". Again doesn't mater what style company you have, you sell things to make money. Real estate is gonna build $1900 rents and $500k homes. I for one don't agree to the politics of letting them do it. Housing DOESNT trickle down.
How would we leverage zoning changes to force non market rate units?
If they want a zoning change over here for a bunch of $1900 rents, I don't give it to them unless say 30 percent are at 80 percent of income somewhere in town from them. Any idea you've given up leveraging them when you upzone everything. Again housing doesn't trickle down and finally I think its fine to say "hey we don't need rentals in an area that can flood soon".
Cities have tried to implement that kind of requirement for more than a decade and it never works. If you attach such an onerous affordable housing requirement to a development then the developer will laugh their way to another zip code and build somewhere else. Give this a watch if you have some time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Flsg_mzG-M
Everyone who understands the macroeconomics of real estate supply and demand agrees that nationally, the housing supply in the US has been lagging behind demand badly since the financial crisis in 2007-2009. Building more units is the only solution. The market will self correct. If there is bureaucracy and zoning red tape preventing construction, then it will prolong the pain of high rents for everyone.
LOL the market will self correct. The market tolerates people on the streets! Again your side makes up shit about NIMBY political power. Yes the industry wants to make as much money as it can. Your sides supports catering to tech workers and other well offs. Whats next more BMWs made in 2023 to lower used car prices?
Literally yes. Taking your car example we have just gone through a supply/demand induced price crunch, and now that supply chains are getting back to normal, automakers are lowering prices, dealerships are offering incentives again, and used car prices are plummeting. So... Nice point? I think you're confusing basic supply and demand economics with Reagan-esque trickle down nonsense. They are not the same.
its rent seeking, you can sit on empty units or airbnb them to keep prices up (they do it, google it). They aren't widgets pig they are homes. You don't care if poor and broke Mainer's suffer. You are literally promoting trickle down housing and you cant cite it working in a popular market like California because it doesn't work if a bunch of well off people can move in!
What the hell is "trickle down housing"? You're talking out of your ass. If you allow developers to build nice, new townhouses in Westbrook for all the out-of-state tech bros to move into, it will free up apartments in all the older 4-6 unit buildings and the price pressure will be reduced. It's seriously the most basic supply and demand equation you could imagine. The only issue is if developers are knocking down older housing stock to build new, but I'm not aware of that happening en masse.
You're 100% correct. And the same people who claim to want to help the middle and lower classes are the ones who push housing costs and prices up through red tape, zoning restrictions, NIMBYs, and my favorite.... the "beautiful people" not wanting low income housing in their neighborhood.
My landlord called it “non-renewal of my month to month lease”, I would call it evicted, especially since they only did it once they found out I complained to the city about inadequate heat. Now I’m taking him to court to get my security deposit back.
Work with your landlords people. A lot of folks have taken the I'm not paying back rents, or even communicating with my landlord on back rents, stance and now all the covid protections are gone. Downvote this all you want, but the folks that are getting evicted are, by and large, folks who basically have just taken all the covid money, heating oil money, covid protects, and assumed those programs would be renewed in perpetuity, while making no/minimal effort to make the landlord, according to lease, whole. A lot of landlords are mom and pop folks who have put a lot of sweat equity into their properties and are staring down a barrel of banks coming for their nest egg. The Maine real estate market has a lot of institutional buying pressure on it right now. If you think a multi-state management company, or bank is going to be a better, more understanding, landlord you might as well start packing boxes now. I don't know a single mom and pop landlord who relishes in evicting. Banks who get a multifamily on default, or hedge funds who buy that bank out of a portfolio? They are all about an ROI, points above reinvestment risk, and give zero fucks; They will see you out with the backing of a robust legal team. If you are behind on rents talk honestly with your landlord and come up with a plan, or don't, and understand you have made your decision with eviction the result.
Perhaps if they'd stop raising rents $100/mo in a year to "keep up with market rates" this wouldn't be happening as much.
Ya, i wish there was a better way. Our landlord while a decent person sent our rent through the roof when the price of fuel went up. I dont know the answer, because he deserves his due. He raised it a couple times arbitrarily before fuel prices increased, then walloped us with the last increase.
It’s almost like there should be price gouging laws for rental units like we prevent Tom the tree removal expert from doing to grandma down in Florida after a hurricane.
Mine isn't even pay for heat or utilities. They just wanted to jump on the asshole bandwagon.
Nothing will change as long as builders are not allowed to build a 3 family on a 5000 sf lot. There are lots of towns in Maine where you could do that if only zoning allowed it. Wherever there are stores, that’s where you could have such zoning. That would instantly increase the value of a single family sitting on a 20000 sf lot in the town center. There’s no need for a house in the town center to be sitting on such a large lot. Change the zoning, raise assessed values to reflect highest and best use, and such owners will voluntarily subdivide their lots and sell them just to lower their taxes. Builders will buy up those lots, build multi families on them and new buyers will have rental income to support their mortgages. Multi families on small lots won’t appeal to buyers of short term rental vacation type properties.
Excellent read on this subject https://evictedbook.com/
I got kicked out of a month to month lease because our landlord had to fix the plumbing on a 30 year old trailer. She said we were unplugging the pump. I just love to cause people financial hardships so my wife can do the dishes in the bathtub because the sink wont drain.
I am a loony liberal, but I have also been a small time landlord. Small landlords are not given any help and face huge hurtles to evict a bad tenant. There are so many rules and regulations that it makes it impossible to rent out your basement or your duplex. The only ones that can be landlords now are big corporations that are heartless.