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Wednesday, August 6, 2003
Panel examines affordable-housing crisis
Copyright © 2003 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc. | ||
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Many teachers, police officers and other workers who play a vital role in communities can't afford to live in the southern Maine towns and cities in which they work. On top of that, they move to outlying areas, contributing to sprawl. Those are two of the ways that the lack of affordable housing in southern Maine is affecting the state, said speakers at a roundtable discussion on the issue, held at the University of Southern Maine's Portland campus Tuesday. The discussion, sponsored by the National Housing Conference, an advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., brought together housing experts, government officials, business leaders and others to talk about how to create and retain affordable housing in Maine. The focus was on the housing needs of working families in southern Maine. "One in seven American families pays more than 50 percent of their income for housing," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who spoke at the event. "This is a problem for so many Americans." Collins said she was startled to learn that whole families in Maine must resort to living in homeless shelters because they can't afford housing. "It made me realize how many families in our society are just a paycheck away from homelessness," she said. The discussion on Tuesday was one of four Senior Executive Roundtables that the National Housing Conference is holding around the country this year. The other sites are in Charlotte, N.C., Columbus, Ohio, and Houston. The locations are an indication of how widespread the problem of affordable housing is, the experts said. The hope is that the discussions will spawn ideas for creating more affordable housing and preserving what exists. Southern Maine has an acute affordable-housing problem, speakers said. Figures presented showed that in Portland in 2001, a median-priced home cost $158,000. An annual income of $50,340 was needed to afford that home. But the median annual income for an elementary school teacher in the Portland area was $42,340. The median income for a licensed practical nurse - one of the jobs in the growing health care industry most available to people moving up the economic ladder - was $32,710. An office worker's median income was $23,030; a retail salesperson's was $17,850; and a fast-food server's was $15,700. Renters are struggling too, the data shows. The rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Portland was $817 in 2001. A wage of $15.71 per hour was needed to afford that rent, but the median hourly wage for an office clerk was $11.07; for a retail salesperson, it was $8.58, and for a fast-food server, $7.55. The cost of housing is even higher now, said Heather Curtis, president of the Portland Tenants Union, who attended the discussion. She said two-bedroom apartments now rent for $850, and to afford that, a single mother with one child who was earning minimum wage would need to work more than 100 hours per week. Valarie Lamont, director of the Center for Real Estate Education at USM's School of Business and one of the speakers at the event, said one reason Maine is experiencing an affordable-housing crisis is that higher-paying manufacturing positions have given way to lower-paying service jobs. Lamont said that "there's a major gap between (what's earned by) fast-food workers and service workers and the income needed (to rent or buy)." Among proposals to address the problem of affordable housing nationwide is to give a tax credit to developers and investors who build or rehabilitate homes for low- and moderate-income families. The roundtables are also tackling questions such as whether local communities have rules and regulations in place that make it difficult to build affordable housing. "When it comes to housing issues, we're not victims," said another speaker, James Stockard of Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. "We make the rules and set regulations. We can shape a lot of what we want our housing to be like." Staff Writer Tess Nacelewicz can be contacted at 791- 6367 or at:
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