Maine’s largest city approved more than 1,300 new units of housing in 2025 — but only 159 homes were actually built in the last year.
That information is available on a housing dashboard operated by Portland’s Department of Planning and Urban Development. The webpage shows how many homes were approved and completed each year dating back to 2010.
Next year, that same information from 92 Maine communities will be gathered and reported to the state, as required by a new bill Gov. Janet Mills signed into law over the summer.
The legislation, LD 1184, requires communities with 4,000 residents or more to report how many residential building permits and certificates of occupancy they approved, as well as how many units were demolished each year, said Rep. Traci Gere (D-Kennebunkport), who presented the bill.
Knowing how many units — and what kind of homes — are being approved, built or demolished will allow lawmakers to better gauge whether the state is making progress on its goal of building as many as 84,000 new units by 2030.
That goal was set by the Maine Housing Production Needs Study, published in late 2023, which credited the state’s housing shortage to historic underproduction.
“You can’t manage what you don’t measure,” Gere said. “It’s important to have good information so that we can understand our progress and the things we need to do moving forward to continue creating the housing that people need.”
Gere said the data could show the state’s older housing stock, much of which was built to serve larger families, isn’t meeting the needs of the Mainers who are looking for a smaller space to live, either because they’re just starting out or because they’re downsizing as they age.
State leaders have previously looked to the U.S. Census for information on how many homes were being added over time. However, that source is flawed for two reasons, according to Greg Payne, senior housing advisor to the governor.
First, the U.S. Census Bureau’s housing data is voluntarily reported, so some jurisdictions don’t submit information. That information is then compiled into statewide numbers, so lawmakers don’t know which regions are building more than others.
Additionally, the U.S. Census’s numbers come from building permits, but it’s unclear whether those projects were ever created or completed.
“Sometimes a project may have been granted a building permit but then financing fell through or a NIMBY battle heats up or there’s a lawsuit, so those units don’t actually get built,” Payne said.
The new law calls for communities to report how many certificates of occupancy they issued so the state can track whether a permitted building was actually constructed and became occupied, Gere said.
Some individual cities like Portland and Bangor report how many homes were permitted or built in a year, but only within their city limits. Other groups, like the Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future, publish updates only on affordable housing projects in the works.
“This is going to be, both in breadth and overall accuracy, a much better means by which to understand what kind of housing development is happening all around the state,” Payne said. “It’ll also allow lawmakers at the local and state level to understand where we might need to focus our work going forward.”
Lawmakers required the bill to apply to communities with 4,000 people or more, which is where roughly two-thirds of the state’s population lives, according to Payne. However, smaller towns can voluntarily submit data if they choose.
While this leaves a hole for some data to go accounted for, Payne said the law focuses on larger communities because those are the places where development is more likely to occur. Additionally, sizable communities are more likely to have the municipal staff needed to report the data.
Community officials will submit the necessary information in an online form at the end of each calendar year, Gere said. The Maine Office of Community Affairs also offers communities technical assistance and funding to help them submit the information.
“The goal is to make it easy to report, even for municipalities that are smaller and may have less staff and capacity,” Gere said.
The first wave of data could become available this coming spring, but the first full data report likely won’t be published until early 2027, Payne said. The information will be posted on the State of Maine Housing Data Portal.