Affordable-housing tax credit bill moves forward in Augusta
File photo/ Tim Greenway
TK....Dana Totman and Greg Payne....
A proposed tax credit aimed at bringing more affordable housing to Maine is headed for a vote in the House and Senate after last week's endorsement by the Taxation Committee.
L.D. 1645, "An Act to Create Affordable Workforce and Senior Housing and Preserve Affordable Rural Housing," is sponsored by state Rep. Ryan Fecteau, D-Biddeford, who recently told Mainebiz that he's confident it will pass.
The Legislature's Taxation Committee unanimously backed the measure in a vote last Thursday, following a public hearing where there was only support. By a vote of 9-0, the committee voted in favor of the bill as "ought to pass."
Greg Payne, director of the Maine Affordable Housing Coalition and a development officer at Avesta Housing, welcomed the committee vote, saying that "such strong, bipartisan support puts the bill in a more advantageous position when final funding decisions get made in coming weeks."
But he also cautioned that, "if approved by both chambers, the bill's final hurdle is likely to be among its most challenging: endorsement by the Appropriations Committee, which has the daunting tasks of making final funding decisions among a host of worthy proposals."
Avesta, the largest nonprofit affordable housing provider in northern New England, released new data earlier this month showing a 32% jump in new applications for Avesta affordable homes over the past five years, to 4,046 in 2018.
Scarce resources to build new apartments, along with low turnover in Avesta's existing portfolio, limited the number of new households served by the agency to only 373 last year.
"Maine is experiencing a housing affordability crisis, and that crisis is materializing at our front door in increasingly alarming numbers," said Dana Totman, president and CEO of Avesta Housing, in a May 1 news release. "in the face of this growing unmet need, Maine is only creating about 250 affordable homes each year. We have to do better."
Totman told Mainebiz earlier this year that this year's priority will be to create more affordable housing for seniors, as well as immigrants and homeless people, and that "we really need to do a better job in helping homeless folks here in Maine."
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