The race for an at-large seat on the Portland City Council could prove to be the most contentious on the city ballot this fall, with one candidate trying again for a seat he lost in 2021 after a tie-breaking recount and another hoping to serve elected positions at both the state and city levels.

Brandon Mazer, 38, chairs the city’s planning board and has run for council twice before: once for a District 1 seat in 2015 and again in 2021 when he ran against Roberto Rodriguez for the at-large seat that Rodriguez is now vacating. The two had tied in a runoff, but Mazer ultimately conceded after votes were recounted by hand.

Grayson Lookner, 40, will appear twice on local ballots as he also runs unopposed for a third term as a state representative, a position he plans to hold in tandem with the City Council seat should he win.

There are three other candidates on the Nov. 5 ballot: Ben Grant, 47, who is on the school board and chaired the state’s Democratic party for three years; Jake Viola, 33, a board member for the Back Cove Neighborhood Association; and Jess Falero, 27, who founded the People’s Housing Coalition and organized Stop the Sweep rallies last fall to protest the city’s clearing of homeless encampments.

Early voting ahead of the Nov. 5 election began Monday and runs through Oct. 31.

All five candidates have big ideas about how to solve what they all say are the city’s most pressing issues – housing and homelessness, with affordability and climate mitigation high on the list, too.

HOUSING 

Mazer, who works as an attorney, believes the Green New Deal stifled development in the city and he’d like to see it tweaked to make it easier for developers to build. One way to do that, he said, is to lower the percentage of required affordable units, currently set at 25%.

Viola, a deputy chief engagement officer for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, also wants to tweak parts of the Green New Deal, which passed in November 2020 by citizen referendum, establishing a $15 minimum wage, the city’s rent control ordinance and inclusionary zoning requirements for new developments.

“I think what we’re seeing with rent control and some of the Green New Deal’s laws, we had good intent behind it to create more housing units and make housing more affordable, but we’re having these unintended consequences where it’s slowing down the building of housing in the city,” said Viola.

Mazer and Viola both mentioned lowering property taxes as a development incentive.

Mazer said as a councilor, he would not want to see increases of more than 3% each year. He also would like to see the city’s housing trust fund used more liberally to pay for the maximum amount of housing possible.

Viola said filling vacant positions on the city staff and fighting for more General Assistance funding from the state could help mitigate property tax increases.

He also hopes to see more zoning changes that will make it easier to build for developers and homeowners alike.

One recent proposal to help solve the housing crisis has been the creation of a social housing program in which the city would build, own and operate middle-income housing projects.

Mazer said he doesn’t support this idea because the city would need to change state law to facilitate such a program.

“I don’t think it is a system that will work here in Portland. We have organizations that know how to develop and manage affordable housing,” said Mazer. “This is coming out of a playbook from the Democratic Socialists of America.”

Viola agreed that social housing is not the answer to the housing crisis. He said he’d prefer to incentivize private development.

Lookner, who works as a stagehand at Merrill Auditorium, a kayak guide and as a community organizer, supports the city starting up a social housing program.

“It’s really just housing developed using public equity in which a public entity like the city of Portland maintains some stake. It’s less expensive, more efficient and more affordable,” said Lookner.

He’d also like to see the city more consistently enforce rent control and short-term rental restrictions.

Grant, who works as general counsel for the Maine Education Association, is open to the idea of a social housing program but would want to explore other ideas too.

“It could be part of a mix,” he said. “There are a lot of ways things could be built and we have to be looking at all of them.”

He’d like to see the city incentivize some large-scale projects for developers in order to speed things up.

“We aren’t going to catch up with housing by going from single-family plots to multi-units. That’s all fine, but I want to see Portland try some big things,” said Grant.

Falero, a community health specialist for the Church of Safe Injection, said they would support a social housing program. They would also like to see the city utilize empty spaces for temporary housing while the impact of the rezoning process sets in and consider lifting some restrictions around development to make it easier to build more housing.

“We need to be creative as a city and make some tough decisions, we really need to dig into building more but also utilizing existing structures,” said Falero.

HOMELESSNESS 

Falero was homeless in Portland for years and believes it is critical to have that voice represented on the council.

Falero views the city’s expanded homelessness shelter as a step in the right direction, but wants to do more to address the homelessness crisis.

“We moved everyone from downtown to District 5. It’s no longer directly in our faces as much as it used to be,” said Falero. “It’s easy to say, ‘Oh the problem is solved because we don’t see it every day,’ but that issue is still there.”

Falero is concerned that the city doesn’t have a solid plan in place for warming shelters this winter. They would like to start planning for warming shelters earlier in the year and start a homelessness census so the city has reliable data about who is living outside and where.

Also, they want to ramp up housing first programs in Portland to get people off the streets.

Grant is also a proponent of the housing first model, in which people move directly from the streets into stable housing, rather than spending months in a shelter first. He would like to see a robust housing first program that would also offer wraparound services to help people stay in their housing successfully.

He also would like to see other parts of the state offering more support services for homelessness and substance abuse so that Portland, and its taxpayers aren’t shouldering so much of the burden.

Lookner also said it’s important to him to see other nearby communities providing services. He said as a state representative and a councilor, he’d be uniquely positioned to advocate for this.

“Homelessness is a statewide crisis so it’s really important that Portland isn’t the the only service provider in the state,” he said.

Viola said he doesn’t think homelessness is caused by a lack of affordable housing. Instead, he believes it is caused by substance use disorder and mental health issues, and a lack of support. He would like to make sure people have access to the support they need, but in the meantime he doesn’t think anyone should be living outdoors.

“I am strongly against encampments,” he said. “I want to treat people humanely. It is not humane to allow camping in the city. It’s not helping any of the residents of the city and it’s certainly not helping the residents of the encampments. We have to find ways to incentivize people living outside to get help.”

NEEDLE EXCHANGE

As for the needle exchange, the program in which the city gives out clean needles to intravenous drug users, Falero said they wouldn’t support going down to a one-to-one exchange ratio, something Mayor Mark Dion proposed last month.

“I think Mark Dion’s proposal for a one-to-one ratio is well-meaning. We definitely need to do something about needles on the ground. But it feels like finger-pointing instead of working together to solve this problem in our community,” said Falero.

Instead, Falero would like to see more sharps containers around town. And, they’d like to start a safe injection site, where people can come to safely use drugs indoors with clean needles they can dispose of on site. Staff there would be equipped with Narcan should anyone overdose.

“When we’re talking about clean needles, we’re talking about life or death, people losing their limbs. It’s not about enabling. I don’t abide by the ideology that someone losing their limb or getting a blood infection is a prompter for them to get sober. That’s pretty cruel,” said Falero.

Grant said, he’d want to see more data before making a decision about the needle exchange rate, though he said that the needles littering the city are absolutely a concern. But when it comes to addressing homelessness, he has other ideas.

Lookner, like Falero, said he would not support lowering the needle exchange rate to one-to-one. Instead, he’d like to see the city start a needle buy-back program in which the city would offer money in exchange for used needles. The model is intended to incentivize people to return their used needles instead of discarding them on the street.

Lookner would also like to see more sharps containers installed around the city. But, he thinks limiting the needle exchange ratio is dangerous.

“It will increase transmission of disease,” he said. “It’s a stigmatizing non-solution that experts don’t agree with.”

Viola, on the other hand, supports the mayor’s proposal.

“I think it’s abhorrent that the city is handing out hundreds more needles than it’s taking in. I understand the harm reduction element, but I don’t think we can just have needles littering our parks,” he said.

Mazer also supports Dion’s idea. He said cleaning up needles would be a “major focus.”

“I think it’s unacceptable to have parents walking around a playground and making sure their kids aren’t stepping on dirty needles. It is a big deal and one that we need to get control over,” he said.

Mazer also said he wants to start a licensing system for independent service providers like Preble Street, Commonspace and Milestone as a way to make sure they are keeping the areas around their buildings clean and under control. If they aren’t and are issued multiple violations, they would be fined or shut down.

“If those providers are not maintaining their sidewalks or they’re having a lot of police calls, they need to be held accountable to the city and to the neighbors,” said Mazer.

This story was updated at 7:30 a.m. Oct. 10 to correct Ben Grant’s status on the school board. He is a current member. 

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