When Elijah Ramirez’s parents were in their early 30s, they had steady, middle-income jobs that afforded them a comfortable lifestyle in a beautiful four-bedroom home in Washington state.
Now, at 32, Ramirez is working in the medical field and making almost as much as both his parents made combined, but the Westbrook apartment that he shares with two other roommates could best be described as “shoeboxy.”
“I want the life that my parents had,” he said. “That shouldn’t be shooting too high.”
He pays $900 a month for his share of the home, plus electricity and internet.
It’s not a bad apartment. In fact, it’s the nicest one he’s lived in, even if it is “kind of falling apart.” He loves the neighborhood, which he said is quiet and peaceful. His landlords are nice and he lucked out with his roommates.
But each time rent is due, Ramirez can’t shake the feeling that he’s just “hemorrhaging money.”
“If I had the option, I would own a house in a heartbeat,” he said.
The Maine Trust for Local News partnered with the Siena Research Institute to survey 824 Maine residents in July about what their lives are like here.
They were asked about their communities and whether things are getting better or worse. They were asked to rate the availability and affordability of housing, health and childcare, food, outdoors access, and job opportunities.
Results in many categories were mixed, but Mainers were loud and clear when it came to housing: Something needs to change. In a big way.
Of those surveyed, 85% had a negative view on the availability of affordable housing. It was by far the worst scoring question.
The second worst score was also about housing — 65% of the respondents felt it was unlikely that people in their communities would be able to afford quality housing.
And 28% ranked affordability, housing and economic challenges as the worst thing about the community. Again, that was the largest share of responses.
That negative perception was felt across all corners of the state, by Mainers of all ages, income brackets and political parties, but it was particularly high for renters, people between the ages of 35 and 54 and, somewhat surprisingly, people making more than $100,000.
The discontent isn’t surprising to anyone who has been paying attention. Home prices and rents have both more than doubled statewide in the last decade, pushing the possibility of homeownership further out of reach for people like Ramirez.
State and municipal officials haven’t been sitting idle as residents struggle.
In the last few years, legislators have passed a slew of land-use changes designed to encourage more and denser development.
The governor’s office set an ambitious goal to build more than 80,000 new homes by 2030.
Cities like Portland have passed rent control laws and instituted inclusionary zoning ordinances in an attempt to protect and increase affordability, though opinions on efficacy have been mixed.
Solving the housing crisis has become a key issue in the impending gubernatorial election, with all three candidates proposing solutions including investing millions in affordable housing production, greater investment in manufactured housing, and reducing red tape that keeps timelines and costs high for builders.
But so far, there’s been no silver bullet or panacea.
Results from the first year of data collection on the state’s housing production goals weren’t discouraging, exactly. Municipalities permitted the right number of units, but few were income-restricted and many were thought to be second homes, clustered in recreation and tourist-heavy areas. It’s also still unclear how many of those permits will translate to certificates of occupancy.
For now, we seem to be stuck.
The gist for many, as Ramirez said, remains the same: “I need more money and we need more houses.”
‘Worse and worse’
Nick Lesser is tired of renting.
A middle school social studies teacher, Lesser, 43, has been paying a little over $2,000 a month to live in a one-bedroom Munjoy Hill apartment in Portland with his dog, Luka.
He’s hopeful that within the next year or so he can add “homeowner” to his resume.
He’s “testing the waters” right now, but with home sale prices seeming to break records just as quickly as new ones are set and interest rates moving in the wrong direction, “it just seems like the affordability issue just keeps getting worse and worse,” he said.
Not long after Lesser and his now-ex wife moved to Portland from New York City, they put in an offer on a home in Deering that they loved. They offered $100,000 over the asking price of around $650,000 and were sure they’d get it.
They didn’t. The house sold for around $800,000.
“To me, that seems like an indication that we just need more housing,” Lesser said.
Worries about the future
Dissatisfaction over the state’s housing situation isn’t just an issue impacting young renters or low-income families. According to the Siena poll, 90% of people making more than $100,000 and 84% of homeowners surveyed felt negatively about the affordability of housing.
Laura Mitchell, executive director of the Maine Affordable Housing Coalition, said those results mirror the findings of a similar survey the housing advocacy organization did with YouGov this summer. That survey also found that the availability and cost of housing were a top concern to up to 90% of Mainers.
Both reports, Mitchell said, underscore the need for building more housing, preserving the existing stock and putting in safeguards to help people stay housed.
The state and communities need to reduce construction timelines and costs, she added.
“These findings send a clear message: Mainers see affordable housing as increasingly out of reach for the people in their communities,” Mitchell said in an email. “A home people can afford is the foundation for good health, economic stability, and the ability to build a future in Maine. We can’t leave a generation behind.”
The next generation is a chief concern for Lew Collins, a retired school superintendent who lives in Hallowell.
“I do not understand how we have not even begun to address this issue,” he said.
Collins, 73, owns his home, but he worries about young people trying to buy today.
When he bought his first house, his salary was $30,000 and his home was $40,000 — about one and a third times his salary (though he did have 14.5% interest rate). Now average housing costs are five or six times people’s salaries, at least, he said, far beyond what many people can afford.
“If you’re in Portland, you better not be a teacher. You won’t be able to live there,” he said. “Don’t be a firefighter or a policeman or any of the great people who do public service work. They just don’t pay them enough.”
Roughly 75 miles east in Lovell, Rondi Stearns, worries about the future of her community. Like Collins, Stearns bought her home decades ago, but she fears that opportunity is slipping out of reach for others.
The average age of the volunteer fire fighters in the small Oxford County town, for example, has started creeping upward as home prices have escalated.
“Part of that is that people don’t volunteer as much, but the other part is that you can’t afford to live here if you’re young, and certainly, if you have a family,” said Stearns, 68.
Of the 20 Lovell homes posted for sale on Zillow in mid-September, eight were over $1 million, with one priced just shy of $6 million. Another four were more than $800,000.
“It just makes me very sad,” she said. “To get started here in Lovell, Maine, I think it’s a challenge.”
Harder to stay in Maine
Caleb Pearson is struggling to find a reason to stay in Maine.
He has a good job doing carpentry for a boat manufacturer. He’s unmarried, has no children or pets, and lives in a house owned by his church that only charges $400 a month, with all utilities included.
“I’ve been saving for 15 years, I’ve had low expenses, but I still can’t afford a home,” said Pearson, 40, of Bangor.
And if it’s this hard for Pearson, who said he makes more than the area median income, he can’t imagine how hard it must be for a single parent or a younger person with a starting salary.
“There’s something majorly wrong here,” he said.
He’s dating someone in Indianapolis, where the home prices are a fraction of what they are in Bangor, he said.
It’s discouraging to see nearly comparable houses listed for $330,000 in his neighborhood and $160,000 there.
“I don’t see any reason to stay in Maine,” he said.
As he starts thinking about the best place for his future, from an economic standpoint, he said the decision is clear: “not here.”
Not ‘good for the little guy’
Not every renter aspires to homeownership. For many, it’s hard enough to pay the rent on time, let alone save for a down payment.
Jana Chandler, 75, of Harpswell has had to get creative.
In one apartment she rented, she did work around the landlord’s farm in exchange for a discounted rate. She painted, cleaned and picked apples.
In another, she worked as a property manager, doing the landscaping, serving as the point person for an issue like a burst pipe, again for a roughly two-thirds rent cut.
She knows she’s lucky to have had landlords who’ll work with her. She knows people in town who’ve had to leave because their landlord sold their home to an out-of-state investor who then slapped a coat of paint on the wall and raised the rent beyond what they can afford.
That’s not even mentioning the apartments that have been converted to short-term rentals in the Midcoast town.
“They’re not going to offer you a job to help you pay your rent,” Chandler said. “I managed to find ways around it and keep my feet underneath me but I can understand how it could easily go wrong for somebody.”
Chandler remembers when she and her then-husband bought their Canaan home in 1985. The old farmhouse came with 45 acres. They paid $50,000.
“[Today] you couldn’t buy a postage stamp of land for that,” she said.
At that time, she could spend $140 at the grocery store to feed her family of four for two weeks.
That’s a reality that she said her grandsons, both in their 20s, will never know. Their best bet for homeownership, she said, is if someone leaves them land.
“I’m an old person and everything’s changed a lot and it just seems like it’s not changing for the good for the little guy,” she said.
This story was originally published by the Maine Trust for Local News. Hannah LaClaire can be reached at hlaclaire@pressherald.com.