I am voting in support of the affordable housing project proposed for Drowne Road in Cumberland.

Does any of this sound familiar: Can’t find someone to care for an older parent in their home, or someone to paint your house in the next six months? Did your daycare close due to lack of staffing? Have you found the pharmacy line so backed up because there is no one working the counter, and the pharmacist is both filling scripts and ringing people up? Safe, affordable housing supports a reliable workforce that supports all of us.

We are all in this together. We can look at boundaries between parts of town, or at town lines, or regions of the state, etc. but the bottom line is we are all experiencing the effects of the housing crisis, and we all stand to benefit from affordable housing.

We are all residents of Maine — if we are not participating in the solution at the local level, we will just be paying for it at the state or federal level. Unsafe, unpredictable housing contributes to poor health, overall poverty and increased criminal activity. These costs will just show up for us somewhere else. I’d rather put my money toward preventative measures than downstream costs of child protective services, criminal justice involvement, higher insurance rates, higher health care costs.

Unstable housing is a foundation of systemic multigenerational poverty. With affordable housing, people can safely predict reasonable household costs, reducing familial stress that affects emotional health, food security and education achievement. The long-term impacts include greater economic mobility, community engagement and reduced reliance over time on social welfare programs.

When we support people at all levels of the income spectrum, we create stability in our community. I refuse to believe it is an either/or situation for our residents. We can afford to offer this development without putting undue burden on our existing neighbors. I believe we can find balance through programs that stabilize taxes for current residents and shift the burden to people coming in to develop extremely high-income property on large parcels of land.

Look at the range of house prices for new development in Cumberland over the past couple years. There are more than enough $1 million-plus homes to offset the taxes of potentially 36 additional kids in the school system. With 107 units, Cumberland will barely make a dent in the need, but it is better than doing nothing.

Affordable, higher-density housing has benefits for the environment. New affordable housing must be built using the latest energy-efficient standards, reducing over dependence of fossil fuels for the people living in these spaces. Yes, ideally this would be further supported by public transportation, but I still think the benefits are there. Higher-density housing also leaves more green spaces open for carbon catching and wildlife. This project is not perfect, and no development is going to be everything everyone wants, but we have to start somewhere.

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