AUGUSTA, Maine — Advocates for affordable housing met with legislators outside the State House Tuesday to try to push through a handful of bills aimed at addressing what they say is a crisis.
Gina Morin of Auburn, who emceed the rally, said they had previously experienced homelessness.
"We’ve already waited way too long to deal with this, and our representatives in Augusta have the power to change it now," Morin said about the bills being discussed by the Legislature.
Officials for the Maine People's Alliance, the lobbying and campaign organization that organized the event, said they are targeting six bills in particular.
Among them, LD 1673, An Act to Create a Comprehensive Permit Process for Affordable Housing, aims to establish a minimum standard for affordable housing in chosen communities across the state, and it would create a state affordable housing appeals committee to oversee municipalities. According to the bill's text, three of the five committee members would be chosen by the Maine State Housing Authority. The remaining two would be chosen by the governor.
Rep. John Andrews, R-South Paris, told NEWS CENTER Maine the bill has some good attributes but he opposes it, saying he doesn’t want an unelected board to take decisions from Maine’s towns.
"The thing I disagree with the most is having a state-level board that supersedes local control," he said in a Tuesday interview at the State House.
"Communities that don’t want something in their neighborhood can voice that to their selectmen or town council and, if they don’t like that, they can vote them out," he said. "But, with a state-level board, appointed by the governor, the speaker, and the president of the senate, there’s really no appeal for that. It’s kind of, 'You’re doing what I want, and you don’t have any recourse.'”
Rep. Mike Sylvester, D-Portland, who attended the rally, said the state already has authority to have the final say on affordable housing.
"We can come in and we can make the rules about how folks should be able to be housed," he said in an interview after the rally. "Because one of the main priorities of a legislature is to make sure that people can find work; that people can be housed; and that people can eat."
As of Tuesday, LD 1673 remained under debate in the Labor and Housing Committee.