"It was just a few fireball nips..."

I don't give a shit if you don't have a lawn. Everyone is free to do what they want. If your front yard is just moss and pine needles, that's awesome. Low maintenance. I get it.

What I really don't like is the people like those in /r/fucklawns who make it their mission to shame other people for doing what they want with their own property.

Re: the town codes, the easiest way to avoid this is just to buy land outside of an incorporated town or city area, which OP would likely have to do anyway to get some decent acreage.

Once you're living in whatever township or other unincorporated area, you can largely do whatever you like as long as there isn't a state or federal law against it.

Lawns are easy as shit to maintain in Maine, especially if you use a water-retaining clover mix. Maine gets plenty of natural rain and even irrigation is easily supported by the plentiful ground and surface water resources.

Go bring your boring Reddit hivemind nonsense back where you found it.

Gotta boil hot dogs in the sap! Nothin' like it!

Yes, the ones that crunch are known as Italian parallel parking sensors.

There it is!

Yes, people actually believe building more quality housing units is bad for working class Mainers.

Watch out, I made a similar point in a housing cost discussion a few weeks ago and got accused of supporting "trickle down housing" lmao.

Could be! Who knows? I, for one, would be more than happy to have these huge birds hanging out in Maine full time.

Finding a mate would be easy if it stayed in Kamchatka where over 4,000 of these giant birds live, I'd think.

Vagrancy happens to albatross and frigate birds too, I believe. Only takes one bad storm to be blown off course.

It literally is.

https://www.npr.org/2021/12/21/1066201821/a-lost-eagle-from-asia-has-been-traveling-around-north-america-for-more-than-a-y

It's called vagrancy and it affects many species of sea birds. There's no reason for the eagle to be outside it's normal range where it can never hope to find a mate.

I feel sad for this lonely eagle.

It's lost!

Excuse me... I think you meant WACKY WAVING INFLATABLE ARM FLAILING TUBE MAN!!!

They could build humanity's first space elevator right there and grandma Gladys would still find a way to dementia her way on top of it.

If you even read my comment a few spots up this thread you'd already know my stance on that.

It doesn't matter if developers build higher end new stuff (which they largely will), because it still frees up older and less desirable supply which should be renting for a lot less than it is.

If you want the Old Port to look like it did in the 1970s, enact a bunch of restrictive rent control and lower income construction requirements and wait 20 years.

The Old Port is literally the charming hipster foodie destination it is because people with money want to live there...

It's a debate strategy. I'm picking an absurd extreme to make a point, which is that reality lies somewhere between my extreme and what the person I'm arguing with is saying.

We can't have a rational debate based solely on platitudes and ideologies. I am 100% sure that more housing fixes housing shortages.

So if we built 200,000 units of housing in Maine overnight, just for the sake of argument, your claim is that 200,000 people would appear out of nowhere and rents would continue to climb?

C'mon, man.

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.

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.

I wouldn't be so sure... I've seen DEA agents with dogs at airports within the last year. They're federal agents so the state laws on THC products don't matter.

"I'm not the traffic, you're the traffic!"

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.

Did he hide the money in that comically large hat?

I thought they were all in Florida.

The Netherlands is consistently ranked as one of the best places to live, by every measurable statistic.

I've lived there. The statistics are true. But fuck no I don't want to live in a densely populated country that is completely flat and half made of reclaimed seabed. It also has a ton of bureaucracy and a very high cost of living. You probably won't ever be able to afford some land with your own home there unless you are a farmer.

So yeah, 100% statistics don't tell the whole story. That being said, western Mass is a lot like Maine and I would have no problem living there.