Where is the Discussion of the Cause of the Affordable Housing Crisis?
What happened to the 79000 dollar questions?
When the leadership of the Boothbay Peninsula received the Town plan from New York consultants hired at the small fee of $79000.00, they narrowed the plan down from sixty-three priorities to three priorities.
Seventy-nine thousand divided by three is $26,333.33 per identified priority. If the leaders had decided to run with all sixty-three priorities it would have only been $1,253.96 per priority!
The three priorities that the Town leaders extracted are housing, regional collaboration, and the industrial park.
Here are my 7900000 cents on those priorities:
Housing
Washburn & Doughty is an established and successful shipbuilding company in East Boothbay. Building ships requires specialized skills. Its employees qualify as what the Boothbay Region Housing Trust calls “the professional workforce”, that special sector of the workforce that the Boothbay Region Housing Trust has announced it will serve. The Boothbay Region Housing Trust is inspired by the Island Housing Trust on Martha’s Vineyard, which introduced a new model for professional workforce housing - the boarding house.
I have noticed over the years that when the Party of the New, as I call our current leadership, tears something down, they replace it with something resembling a cubicle such as the dressing rooms at the renovated YMCA swimming pool. I so dreaded dealing with those little closets that replaced the old elegant dressing room space that I stopped swimming, except in the summer when swimming at Grimes Cove. Why torture me? It wasn’t just before, but also after swimming that one had to deal with those cells. I am spoiled by growing up in a home and community where people had a lot of space, even though we were not rich. I know everyone has not been so fortunate.
The latest innovation by the Party of the New is “apartments” in name only, that are nothing more than a room for rent, inspired by the Martha’s Vineyard Housing Trust workforce housing for hospital employees. As if the branding of Martha’s Vineyard normalized the concept of rooms for rent as a model of “affordable workforce housing”. Washburn and Doughty are developing their own worker boarding house, or rooms for rent with a shared kitchen, as an answer to skilled workforce housing.
For many living in a boarding house is a downgrade for the working classes, offering far less privacy and minimal personal space than we became accustomed to back in the last century. Washburn and Doughty are not to be blamed. Washburn and Doughty are looking for solutions as an established year-round business with a reason to be located in a coastal town. The sisters and daughters of Bruce Doughty, one of the shipyard’s founders, say “ The lack of housing is preventing workers from accepting positions with us, whether it’s short- or long-term. So we’re here looking for guidance in what kind of application we need.” Such a living environment is most likely temporary and transitional but will there be places for working people to transition toward if the Peninsula continues to pretend that Airbnb has nothing to do with the housing shortage?
This is how it is in Hancock County:
Vacation rentals became so lucrative that properties were quickly bought up for that purpose. That made even more of a dent on year-round housing. Next was investors from away, some of whom had never set foot in a Hancock County town, buying multiple properties for vacation rental use only. The aggregate of various types of vacation rentals has made it notoriously difficult to find a year-round home in many parts of Maine. And if you can find one? Good luck affording it. source
Would boarding houses have been suggested as affordable workforce housing ten years ago? Unlikely because Airbnb’s were not so prevalent then. There is no local discussion about housing and Airbnb. Other areas in Maine are instituting regulations, or at least discussing them, Like Bar Harbor, Portland, Kittery, and Hancock County.
Legislation:
This is not an exhaustive search as I am just getting started on this subject. There have been two State Legislative Acts proposed to deal with Airbnbs. One passed and the other died in the chamber.
The act that passed assures that the State of Maine will collect its taxes.
The state of Maine requires that short-term rental operators, homeowners, or anyone who collects rents on behalf of the owner, for a business or even casually, must register for and collect a 7% Vacation (Casual) Rental Tax. The rental does not have to be advertised in order for this tax to apply. There are some exemptions: source
In 2019 LD 209, sponsored by Representative Scott Strom, prohibited municipalities from prohibiting or restricting the use of short-term rentals except for narrowly tailored regulations to protect public health and safety. It did not pass and was not enacted- Thank God, but it did legislatively address Airbnb.
In March 2022 an emergency housing act was passed based on a congressional study on zoning and land use restrictions. In a preliminary scan, I did not find that the act considered the impact of Airbnb on the housing crisis or notice a mention of short-term rentals. (nor corporate buys of single-family homes- another looming concern) The act deregulates density restrictions. Kate Dufour, the Legislative Advocate at Maine Municipal Association, was a member of the housing study commission She says the act undermines local control. I tend to agree, that is the nature of centralization.
There is great local recognition of a need for “affordable workforce housing”, which seems a signifier for a higher income category than the term “affordable housing” implies. Ironically affordable housing, developed in the past for the lower end of the economy, offers a better quality of life than recent affordable workforce housing unless you are in your twenties and seeking a communal experience with your co-workers, like living in a dorm.
While the newly formed Boothbay Region Housing Trust heralds the Martha’s Vineyard Island Housing Trust as its inspiration, there is also an Island Housing Trust in Mount Desert Island Maine, unrelated to the Island Housing Trust on Martha’s Vineyard.
Mount Desert Island, Hancock County. Maine
In 2020, the median household income of Mount Desert households was $79,348. Mount Desert households made slightly more than Dyer Brook households ($78,750) and Hermon households ($79,194). However, 1.5% of Mount Desert families live in poverty. source
The Mount Desert Island Housing Trust provides modular single-family homes. The annual report is available online. On a quick scan, the annual report looks like an informational report not like a marketing brochure, which many annual reports look like these days. There are restrictions and rules to home ownership that do not seem appropriate such as requiring the occupant to live in them year round. It seems that the requirement could simply be that it would be the only residency but these types of restrictions are found in subsidized solutions to preserve the intentions of the subsidizing party.
Mount Desert Island Housing Trust has Affordability Covenants. The value of the property is linked to the median income for the area but the limit on the household income is a higher percentage of the median income than allowed by the Maine statutory definition of affordable housing. It only matters when it comes to the legally stated purpose. Does the non-profit purpose say “affordable”?
There are covenants about not improving the value of the property to ensure the properties stay affordable. The Island Housing Trust subsidizes the properties and that is why they can assert rules over the owners of the property. In my last post, I brought up the concept of subsidized workforce housing and observed that subsidized means regulated. The Mount Desert Island Housing Trust is an example of how regulations and subsidies go hand in hand.
On the website is a pretty picture of a suburban housing block with closely placed modular homes with woods behind the development. The picture does not show the backs of the homes and so it is fair to assume there are no backyard patios or gardens, as that would surely be featured. The narrative paints an ideal picture of what life might be like in a community living in such close proximity to each other.
Even though the picture is attractively done the houses look like they are “all made out of ticky tacky and all look just the same” At first I thought, its a good option for those struggling on the edge of homelessness, but then I realized that the targeted market high bar is the upper middle class.
These are some of the requirements for “affordable workforce housing” today from the Mount Desert Island Housing Trust website:
Eligible applicants should have a household income that does not exceed:
130% of the area median income (total of $98,500) for the single-family homes
100% of the area median income ($75,700) for the duplex units.
The median household income in the United States is $67,521 a year.
Still, the quality of housing beats the boarding house “apartments” for hospital workers on Martha’s Vineyard and there is no employer-landlord. Why did the Boothbay Housing Trust cite the Martha Vineyard Housing Trust as inspiration when there are affordable housing solutions in Maine that offer better quality solutions, overall?
A recent analysis from AirDNA,…, listed Southwest Harbor on Mount Desert Island as one of the top 10 places in the country to invest in a rental property. Hancock County towns could restrict vacation rentals to ease coastal housing crunch Bangor Daily News February 24, 2022
Top Ten Placement nationally in Airbnb Rentals creates the need for affordable workforce housing for the upper-middle class! Today Maine is rated as number eight among the top summer travel destinations in the world, on Airbnb- What does that say about the future of Maine?
We are becoming a society where every income group is controlled and segregated from other income groups, each with special regulatory rules applied. To buy affordable workforce housing one must commit to living there all year round. This is the long-term effect of compounded central management. A core reason for the housing affordability crisis is not being regulated causing municipalities to lose their year-round residencies. To solve the vanishing year-round population, regulations are created to enforce year-round residencies. The USA is no longer the land of the free, it is the land of the regulated.
Deborah Kale and Cindi Watson, founders of the Boothbay Region Housing Trust do not say why they are inspired by Martha’s Vineyard as if just the mention of Martha’s Vineyard should be enough to send tingles down the spines of …whom?
An article in the Vineyard Gazette titled Census Shows Vineyard Population Has Grown, Diversified reports unanticipated increases in year-round population, due to covid that have exacerbated the affordable housing problem. Martha’s Vineyard is not dealing with its affordable housing problem successfully.
The Culture of Denial
There is no mention of Airbnb in the Vineyard Gazette article as if the explosions with Airbnb have no relationship to the explosion in unattainable year-round housing. Typically, statistical reports list rental properties with no special category for short-term and long-term, while in a backhanded form of recognition of the value of year-round communities, year-round occupancy is mandated by “affordable workforce housing” homeownership programs. At least the homeowners do not have to go on vacation to experience what it is like to have one’s own private kitchen and bathroom, but they probably have to abide by strict rules pertaining to how long they can travel away from home.
Neither the Martha’s Vineyard Island Trust, the Mount Desert Island Trust, nor the Boothbay Region Housing Trust are concerned with those making below the poverty line. They can be sent to the homeless warehouse in Portland.
Ideally, BRHT would collaborate with Washburn and Doughty who reached out to the community publicly when the sisters said “they are looking for guidance”, Washburn and Doughty is a local business facing a workforce challenge due to housing affordability. BRGT’s nonprofit purpose is to create and preserve affordable housing.
But in their announcement to the world of the Housing Trust’s creation, Yale and Watson also talked of addressing the archaic code from 1986 which protects the working waterfront, including Washburn and Doughty.
In 2021, Yale and Watson said the following:
BRHT is focusing on granular workforce housing – one piece of a trinity of housing problems plaguing the peninsula. Not the other two – subsidized or senior housing, said BRHT’s Debrah Yale. Though each issue’s problems are about the same – high cost, low inventory and high demand – the Boothbay Region, like Martha’s Vineyard, can find a way for workers, teachers and other professionals to live here, said Yale and Watson. BRHT looks to Martha’s Vineyard’s housing model Boothbay Register May 2021 (comment added by author- There is more in the mix than three sectors- but the business in residence sector, which now includes remote workers, has long been unrecognized by Peninsula leadership)
In March of 2022, the emergency housing act passed that added a section to the Maine Statutes under Chapter 337: Subchapter 4: FAIR HOUSING that prohibits refusing to rent to any person because the person is on public assistance:
4. Receipt of public assistance. For any person furnishing rental premises or public accommodations to refuse to rent or impose different terms of tenancy to any individual who is a recipient of federal, state or local public assistance, including medical assistance and housing subsidies, primarily because of the individual's status as recipient.
I don’t know how that affects builders targeting “workforce housing”, since constructing houses is not the same as renting them, but BRHT promoted itself as discriminatory in the peer group it targets to serve.
Later Watson and Yale suggested copying Martha Vinyard’s The Community Investment Tax Credit (CITC) which would allow BRHT to match their own fundraising with public subsidies. There is a little bit of irony in the fact that Watson and Kale exclude serving those on subsidies and yet are seeking 50% subsidies for their own organization. The Massachusetts law states its purpose as to improve economic opportunities for low and moderate income households. Watson and Yale make it clear that they are interested in serving the needs of the professional workforce, only. In the age of the ever-advancing wealth divide, those two categories are merging, and then there is the other residences category.
CITC is designed to enable local residents and stakeholders to work with and through community development corporations (CDCs) to partner with nonprofit, public, and private entities to improve economic opportunities for low and moderate-income households and other residents in urban, rural, and suburban communities across the Commonwealth. source
Affordable housing is determined by the median income in an area, which would apply to the Boothbay Region Housing Trust since it is their non-profit purpose to create or preserve affordable housing. They cannot refuse a renter because they have a subsidized income. The workforce industries that BRHT is likely targeting are probably subsidized industries, which by proxy make the worker’s income subsidized. A centralized system eventually evolves toward everyone being subsidized. The philosophy and association with the Martha’s Vineyard Housing Trust whose medium income tops that of Mount Desert Island, place Watson and Yale among those seeking to gentrify the Peninsula turning it into an exclusive place for the wealthy with workforce housing that maybe a custodian can afford since custodians provide an essential service. That means they are trying to push the medium income of the Peninsula up and charge higher prices for affordable housing, so custodians have to be paid within the range of the median income.
1. Affordable housing. "Affordable housing" means a decent, safe and sanitary dwelling, apartment or other living accommodation for a household whose income does not exceed 120% of the median income for the area as defined by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development under the United States Housing Act of 1937, Public Law 75-412, 50 Stat. 888, Section 8, as amended.
Watson added that among the issues which have gone unaddressed are the general recommendations as illustrated in the regional economic master plan presented in February 2018, and the need to reduce density requirements from 10,000 square feet per residential use to 5,000 square feet. source.
The emergency housing act may have helped Yale and Watson in their goals of reducing density requirements but I have not thoroughly researched that yet. I can see I am delving into a work-intensive research project, supported only by subscriptions. On the one hand, I am creating an alternate conversation space for those like Andersen Design who have been excluded from the conversation because we are not in the targeted ”peer group”. As a result of being excluded and years of researching public economic development policy as an independent, I have conceptualized my own affordable business in a home plan for which I need to find a board to create the 501(3)(C0 that I am always talking about.
But the plan is not fully realized and the part that needs working on is linking it to affordable housing in a unique way. Doing this research project will advance that end. It will include locating and reading the congressional study that resulted in the emergency housing act. I wonder if Airbnb’s and corporate ownership of packages of single-family homes was in the study? I have so many unanswered questions and each one requires rigorous research, SO….
The Mount Desert Island Housing Trust model would work much better for Washburn and Doughty than the Martha Vineyard’s Island Housing Trust model, but ultimately anyone building a permanent year-round lifestyle will want to have a home that they can improve upon as they wish. Both models are transitory and so unsubsidized solutions are the real answer and that means reversing the direction toward centralization because subsidies and all the regulations that are attached to subsidies are inherent to centralized systems that evolve toward subsidizing, regulating, and controlling everything.
This is not the full 7900000 cents that I promised but I have just gotten started. We as a community need a deeper conversation about the housing crisis that includes everyone.