Step by step, we’re making a dent in our housing crisis.

For the past two years, the Joint Select Committee on Housing has been working with Maine’s legislature and Gov. Janet Mills’ administration to address the housing shortage in our state. As the co-chairs of the committee, we are happy to report that we have made strong progress on all three prongs of our strategy – addressing homelessness, increasing affordable housing production and fixing the systemic obstacles to housing.

Thankfully, the number of people experiencing homelessness in Maine declined by 28% from 2023 to 2024, but the numbers still remain too high. To address this challenge, we have funded emergency shelters around the state, adding capacity and support for the state’s five low-barrier shelters and deployed new measures to prevent families with elementary and high school students from experiencing homelessness. These resources are already helping many people who were unhoused – including many who were living in encampments – to get a roof over their heads, access needed healthcare and social services and move into or make progress toward finding permanent housing.

Funding for the Housing First program, created in 2023 to provide permanent, supportive housing to Mainers struggling with chronic homelessness, is set to begin in 2025. In communities around the state, partnerships between governments, service agencies and nonprofit organizations are coming together to plan Housing First programs, begin or continue construction or renovations, and prepare the housing stability and other wraparound services for residents. We look forward to this program providing the supportive housing people need to recover from chronic homelessness and move forward with their lives.

Additionally, we made key investments in keeping Mainers housed and reducing the risk of entering the cycle of homelessness, including a two-year pilot program focused on eviction prevention. We also created a fund to assist mobile home park residents in purchasing their parks in order to maintain affordability and avoid displacement, and we increased MaineHousing’s ability to sell bonds to finance affordable rental housing and first-time homebuyer mortgages.

On the housing production front, 37 projects with more than 1,230 units were built and preserved from 2022 through mid-2024. We believe we need to keep pushing Maine’s supply of housing up. We invested in keeping the pipeline filled for affordable housing projects all around the state, with more than 3,500 additional units projected to be completed in the coming three years. In this year’s supplemental budget, an additional $20 million is going into MaineHousing’s Rural Affordable Rental Housing and Low Income Housing Tax Credit programs, while $10 million into the Affordable Homeownership Program will support Maine communities in creating housing that meets their specific needs.

And in an excellent example of adaptive re-use of state property, we authorized the transfer of the vacant courthouse buildings in York County from the state to local housing authorities to be used for housing.

Finally, on the third prong of our work, fixing systemic obstacles to housing, we enacted legislation to encourage the conversion of commercial properties for housing, strengthened Maine’s housing preservation laws and allocated funding to speed up elevator inspections and abate lead paint in more housing units. We also made it easier for cooperative affordable housing organizations to qualify for federal and state programs, clarified where Accessory Dwelling Units and code-compliant manufactured housing can be located, and established working groups to study incentives for building attainable homes for ownership and to coordinate collaboration on Smart Growth development in commercial corridors, where services and infrastructure already exist.

The 131st Legislature’s Joint Select Committee on Housing tackled Maine’s housing challenges head on, directly addressing the emergency situation facing people experiencing homelessness, filling the pipeline of affordable housing development and chipping away at the barriers to building housing for Maine people at all phases of their lives. We thank our committee members for their dedication, expertise, and collaborative spirit, and we thank all of the people who testified before our committee and provided information and insights. Going forward, we hope to continue this work on behalf of Maine’s people, fueling what works and fixing what doesn’t, with the goal of everyone having safe, affordable housing and vibrant communities to call home.