The news from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week sounded ominous: The eviction moratorium that has been in effect since the end of last summer will expire at the end of next month, and it will not be renewed.
Housing advocates in Maine are not expecting this to result in a tsunami of evictions.
The American Rescue Plan, which passed in March, included a rent relief program that will keep thousands of Maine families in their homes despite losing some or all of their income during the pandemic.
But not all the news is good. Maine had an affordable-housing shortage before the pandemic hit, and a number of indicators suggest it could get even worse as the economy rebounds.
It will take continued commitment by the state and federal governments to speed up construction of new housing, especially for low-income families, if we are going to avoid a large-scale housing crisis in the next few years.
It’s a matter of supply and demand. Maine has some of the oldest housing stock in the nation, and much of the existing housing is far from the parts of the state where there is the greatest population and job growth. Construction of new housing has not kept up with demand. Meanwhile, rising prices for existing houses, driven by people moving within the state and to Maine from other places, are pushing potential homebuyers back into the rental market, increasing competition for scarce units.
Before the pandemic, the Maine Affordable Housing Coalition estimated that there is a shortage of about 20,000 housing units in Maine that are affordable, meaning they can be secured with less than 30 percent of a family’s income. They have set a goal of building 1,000 new units a year to close the gap.
But since 2014, Maine has averaged only 230 new units a year, topping 300 units only once, in 2016.
That has put the greatest burden on the people with the least. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, there are 41,454 extremely low-income households in Maine – those with incomes less than $25,750 a year for a family of four.
More than half of those families pay more than half of their income for housing, leaving little for food, clothing, medicine and other expenses. There is even less left over to save for emergencies, putting these families in precarious positions.
The Maine State Housing Authority has been able to approve or distribute more than $35 million in rental assistance to about 6,500 qualified households. These payments are erasing back rent for these COVID affected families, making landlords whole and should prevent a mass eviction event when the moratorium ends at the end of July.
But that program alone won’t do anything about the underlying problem. Gov. Mills has proposed spending $50 million from the $1 billion the state received from the American Rescue Act on affordable housing. And, although housing is not included in the bipartisan infrastructure proposal that came together on Capitol Hill last week, it is expected to be a feature in a separate budget bill that can pass with only Democratic votes.
The expiration of the eviction moratorium may not set off a crisis right away, but if we don’t increase our commitment to building housing, there is a crisis coming.
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