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Shake-Spear4666 OP t1_j59qvcd wrote

Quote from the article:

MaineHousing says a decade of not building enough homes and apartments only made the homeless crisis worse.

"And that's how we're going to get out of this long-term, is to just keep building more," Brennan said.

He says we'll need at least 1,000 apartments built each year over the next 10 years, and hundreds of new homes, to meet the housing need in Maine.”

                      Fuck.
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steelymouthtrout t1_j5a15lt wrote

And once all that housing is built who's to say that it's going to actually go to any locals and not get snapped up by investors who will turn it into short-term rentals again? Problem isn't lack of inventory the problem is folks hoarding real estate and Airbnb.

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DidDunMegasploded t1_j5a914r wrote

I think there are numerous reasons at play. Shitty OOS investors who jack up rent prices, lack of available houses, shitty NIMBYs...

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Cougardoodle t1_j5achqb wrote

Exactly!

There was an effort two years ago to drain a piece of wetlands near my place, put in housing. I was definitely willing to hear them out when I pictured an apartment building or even a mobile park... really anything, y'know, useful.

Instead the plan was summer cottages for tourists.

I didn't even have to get involved, another furious neighbor drove a stake through the heart of that bullshit.

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GaryHart2024 t1_j5b78ym wrote

I doubt that ~10K apartments wouldn't rapidly lead to saturation of short-term rentals.

We do lack inventory. 10K apartments aren't on AirBnB. It strains credulity to believe as much. And hoarding real-estate doesn't seem likely if you can make money renting what you have.

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RealMainer t1_j5a6xw0 wrote

Came here to say this. Building 1,000 apartments in ten years is not going to solve the problem. Even if those homes are only for low income households, not many will go to the homeless. They will be snapped up by single mothers and immigrants as quick as they are built. And I am not saying they shouldn't be, but the point is, 1,000 stretched out over 10 years is not near enough to meet demand.

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[deleted] t1_j5aq3vo wrote

[deleted]

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RealMainer t1_j5ayx5a wrote

Nobody said it was terrible. In fact I made a point to say, "And I am not saying they shouldn't be." But go on and keep trying to create drama.

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78FANGIRL t1_j5bhw8s wrote

The people on this sub read only what they want.

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GaryHart2024 t1_j5b7giq wrote

I believe you misread that. They said 1,000 per year, for 10 years. That's 10,000 apartments, and they're saying that's a minimum (in addition to single-family home construction).

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RealMainer t1_j5c7f2m wrote

I did indeed misread that.

That's much better. Could still be better, but much better than 1000 every ten years.

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PhiloBlackCardinal t1_j5bv6og wrote

>Building 1,000 apartments in ten years is not going to solve the problem.

Let's be conservative and say each apartment hosts 60 housing units on average. That results in 60,000 apartment units. 44,000 people moved to Maine between 2010 and 2021. The average family size in Maine is 2.87 people. Assuming each family needs one unit, dividing 44,000 by 2.87 leads us to 15,331 units being used. That's around 45,000 units left.

So... yeah, building apartments would be more than enough to solve the problem lmfao. Godforbid they might attract jobs and industry to the state as well!

Also, there were only 900 immigrants to Maine in 2021. Good way to bring the race card into this.

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RealMainer t1_j5c73dl wrote

> Let's be conservative and say each apartment hosts 60 housing units on average.

Are you crazy? The average apartment building in Maine has maybe six apartments at most, and the apartments Maine housing built a decade ago had two apartments each, basically duplexes.

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PhiloBlackCardinal t1_j5cr9j6 wrote

And yet no mention of your race baiting which you brought into this. Very interesting

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RealMainer t1_j5ohoum wrote

> race baiting

You are the only one who brought up race. It says a lot about you that that's the first thing you thought of after reading my comment.

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PhiloBlackCardinal t1_j5p0vr9 wrote

You claimed "all new housing goes to immigrants" despite only 900 immigrants moving to Maine in 2021. Stop lindy hopping around the point and explain your race baiting.

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RealMainer t1_j5pb282 wrote

You do realize that all immigrants are not of a single race right? Maybe in your head you are imagining some racist stereotype of an immigrant but that’s on you bub, not me.

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PhiloBlackCardinal t1_j5pc7i4 wrote

So, it's racist to note that most immigrants are people of color? Lmfao, what's next, is it racist to point out that you're white? Give me a break.

And where did I say they were "Of a single race?" I said you're race baiting, i.e., blaming problems white people created on nonwhite people. Which is exactly what you meant with that comment.

According to PEW research center, 68% of documented immigrants are Asian or Hispanic. If you add undocumented immigrants, that balloons to about 90% Hispanic or Asian (With around 7% being Hispanic), and only around 5% white.

Again, where are you going with this? Does 900 migrants moving to Maine each year create a housing crisis? Or does the lack of affordable/government subsidized housing cost it?

Knowing you, you'll resort back to "Fox News brown people bad keep Maine White"

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RealMainer t1_j5pftan wrote

I can hear your brain overheating as you type, trying to crank out some way to justify your obvious racism. It’s funny because I believe you believe you’re not racist but you are undeniably having racist thoughts. And all in an attempt to prove someone else is racist. What a joke. Maybe think a little more next time before you automatically regurgitate some white knight bullshit on the internet. You only expose your own racism by doing so.

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PhiloBlackCardinal t1_j5z8pus wrote

Noting that most migrants are brown is racist? Lmao, especially as I’m brown this comes off as desperate. Keep crying into your LePage body pillow

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RealMainer t1_j63svlr wrote

First of all you're as white as snow, so stfu. Second of all, don't come into a thread where someone is accusing another person of being racist and get mad when the person being accused defends himself. Jesus Christ cry me a river.

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PhiloBlackCardinal t1_j64x4lp wrote

>Jesus Christ cry me a river

ironic when you're the one writing novels weeping on a week old thread

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RealMainer t1_j65yv0w wrote

I don't live on reddit, it just happens to be the first time I logged in since posting.

And who started crying first? Exactly.

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PhiloBlackCardinal t1_j66b54s wrote

I just told you I'm not reading anything you're saying lmfao, and yet you're still replying. Desperate ass LePage bootlicking mf

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RealMainer t1_j68prwi wrote

I think you may be short a few brain cells. But no really, I totally believe you are not desperately pressing refresh over and over on your phone waiting for my reply lol. Also not sure why you think I like lepage when I have several anti lepage posts in my post history. But you’re not reading this after all, so no wonder you sound so ignorant. I tried to give you a free education but I should have taught you how to read first!

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PhiloBlackCardinal t1_j69ty9y wrote

Holy shit, you're still going on?? My guy you need to get a hobby, you're way too latched to this. Typical conservative no life moment

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RealMainer t1_j69vqx0 wrote

Are you still pretending to not read my comments yet still responding? So sad.

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PhiloBlackCardinal t1_j6aifc2 wrote

Dude youre latched as fuck. Once again, I’m not reading the manic ramblings of some freak with a LePage body pillow soaked in cum.

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RealMainer t1_j63y6ds wrote

> According to PEW research center, 68% of documented immigrants are Asian or Hispanic. If you add undocumented immigrants, that balloons to about 90% Hispanic or Asian (With around 7% being Hispanic), and only around 5% white.

You can't add undocumented immigrants into your stat about documented immigrants and then expect the stat to go up to 90% dummy. That's not how stats work. If the stats on documented immigrants are 68% Hispanic/Asian as you say, then that means the other 32% is something else. After all, it's DOCUMENTED.

Adding the number of undocumented immigrants, which we don't have numbers for because they are UNDOCUMENTED does not change the stats of documented immigrants. Therefore if you say 34% of documented immigrants are Asian and 34% of immigrants are Hispanic, then the remaining 32% are white or black. It evens out quite nicely actually. You can't say the majority of immigrants are brown anymore, can you, because Asian, white and black people are not referred to as brown by anyone except the most ignorant of people.

As far as undocumented, there is no way to know the exact numbers, but it's probably very similar, or if anything more white and Asian immigrants because white and Asian immigrants can get into the country easier via visas and then just never leave, as opposed to people south of the boarder who have to take much riskier chances to get in illegally.

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iceflame1211 t1_j5ylgcp wrote

he clearly said "and I am not saying they shouldn't be" after pointing out the fact that yes, a lot of affordable housing does indeed go to immigrants and single mothers.. it also goes to firemen, waiters, veterans, disabled, and elderly/retired people.

That user said absolutely nothing derogatory about immigrants despite a few closed-minded commenters like yourself trying to make it seem that way.

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PhiloBlackCardinal t1_j5yustg wrote

He’s literally blaming Maine’s housing shortages on migrants despite Maine receiving a grand total of 900 migrants per year. If you don’t think it’s racist to immediately blame minorities for problems then you’re probably a typical mindless LePage drone too. Go move to Texas or something.

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iceflame1211 t1_j5ywi1d wrote

You say "he's literally blaming Maine's housing shortages on migrants". He didn't say that... at all, anywhere.

Pointing out that immigrants and single mothers can move into affordable housing is not blaming the housing shortage on migrants. You're making insane conclusions based on an incompetent interpretation of one sentence, focusing on the migrant portion of his comment more than single mothers likely because of your own personal bias.

I'm not sure why you're interpreting what he said the way you are. He's not wrong in saying migrants move into affordable housing. They do. As he pointed out, so do single mothers. As I pointed out, so do vets, elderly, etc.

You're the one that's somehow interpreting these facts as migrants being the cause of Maine's housing shortage. That's not what he's saying. That's not what I'm saying. Your interpretation of our words are woefully incorrect; you are wrong.

He's tried to respectfully explain this several times to no avail. I'm trying to clarify his words for you too, but instead of referring to anything he actually said or have intelligent debate, you're just being rude.

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PhiloBlackCardinal t1_j5z8epc wrote

Not reading your long ass explanation as to why immediately blaming brown people for this nation’s issues isn’t racism. Especially when you’re trying to justify blaming 900 new migrants a year as destroying this state’s housing market. Sorry LePage fanboy. You’ll never see another far right governor again here.

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iceflame1211 t1_j5zayyx wrote

I thought your reading comprehension seriously needed work, but if you refuse to read anything from people trying to help you understand the things you very obviously don't, I guess that's a separate issue.

I'm not sure where you're getting that I'm a LePage fanboy either? I'm most certainly not, and quite glad he didn't become governor... but that has ~absolutely~ nothing to do with this topic and probably ties back into your abysmally low reading comprehension skills. Similar to how you can't point out where the other user blamed brown people for the housing crisis- You can't, because he didn't.

The user said that single mothers and migrants will move into affordable housing. This is a fact that is true in Maine; these two groups indeed do make up a portion of the tenants that move into affordable housing. If the user said veterans and elderly people, perhaps you wouldn't be accusing them of "blaming brown people" as you put it. Competent people can recognize he wasn't blaming anyone, in addition he tried to clarify this and explain several times that he was simply pointing out that affordable housing is immediately snapped up upon creation. You decided to be a douche to him, like you are to me.

I can explain it to you but I can't comprehend it for you. Clearly the words people say have no basis in your reality, so you do you buddy, I'm done.

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PhiloBlackCardinal t1_j5zb80w wrote

Jesus Christ you’re still going? The fact you feel the need to write a thesis on why you’re not racist says a lot about you

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Trilliam_West t1_j5a2gl0 wrote

So that's not happening.

Too many people are perfectly okay with driving by homeless people on their way to town meetings where they will deride anything that would increase housing.

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Miserable_Bridge6032 t1_j5az5z1 wrote

Thats the thing, it will happen, but not for the homeless, homes and apartments will be built to attract people to stay and move because the working population is also aging out I think, most people leave maine, even if they eventually try to come back, most people cant even come back even if they want to rn because the housing is so ridiculous even in comparison to other places that seem crazy. It wont be to save the homeless but to save the economy really, imo.

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Trilliam_West t1_j5d5247 wrote

I think the homeless rate reduction will ride the coat tails of what you mentioned, assuming we produce enough new housing. If we produce enough housing, landlords will be more willing to work with the homeless (and other distressed communities) in order to fill vacant units. Right now, landlords can be very particular about tenants since they have so many interested renters.

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Automatic_Virus_4279 t1_j5c1bix wrote

Also; too many people are perfectly okay with living on the streets. There’s many who find it “easier”, I’m not being rude here either. I’ve heard this directly from the source multiple times.

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meowmix778 t1_j5fgybj wrote

I think it's because so many delude themselves into thinking either it's their fault oh well or they believe in this magical voluntarily homeless person who's out there having a good life.

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dedoubt t1_j5a7kqc wrote

>not building enough homes and apartments only made the homeless crisis worse.

I'm sure that's part of it but from the perspective of someone who has had unstable housing for years, lived with friends/relatives/in my car/dilapidated trailers & cabins just to have shelter, the real issue is that rent prices are fucking out of control. I simply could not afford to pay rent in most places, and definitely couldn't afford to pay rent plus save money for first/last/deposit to move elsewhere. Edit- meant to say that I technically have stable housing now because I got a small inheritance after my sister died, so I was able to buy some off grid land with a decrepit trailer on it, but it's going to take a lot of work to make it livable in winters, so I'm still shuttling around to various places. (Planning to build a cabin, but that'll take time.)

One place I rented in 2018 increased rent from $600 to $900 on the shitty apartments in the building in one year, increasing every time a tenant moved out. Last I checked, those apartments were $1200+. The building didn't magically become less shitty over the course of a few years, they badly paint the place occasionally, but everything is old, paint peeling and barely functional.

Having new places built wouldn't have helped me, because new buildings generally charge even more for rent.

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dirtroad207 t1_j5aa8up wrote

Building new housing doesn’t help now. It helps 15 years from now. If there was adequate construction 15 years ago rent wouldn’t be as crazy as it is today.

If we don’t build more now then the housing situation is going to go full San Francisco or Boston in ten years.

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dedoubt t1_j5ak2rp wrote

>Building new housing doesn’t help now. It helps 15 years from now. If there was adequate construction 15 years ago rent wouldn’t be as crazy as it is today.

I totally get that, but in addition to building more housing, stopping the rent prices hikes would help immediately. There is no reason that the apartment I used to rent 5 years ago for $600 should be $1200+ now, except that property management places can get more profit.

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redwall_hp t1_j5b4l4v wrote

And, like anything, rent prices are a function of the demand and the supply. Housing is artificially scarce and often employs protectionist policies to inflate the price so it can be used as an investment vehicle for rentiers.

That's why you have cities like San Francisco with moratoriums on apartment construction or questionable zoning laws that promote suburbanization: the goal is to drive up prices and prevent competition from pushing them down.

The demand for housing is inelastic, so the supply is the main driver of the cost, since the demand side can't drive it down by not buying.

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dirtroad207 t1_j5bmrx3 wrote

Yes. I prefer a government solution that creates nice public housing. But there are two important factors when doing government housing:

  1. No means testing. You need mixed income households so that it doesn’t create permanently impoverished neighborhoods. You also need buy in from the the middle class so that people want to keep the programs running.

  2. It can’t be self funded. In the past housing programs in the US were set up to be self funded and had very little margin for vacancy. Basically as soon as they weren’t at max capacity they had no budget for essentials like trash removal and basic maintenance. This means that sometimes the government eats a loss. That loss is always going to be cheaper than the long term cost of caring for unhoused people.

Creating this kind of housing will flood the market with housing thereby driving down demand. It will also function as a price anchor.

This is something that requires federal funding. It won’t ever happen in the US.

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IamSauerKraut t1_j5afceq wrote

If you build it, they will move north from Boston and NYC.

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respaaaaaj t1_j5acnhc wrote

The best way to bring down rent prices is to build more housing

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dedoubt t1_j5ajr7w wrote

>The best way to bring down rent prices is to build more housing

That will help in the future. In the present what would help is somebody stopping the ever increasing rental prices, right now.

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GaryHart2024 t1_j5b7lge wrote

More units stalls increases. There's pretty decent research on this.

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respaaaaaj t1_j5b6gxm wrote

The issue with that is that short term measures to bring down on existing housing costs (rent control, limiting short term rentals second homes etc) discourages construction and frequently leads to landlords going condo potential driving rent up or at least availability down while also preventing the long term cost reduction that more construction brings.

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SabbathBoiseSabbath t1_j5b72tm wrote

So while places build new housing for prices to maybe fall 10 or 20 years from now, eff the people that need relief right now?

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respaaaaaj t1_j5b81la wrote

Yes government policy needs to balance short and long term interests, but the biggest issue is that attempts at short term reductions in costs of housing frequently backfire and either don't help short term and hurt long term or just straight up hurt both. This shit should have been addressed 5 to 10 years ago, but the best that can realistically be done is start on it now. (And it doesn't take 10 to 20 years for newly built housing to impact housing, nor does it take 10 to 20 years to build new housing).

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SabbathBoiseSabbath t1_j5b9yy4 wrote

Government (at any level) really doesn't do long term planning at all. In fact, I can't think of a single policy or program that is long term focused, other than maybe public lands conservation.

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respaaaaaj t1_j5bawbi wrote

I guess that would depend on what you consider long term, because things like zoning, environmental protections (of any kind), fishery and wildlife management, infrastructure, tax credits aimed at promoting particular kinds of buildings products vehicles home upgrades (heat pumps extra insulation windows that retain more heat) etc are all what I'd call long term just off the top of my head.

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SabbathBoiseSabbath t1_j5bdsyh wrote

Yeah, this is true. My previous comment was certainly too lazy and lacked nuance.

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respaaaaaj t1_j5be8q0 wrote

You are right that outside of emergency relief there aren't many short term actions taken by governments in regards to housing, because all of the short term options that governments have tried have risks of backfiring both short and long term.

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New-Work-139 t1_j59rzzm wrote

I’ve been saying this for a while. Development is the only solution and for that you need builders. Things like (severe) rent control are not exactly encouraging that to take place.

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maineac t1_j5cq96p wrote

The issue is that they have basically dismantled mental health in this state. All the places that the mentally ill were housed have been systematically shut down or reduced to where they no longer can take care of the people that need it. There are thousands that were in mental health facilities that no longer have anywhere to go and this is increasing because they are no longer helping anyone.

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