In 2022, the Maine Legislature took a rare step and required municipalities to adjust local zoning rules in an effort to spur housing construction, a move that generated a fierce debate over state growth targets versus local control.
Canada's prime minister says the US does not get to dictate terms for a trade agreementFederal appeals court blocks California law requiring federal agents to wear identificationNavy Secretary John Phelan is leaving in the latest departure of a top defense leaderMake room!
Flyers, Penguins squeeze 11 players inside penalty box after Game 3 meleeCeleste Rivas Hernandez, girl who singer D4vd is charged with killing, died from penetrating woundsAP Entertainment WireA robot is beating human pros at table tennis. Its maker calls it a milestone for machines1 million bees make for bumper-to-buzzer traffic on a Tennessee highway rampScreen fatigue is real. Experts share tips to find reliefHow a remote camera captured the Artemis II launch and startled birdsMassachusetts is dumping sewage into waterways.
Grassroots organizations are fighting backMore people are addicted to marijuana, but fewer of them are seeking help, experts sayTrump signs order to speed review of psychedelics, including the controversial drug ibogaineTo make hosting less stressful, strive for connection and not perfection'If my people': Here's why the Bible passage Trump read aloud is so potent and polarizingFauna y vegetación en el paisaje radiactivo de Chernóbil muestran la resiliencia de la naturalezaTrump orders US military to 'shoot and kill' Iranian small boats choking Strait of HormuzThe Afternoon WireFederal appeals court blocks California law requiring federal agents to wear identificationNavy Secretary John Phelan is leaving in the latest departure of a top defense leaderMake room!
Flyers, Penguins squeeze 11 players inside penalty box after Game 3 meleeCeleste Rivas Hernandez, girl who singer D4vd is charged with killing, died from penetrating woundsAP Entertainment WireA robot is beating human pros at table tennis. Its maker calls it a milestone for machines1 million bees make for bumper-to-buzzer traffic on a Tennessee highway rampScreen fatigue is real. Experts share tips to find reliefHow a remote camera captured the Artemis II launch and startled birdsMassachusetts is dumping sewage into waterways.
Grassroots organizations are fighting backMore people are addicted to marijuana, but fewer of them are seeking help, experts sayTrump signs order to speed review of psychedelics, including the controversial drug ibogaineTo make hosting less stressful, strive for connection and not perfection'If my people': Here's why the Bible passage Trump read aloud is so potent and polarizingFauna y vegetación en el paisaje radiactivo de Chernóbil muestran la resiliencia de la naturalezaReddit In 2022, the Maine Legislature took a rare step and required municipalities to adjust local zoning rules in an effort to spur housing construction, a move that generated a fierce debate over state growth targets versus local control.
Four years later, the State House may have finally worked out the kinks from that experiment. Municipal legal experts and town managers are hoping a new bill, L.D. 2173, signed by Gov. Janet Mills a week ago, is the last word on land use restrictions, a technical but critical piece of the housing puzzle, for a while.
The bill marks the second big adjustment lawmakers have made to zoning laws since L.D. 2003, the landmark 2022 legislation that required towns to remove some regulatory barriers in order to encourage housing production. L.D. 2003 aimed to do this by eliminating single-family zoning restrictions and making it easier to build accessory dwelling units while creating support for communities to develop affordable housing.
But many towns worried about how the law would work in practice and criticized its universal approach to zoning requirements, which they saw as infringing on community planning choices. Lawmakers have tried to find the right balance ever since.
The back and forth has caused frustration and uncertainty at a time when Maine needs roughly 80,000 homes to meet demand by 2030, according to aThe four-year debate illustrated the power of Maine’s local control ethos and how it has shaped housing policy at the State House. Lawmakers trying to remove barriers to housing production ran into complex issues around infrastructure and community resources.
Some said the efforts have done little to encourage affordable housing production so far, with communities needing time to adjust to the changes before the effects can be seen.
“The regulatory framework needs time to stabilize, and the revised provisions must be consistently applied before their effectiveness can be determined,” said Kate Dufour, the communications director for the Maine Municipal Association. The idea behind L.D. 2003 was to change local housing density rules to encourage more development.
The law allowed for more housing units per lot and greater density for affordable housing projects in designated growth areas, which are areas where municipalities plan to target most residential, commercial or industrial development in the next 10 years. Municipalities were also required to allow accessory dwelling units on the same lot as single-family homes. Communities could no longer adopt local ordinances limiting housing to one unit per lot, essentially banning single-family zoning.
And they were required to permit affordable housing developers to create more units than typically allowed. Maine House Speaker Ryan Fecteau, D-Biddeford, who sponsored L.D. 2003, said in a recent interview that, while the bill was ambitious, it did not add rules to reduce allowable minimum lot sizes, which he thought would make starter homes more affordable. This issue was tackled last year with L.D. 1829 by requiring minimum lot sizes to be no greater than 5,000 square feet.
The bill also made some significant tweaks to accessory dwelling unit rules by changing sprinkler requirements, prohibiting towns from requiring that owners had to live on site to construct an ADU and expanding where those units could be built. It allowed more affordable housing units per lot and reduced parking space requirements for those units.
It also allowed affordable housing projects to be built one story higher than a town’s zoning would typically allow and changed the minimum lot size limits for tracts both in and outside of designated growth areas served by public or special water and sewer systems. These last two provisions quickly generated pushback from municipalities, said Rep. Amanda Collamore, R-Pittsfield, the ranking Republican on the Maine Legislature’s housing and economic development committee.
The height exemption became an issue because some towns do not have access to firetrucks with ladders, making it dangerous to build a multi-story development without height caps, Collamore said. Limiting lot sizes for areas outside of serviced water and sewers created concerns that growth would be forced where towns did not want it.
L.D. 2173, which was signed by Mills last week, was conceived as a fixer bill to address these concerns: It clarified what counts as a public water and sewer system, and limited its density requirements to areas served by those systems. It also exempted environmentally sensitive regions from density rules. It allowed communities greater flexibility in setting lot sizes and density ceilings outside growth areas. Affordable housing development height bonuses are now subject to additional review.
Fecteau said the overall aim of L.D. 2003 and its legislative descendants was to take ambitious steps to remove barriers to housing. But he also acknowledged towns’ frustrations and said the process needs to have some “give and take” to ensure communities buy into that goal.
“I realize this is a balancing act between a state interest — to have homes people can afford – and local control, which the state has always taken great stock in,” Fecteau said. With the dust possibly settling on zoning law changes, municipalities that have not adopted the housing density and zoning changes in L.D. 1829 now have more time to do so under L.D. 2173.
The new law pushed back the deadline from July of this year to July 2027. Gray Louis, a municipal attorney with Preti Flaherty, said many of his clients will be relieved to have that extra wiggle room, and hope it will be the last time they have to adjust their zoning rules. He said the four years of changes exposed how difficult it can be for some smaller communities to update their ordinances, which usually requires hiring legal counsel.
“It’s a one-size-fits-all approach, but in reality each community is different,” Louis said. The successive changes in law and deadline extensions mean it has been difficult to measure the effects of L.D. 2003, said Jamie Garvin, director of community affairs for the Greater Portland Council of Governments. This is in part because up until recently there was no standardized way to measure housing development across the state.
That changed this year, with a new law that requires municipalities with populations over 4,000 toThe push for zoning adjustments at the State House also ignored a reality for many of the greater Portland metropolitan area communities, which have been“Our communities all share a strong desire to be contributors to solving Maine’s housing shortage,” Garvin said. But desire at the state level to support housing also needs “concurrent support for development of the infrastructure to enable that kind of growth in the first place,” he went on to say.
Scarborough, for example, has seen consistent growth for decades in part because of its proximity to Portland, access to the ocean and the creation of the spur connecting Route 1 to Interstate 295. Director of Planning and Codes Autumn Speer said her department consistently gets 200 to 250 building permits per year.racetrack has added hundreds of apartments to the town.
And the town has changed some of its multi-family density zoning rules in the last seven years, said Town Manager Thomas Hall. The town does not need help encouraging housing, Hall said, and actively pushed for changes in L.D. 2173 because officials feared the town would be required to grow more, even as it struggles to keep up with its current development rate.
What it does need, Hall said, are better local transportation options, calling traffic the “number-one issue” that stifles the region’s viability.
“We’re at capacity, and the cost and complication of the fixes is beyond any one community’s abilities,” he said. Elizabeth Frazier, a partner at Pierce Atwood who represents the Maine Real Estate & Development Association, said she understands the arguments around supporting infrastructure for housing. But the idea that towns were being forced to grow beyond their desires through L.D. 1829, she said, is “pearl-clutching.
”Frazier said the impact of L.D. 2003 and the subsequent bills is limited because it largely empowers communities to add housing in areas through growth zones, which they ultimately have say over. Adding ADUs has a limited effect on long-term housing, she argued. If the state really wants to encourage housing, it should tackle itsWhile zoning adjustments can encourage growth, they are far from the only factor developers face when trying to get a project off the ground.
But developer LB Ellsworth LLC cannot quite get the project over the line yet, said partner Dan Black. The cost of developing the 36-condominium project is currently estimated at $425,000 per unit, he said, but each unit will sell for around $279,000. Development was delayed initially because of the need for a vernal pool study and to sort out a neighbor’s zoning waiver appeal.
Black said he is committed to seeing the project through, but those challenges make it difficult to guess when it will get off the ground. He never would have approached the project, though, if it was not for how the parcel was zoned. Under Ellsworth’sPentagon says it will take months to clear mines in the Strait of Hormuz, AP source says
Maine Economic Indicators Affordable Housing General News ME State Wire Jamie Garvin Politics Amanda Collamore Thomas Hall Business Dan Black Elizabeth Frazier Pierce Atwood U.S. News Kate Dufour Ryan Fecteau U.S. News
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
NASA shuts off another Voyager 1 instrument as humanity's most distant spacecraft prepares for risky 'Big Bang' maneuver to save powerElizabeth Howell was staff reporter at Space.com between 2022 and 2024 and a regular contributor to Live Science and Space.com between 2012 and 2022.
Read more »
Live Updates From No. 22 Boston College Baseball's Midweek Contest vs MaineThe Eagles are third in the ACC standings with 15 regular-season games left to play.
Read more »
No. 22 Boston College Baseball Falls to Maine, Drops First Midweek Loss of SeasonThe Eagles and the Black Bears went into the ninth inning tied at four apiece until Maine's Juju Stevens hit a two-run homer.
Read more »
Schnepf Farms makes changes to peach season as farm loses 50% of crops this yearElenee Dao joined ABC15 in August 2022 as a multimedia journalist.
Read more »
You don’t need a brand-new laptop — this ThinkPad gets the job done for $240A refurbished 2022 model with solid performance, long battery life, and business-ready specs
Read more »
The English: Prime Video's Underrated Miniseries Echoes Clint Eastwood's Classic WesternsMiguel Alvarez as Timothy Flynn holding a pistol in The English (2022)
Read more »