On Jan. 26, the Portland Press Herald reported a state legislative proposal to establish a state board that would permit affordable housing projects (“Lawmakers considering proposal for state board to permit affordable housing”). Although this proposal seems a step in the right direction, the state has a long way to go to adequately address Maine’s housing crisis.

Maine’s minimum wage just increased to $14.15/hr. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, a Mainer working full-time (40 hours per week, 52 weeks per year) would need to earn $24/hr. to afford fair market rent for a two-bedroom rental home, without paying more than 30% of their income.

There are more than 400,000 poor and low-income people in Maine. Lack of affordable housing is only one of many interlocking injustices they face. Others include inadequate wages, skyrocketing health care costs and medical debt, unaffordable and often unavailable child care, and insufficient education and job training programs.

We need sound public policies to address all these issues, and that is why the Maine Poor People’s Campaign will hold a State House assembly in Augusta on March 2. There, we will present to the Legislature and the governor the policies we demand to lift hundreds of thousands of Mainers out of poverty. We invite every individual and organization that shares our goal of racial, social and economic justice for all to join us that day as we come together to say loudly and clearly: “Fight poverty, not the poor.”

David Jolly
Penobscot

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