The Reality vs the Narrative
Photo by wang binghua on Unsplash
The other day, I was trying to locate the 2018 article in the Boothbay Register wherein Erin Cooperrider outlines the plan that targets the low-income housing credit to be applied to the 80% to 120% AMI demographic and to change the language from “low income” to “workforce” housing.
I have done this search many times before, which has generated at least half a dozen articles featuring Erin Cooperrider. This time, only one article is generated, which is the article that preceded the article described above, announcing that Erin Cooperrider will be a speaker, and is an online promotional bio of Ms Cooperrider.
I have encountered this type of revisionist history manipulation on the Boothbay Register website before. I do not think it is the Boothbay Register doing it because if I mention it in comments, it is fixed thereafter.
Fortunately, I have linked to the aforementioned article previously in this newsletter, and so I found the article herein and saved it in my own notes, just as I did with the link to the more searchable version of the Maine Constitution after the standalone version was removed from the internet and replaced with a PDF doc contained within the Maine Revised Statutes. The Maine Constitution is not a Maine Statute. It is the body of principles with which the statutes are supposed to be consistent.
Afterward, I composed the following letter to the Editor of the Boothbay Register.
Dear Editor,
In a 2018 article in this newspaper, Erin Cooperrider outlines a plan to use low-income housing funds for 80% to 120% AMI housing, changing the language from low-income housing to “workforce” housing.
Workforce” is a term used by the government for workers in its targeted industry, including essential workers and its own corporate workers. The workers are as undifferentiated as the units developed to house them. An apt term is “serfforce housing” since the majority of the units are rentals, and those that are not increasingly exclude land and have greatly diminished equity value for the purchaser.Thereafter, the Maine Legislature appointed Ms Cooperrider a “Commissioner,” a statutory term that allows private citizens to bypass constitutional rules for citizen-initiated legislation. The Commissioners who did the study for LD 2003 (HP 1489) were primarily realtors and developers, constituting a special interest group of private citizens who produced a law mandating that every Maine municipality establish housing “priority zones” where density cannot be regulated. With the recent enactment of LD 1829, the height of the structures can be 14 feet higher than otherwise allowed. Good times for developers.
LD 2003 could have been inspired by Chinese ghost cities, with blocks of unembellished and undistinguished towers for housing the workforce. After listing the units for almost nine months on Realtor website without a sale, Boothbay has its own housing ghost block financed by town, county, and state leadership using affordable housing dollars that place an income cap on the purchasers of the units priced at market rates with cost-burdened financing terms. Did leadership read the website before committing to affordable housing funding?.
Is it time for a leadership paradigm shift?
It seems that the public financing of the BRDC happened automatically once an approved initial investor donated, which automatically activated a chain reaction in government giving.
But government affordable housing funding restricts upward mobility for the inhabitants. It is designed into the centrally managed economy to discourage growth at the roots while using public funds to capitalize growth at the top, generating a continually escalating wealth divide.Why using affordable housing funds for workforce housing doesn’t work
When the housing project was first being promoted, Bigelow Labs expressed an interest. I pointed out in the newspaper comments that the terms of affordable housing require placing an income cap on the residents. Suppose an employer encourages employees to live in an affordable housing project. In that case, they are putting a ceiling on what those employees can expect to make working for that company and underscoring that working for the employer is not a path to home ownership.
In the aftermath of the enactment of LD 200_HP1489, Bath Iron Works is building workforce housing that will prioritize Bath Iron Works workers. If workers can’t find housing, the Navy will not have ships, so the US Navy is one of the financiers. Shipbuilding is a national security issue.
The housing project is an apartment building rental complex. The images portray a building constructed from pre-fabs using the signature architectural embellishment of the prefab style- large panels of a contrasting solid color placed on the building, which is otherwise a block with unembellished windows that create a boring effect. The units, as they are called, do not have their own plots of land. There is one common lawn. maintained by the corporation that owns the complex.
One can’t blame the Navy for going into the Real Estate business to try to preserve the shipbuilding capacity of our country, but the housing ideas coming from the institutions are all alike and create a dreary environment of cultural conformity. marginalizing variety and eliminating differences. The public-private state has been diligent about keeping individuals and small businesses out of the conversation, on the premise that the holders of concentrated wealth know what is best for all.
Housing for working-class and lower-income people doesn’t need to be boring. If we got the developers who are creating these grids of identical, barely embellished units out of the picture, housing could be affordable and have greater variation. Working-class neighborhoods could become interesting again. If we welcome immigrants and encourage them to express their cultural aesthetics, we could introduce a mix that would be truely innovative.
Photo by Dan Begel on Unsplash
Is it a prefab or is it something else? I know that is a church, but so should our homes be spiritual spaces. Prefabs don’t have to be boring, but it’s more cost-effective for developers to order in bulk. If you sell the Land To Individuals and let people who will actually reside on the land develop it, according to their individual needs and preferences, variety will naturally emerge. Look at the mandala symbol on the house, imagine it could be any sort of symbol. and imagine the siding could be mixed and matched to create different architectural textures.
Photo by Joe Green on Unsplash
Bath Iron Works’s version of the “priority Zone” features housing so closely packed that they are just units in a singular apartment building. The units will be one or two bedrooms, which accommodate a family of three, which beats the affordable housing units in New Castle, which are all single-bedroom units and not family-oriented. The New Castle housing complex, generously funded by public funds to developers, is composed of two large cube-shaped units with minimalistic windows and porches.
The message is clear. The workers are not individuals; they are a mass that composes the public-private state’s industrial armies, with the uniform housing mirroring the uniforms worn by the armed forces.
The housing enabled by state policies serves only employees who work at the employer headquarters and are considered not to need working space within the home, so remote workers are not provided for in the corporate state’s plans that define” The workforce’ exclusively as workers who work at employer-owned spaces and live in rented units in a world view that accepts the exclusion of the workers from ownership of any sort, an excluusion that has been incrementally driven by state policies enacted since 1976 when Home Rule was replaced by the centrally managed economy.
The Priority Zone legislation does not mandate densely over-crowded housing; it just permits it and encourages it with financial rewards on a state-wide basis, widening the replacement by the state of local authority over matters local and municipal in character.
Developers want to get as much bang for the buck, or acreage, as they can, which they justify by the overproduction of housing narrative.
There are multiple causes of the housing shortage, but one significant reason is rarely accounted for in the public conversation: the introduction of short-term rentals into the housing market commencing in 2008 with the creation of Airbnb..
Ask Google when the housing shortage emerged in Maine, and it will identify first and foremost that the housing shortage is caused by “the underproduction of housing,” which it reports has been going on for decades:
Maine’s current housing shortage is the result of a long-term trend of historic underproduction of new housing units that dates back decades, particularly intensifying after 1970. While the problem has been building for a long time, the issue became acute more recently due to other factors. (Google AI)
However, when clicking a Maine Monitor story referenced by Google quote above, in support of its claims, the article contradicts the quote and says this:
Maine’s shortage of affordable housing has led to calls to aggressively build new homes and apartments: up to 84,000 more by 2030, according to a 2023 state report frequently cited by Maine media. (note added by SMA –this often-quoterd statistic represents the current homes needed plus seasonal homes, plus homes needed for a population increase created by Maine State Inc’s economic developmernt ambitions – but that is not usually explained when the statement is quoted)
But other numbers paint a more complicated picture, showing how it can be deceptive to focus solely on this statistic, as housing can become less affordable even if construction outpaces population growth. That’s exactly what has happened in Maine over the last 50 years.
According to U.S. Census data, the construction of new housing units in Maine has outpaced population growth since 1970, statewide and in every county. Maine now has more housing units per person than it did 50 years ago. Maine Monitor Maine is building homes faster, but they are emptier
The article makes a case that the reduction of the number of people per household has increased the need for housing. It’s a “which came first, the chicken or the egg” question. Developers choose to build smaller units, while Maine is not creating an environment attractive to larger families through many of its policies, which are governed by what the corporation (Maine State Inc.) wants. Also, if all units are counted, it includes short-term rentals, which do not house permanent residents.
The state government acts as a corporation that writes the laws that govern itself and serves its interests, rather than serving the interests of the people. This is the situation that Article IV Sections 13 & 14 of the Maine Constitution were intended to prevent. The essential government function is to regulate industry, not to own and operate industry.
Section 13. Special legislation. The Legislature shall, from time to time, provide, as far as practicable, by general laws, for all matters usually appertaining to special or private legislation.
Section 14. Corporations, formed under general laws. Corporations shall be formed under general laws, and shall not be created by special Acts of the Legislature, except for municipal purposes, and in cases where the objects of the corporation cannot otherwise be attained; and, however formed, they shall forever be subject to the general laws of the State.
The first often-repeated statistic, citing 84,000 units needed, is explained. on Page 8
Historic Underproduction: The Study Team defines historic underproduction as the deficit of available homes for the existing population (the availability deficit) plus the deficit of homes for workers needed to increase the workforce to support Maine’s existing economy (the jobs : homes deficit)8. For more information about how the Study Team measured historic underproduction in Maine, see page 40.
Future Need: The Study Team defines future need as the number of homes needed to support Maine’s projected population and household change by 2030, while accounting for Maine’s high demand for seasonal homes
On page 54 of the study, it is stated that;
The Maine State Economist’s population projections anticipate 35,000 additional residents in Maine by 2030
Based on average household characteristics and the age distribution of the projected population, these residents translate to approximately 37,000 new households statewide by 2030
After going over this presentation several times, I interpret the paragraphs on Page 54 as speaking ONLY about the projected need of homes for an increased population, and not including the existing need for homes for the current population.
Even so, the projections on page 54 for population increases are far smaller than the projections on page 8 that account for the 84,000 figure.
Why is the projected population increase in service of the state’s economic plans concealed in the narrative about the existing housing shortage? Probably because the corporation (state) does not want the people weighing in on its massive state-wide plans that have the potential to dramatically change the character of the state. So while the 84,000 number repeatedly cited in th media is not false, it is an intentional smoke screen. By not explaining that it is a bundled term, it can be taken to represent the existing housing crisis needs while obscuring the population increase projections that are based on the state’s economic development agenda, used to justify overcrowded workforce housing zones in every Maine municipality, reduceing the quality of life of the working classes living in units removed from the historical connection to land found in traditional rural living.
The statistics quoted above from the state report raise the question: Why does the number of homes anticipated to be needed by 2030 exceed the number of anticipated new residents by 2030?
The explanation is that seasonal or “alternate use” homes are claimed to be a relatively constant percentage of new homes, slightly fluctuating around 17% from 2000-2021. In this section, “short-term rentals are not mentioned. Are they encoded into “alternate use”? If we are to believe that they are included, then we are asked to believe that they have no discernible effect on the housing shortage problem, or maybe the reverse. The need for new residential homes is created by the expansion of short-term rentals. If seventeen short-term rentals are built, then we need 83 new units in the overcrowded housing zones. By that math, one STR occupies the space of five overcrowded units, if these figures represent reality.
In the following paragraph, the study rationalizes away the effect of short-term rentals on the housing market:
While short-term rentals make up an increasing share of seasonal homes, they are not always directly comparable to homes that might otherwise be available to year-round residents looking for housing because of type, size, location and price point, or because the owners occupy them for part of the year. Many of these properties would not viably serve as year-round housing at all— 9% of the AirDNA inventory is hotels and hostels, B&Bs, and “unique” listings (e.g., tents, treehouses, caves, etc.) (Figure 23).
Of the total AirDNA inventory, the Study Team identified 57% percent that are directly relevant to the supply of year-round homes—defined as an entire single family or multifamily unit, available more than 3 months out of the year
LD 2003 (HP 1489) The first state-sponsored study admitted that short-term rentals affect the housing shortage, and then announced that short-term rentals would not be included in the study. and then declared that “under production of housing” is the cause of the housing shortage.
The rationale in the second State report argues that the homes being transferred to the short-term rental industry are not directly comparable to homes that might otherwise be available to year-round residents, but what is the model of comparison? At the end, it is revealed! The model is an entire single-family or multifamily it, available more than 3 months out of the year. So any home used more than three months out of the year is counted as a residential home. The Boothbay Region Water District, guarantees seasonal water service for Ocean Point by May 1st and shuts off around the third Thursday of October, so homes in Ocean Point, Maine, would be counted in the year-round residential stock, even though they are uninhabitable for six and a half months out of a year.
The report overlooks that year-round housing expectations have been downgraded from a “home” to a “unit” or a “room”, and in some cases, a bunk bed.
The report mentions “price point” as a reason some housing is not comparable to year-round housing. Landlords can get a higher rent by renting for the short term. Therefore, a home is rationalized to be “not comparable” to one that is rented as a year-round residence.
The report also rationalizes that some homes would not serve as year-round residences because some are hotels and hostels, B&Bs, which have been around long before short-term rentals appeared as their own unique category that competes with traditional tourist accommodations.
The report concludes by saying “Of the total AirDNA inventory, the Study Team identified 57% percent that are directly relevant to the supply of year-round homes. The comparison is not with the current reality, making it sound like the authors of the report have been instructed to minimize the effect of short-term rentals to discount them.
The purpose is to establish acceptance of a public narrative that the housing shortage is caused by the underproduction of housing. Do not ask what caused the production need that justifies the underproduction storyline. There is a clear intent to exclude short-term rentals from the narrative, which might be a clue.
The language used to describe the housing solutions for “the workforce” is “units,” reflecting a slave barracks mentality. The quality of working-class housing is being downgraded in the process. Compare the homes taken out of the market, once the homes of Maine’s working people, with the solution being aggressively advanced, and it is like comparing a New England village to fancy slave barracks.
But Maine is still a constitutional Home Rule State, and overcrowded housing for the workforce is just permitted, not a mandate. We need alternative “Priority Zones. I am envisioning the Workers in Residence Priority Zone with small businesses included, and every building occupying its own plot of land because it will not be developed by developers, but will be Land to Individuals Priority Zone! Imagine!
