Harpswell Information

Regional Meeting
Affordable Housing

Notes from Affordable housing small group
Regional Planning Session, Jan. 29, 2004, W. Bath

People interested in continuing to work on housing issues:

Please replace (at) with @. It is written this way to reduce spam

• John Hodge, Brunswick Housing Authority        john(at)brunswickhousing.org

• Burr Taylor, Harpswell                                      btaylor1(at)gwi.net

• Bill Longley, Woolwich                                     wlongley(at)yarmouth.me.us

• Steve Gardiner, West Bath                               stephenjgardner(at)earthlink.net

• John Grill, Woolwich                                        jgrill(at)localnet.com

• Sam Alexander, Harpswell                                janet&sam(at)yahoo.com

• Mike Rice, Phippsburg                                     ruby(at)ime.net

• John Bubier, Bath                                             jbubier(at)cityofbath.com

• Jeff Sneddon, MCBDP                                    jsneddon(at)mcbdp.org

• Katrina Van Dusen, MCBDP                           katrina(at)gwi.net

Major issues

• Median income doesn’t buy the median house
  ($42,000 income could afford $118,000 home, but median is $182,000)

• Many working people can’t afford housing

• Land prices going up fast

• Cost of rental construction = high rents

• Ordinances may be obstacle (subdivision/lot size/walkability)

• Need to get builders involved

• Incentives to developers

• Second generation affordability of affordable housing

• Borderless market

• Change in family demographics (not as multi-generational as in past)

• Decrease of household size

• In-law apartments

• Home-based businesses

• Equitable municipal distribution
  (each municipality shares in the solution; services centers (now?) doing more than others)

• Public attitude

• Natural resource constraints

• Re-use of existing buildings

• Under-utilized upper floors

• Building code obstacles: cost of rehab

• Traffic congestion (villages make areas walkable)

• Parking: conflicting state/local/fed provisions

• Regional transportation

How to address affordable housing collaboratively?           *priorities

• *Regional collaboration on a model affordable housing ordinance to be adopted by all communities

• Incentives: reduced fees for increased density, etc.

• *Regional educational program

• *Have MCBDP make this one of their priorities

• Educate public and local officials

• Web site to distribute info

• Regional density discussions

• Collaboration on resources: info, data

• Groups of communities get funding for affordable housing

• Identify resources and bring them together; a larger group may have access to /influence over more money

• Implement affordable housing strategies in existing comp plans

• Identify responsible parties and timeline for implementation of comp plans

• Have a vision that can be acted on

• State environmental/school policies

• Needs to be a more sustainable regional economy

• Infrastructure expansion

• Regional collaboration with housing non-profits (i.e. Habitat)

• Try to address the gap in affordability (incentives, banking, MSHA…)

• Increase wages