Do you really not think that CMP also benefits from the rate hikes? They collect more supplier fees when the rates go up. They lobby for more rate hikes every year. Their profits are at a record high. This isn't a not for profit electricity company, although one is going to be on the ballot!

Their Wikipedia page is quite a trip. Looks like not paying the bills is part of the business model.

One of my new neighbors works for MaineHousing - they paid 750K for a sprawling three bedroom house, which the last owners bought for 400K a few years earlier. It's kind of funny to imagine this guy - with his fleet of Mercedes and Range Rovers out front - setting up in one of his spare rooms to write papers on affordable housing.

It also explains why this outlook report seems so out of touch, repeatedly using establishment reasoning to explain away the rapidly increasing costs of living. According to MaineHousing, high energy costs are a result of the Russian war, high rental costs are a result of inflationary pressures on landlords, increased evictions are due to landlords removing tenants from units to renovate them, and increased homelessness is due to a better way of counting the unsheltered.

By that logic, I'm sure if you asked their thoughts on the rising price of eggs, they'd tell you the high prices are due to the avian flu, or whatever the news said that day. Greed is hardly acknowledged in this report, despite being proven by data to be a major contributor to price increases across the board.

It sounds like you're upset that picking up extra work to supplement your welfare income could get you kicked off the program. This isn't an issue exclusive to Maine. In this country, the very lowest and very highest incomes are subsidized by government welfare. You feel trapped, but by stepping out and earning a bit more, you will enter the "middle class" whereupon you are removed from the government teet and thrown to the wolves.

A welfare check may not seem like much, but when you consider how much cost of living expenses have risen, the housing, healthcare, energy and food subsidies often leave recipients better off than their neighbors in entry level jobs. And all you have to do is sign up. There's no waking up early or dealing with disgruntled bosses, just collecting a check and chasing your creative, self-made moonshot.

Although I won't comment on the flawed data used to compile this map, the Federal Reserve, using a much higher quality data set, determined that housing is in a crisis of demand more than supply. While under-building over the last decade+ did contribute to the quick jump in housing prices, it is just one of the contributing factors.

Arguably much more important was the massive drop in interest rates and the willingness of the FED to purchase unlimited mortgage-backed-securities from the issuing banks. This gap between interest rates and inflation rates spawned a massive rush of capital into real estate as an investment, from the acquisition of investment properties to the purchase of second, third and fourth homes, all too common across this state.

If I was to change one thing to most help with housing affordability, zoning wouldn't even be near the top of the list. I would remove some of the tax advantages which are unique to real estate as an investment class. After all, the housing market has actually been hot since the Tax and Jobs act of 2017 introduced a host of tax benefits. The Fed simply poured gasoline on the fire. Unlimited 1031 exchange, cost segregation, pass through deductions, all of this should go long before it expires in 2026.

Unfortunately, it is human nature to seek simple solutions to complex problems, and anyone who believes we can simply build our way out of the housing problem absent any systematic change is subscribing to a fallacy.

Someone in government deserves a raise for getting these young couples to uproot their lives and pay above asking for places in Chesterville and Limerick. I'm not too sure what there is to do there, I thought the isolation was part of the appeal. A lot of the new residents in my area are making connections by joining local government and boards of directors, although some locals find them overbearing, and this can be financially prohibitive as it is almost always required to make a large donation beforehand. It's always a good idea to connect with your community via outreach, be it volunteering at a soup kitchen or helping your elderly neighbors shovel snow.