Affordable Housing in Cape Elizabeth? YIMBY, please.

Someday people will thank the Town of Cape Elizabeth for preventing the spread of bleak housing across America. Peddled as “affordable housing” and prescribed as tough medicine elites in the suburbs must swallow to combat a housing crisis, the quackery of paying for-profit corporations a pretty penny to administer a bloated government program intended to benefit poor people has thankfully been contained. A “no” vote on the upcoming Town Center Affordable Housing Zoning Ordinance Amendments Referendum will put to rest the “Dunham Court” recipe for mortgage-backed securities sprouting up across the landscape.

Take for instance the recent touching story in the Portland Press Herald about a family living in a van at a rest area in southern Maine while they search for a decent, safe place to live. The Pavlovian response is to beat up Cape Elizabeth - but Jeanie, her husband and his daughter would not qualify to live at Dunham Court - the proposed controversial housing project proposed there - because their combined income of more than $54K is “too high” and only 8 of the 49 units had 2 bedrooms.

Why so many one-bedroom apartments for a project pitched in the middle of a town where 7 in 10 are family households? For the same reason the income restrictions were set so low — to maximize the return using an algorithm of factors including tax credits, TIFs and mortgage securitization. What developers call “feasibility” is a loaded term not regulated and opaque - the profit margin for investors who don’t put up one red cent of their own money.

“Follow the science” we hear when it comes to the climate. “Listen to the experts” we are told about COVID.

Here’s the cold hard truth about housing in Cape Elizabeth according to the experts*: the current model of home ownership and mandatory affordable housing requirements associated with new development is working to lift families including low-income families up the social mobility ladder to longterm economic security. The cost burden associated with housing is decreasing for families in Cape Elizabeth. In short, there is no crisis in our town that demands a knee-jerk response. What we are doing is working to expand opportunities. What we should do is more of it.

Swallowing an “affordable housing project” with a public price tag topping $13.5 million plus a TIF is like taking a malaria drug to treat COVID. Instead of paying a corporation to build, own and manage low-income housing projects for the benefit of shareholders, the public is better served investing in housing that serves the public! That’s the message sent from Cape Elizabeth to Augusta that shines through LD 2003, Maine’s exciting new housing reform law.

Come next summer ordinary people In Cape Elizabeth and elsewhere in Maine will be empowered to invest in the creation of housing to meet the high demand under the new state law unless local zoning zealots strangle it with red tape. Requiring time consuming and expensive site plan review for adding dwelling units to a single family residence or building an ADU is the biggest hurdle to realizing the intent of LD 2003, not the reasoned opposition to large-scale multifamily projects pitched by private developers who dictate the model based on “feasibility.”

Mask mandates and lock-downs seem trivial compared to what the mob was pushing down our throats as a cure-all to a housing shortage. Lawmakers in Augusta heeded the call of those advocating for moderation and public policy based on real numbers and the public good. “Affordable Housing Developments” are not mandated under the new law, allow for private ownership and are defined to include low and moderate-income households - a winning formula for families. Count me in on LD 2003, affordable housing and economic security for families.

A “no” vote on the Town Center Affordable Housing Zoning Ordinance Amendments Referendum in Cape Elizabeth is saying “no thanks” to a recipe for mortgage-backed securities and yes, please to kids.

*“For households with incomes under $50,000, the number of cost-burdened households declined between 2010 and 2020 in both Cape Elizabeth and Cumberland County, for both owner- and renter-occupied units. Expectedly, the overall number of $50,000 households has also declined as nominal incomes rise over time. While number of lower-income cost-burdened households has fallen, the rate of cost burden for these households at the county level increased from 65% to 68%. This was driven by renter households, whose rate of cost burden rose from 68% to 78%. Meanwhile, the share of owner households that are cost burdened has remained steady. Cape Elizabeth shows an opposite trend, with the rate of cost burden for lower-income households declining over time. This is partially explained by the town’s high rate of homeownership. Lower-income residents who have had the opportunity to buy into the Cape Elizabeth housing market have seen decreasing rates of cost burden; their mortgage payments comprise a diminishing share of rising incomes, and long-time residents have been able to pay off their homes.”