Tyler Brown can’t say for certain how many new homes are needed in Presque Isle, or what the right balance of affordable, workforce or market-rate units is. He just knows they need a lot more.

“No matter what we build, it’s necessary,” said Brown, the city manager. “We desperately need it.”

But new development opportunities are few and far between for the Aroostook County city nearly 300 miles north of Portland and an hour’s drive from the end of Interstate 95.

There aren’t enough skilled laborers to support a flurry of new building activity. The tradespeople that are there are too busy, or can’t make residential construction financially feasible.

It’s a challenge shared across many of Maine’s rural municipalities that, like Presque Isle, are trying to court new businesses and revitalize their downtowns. It’s also one both state and federal officials are trying to remedy.

U.S. Sen. Angus King last week introduced the Farmhouse-to-Workforce Housing Act, a bill that would expand the existing Housing Preservation Grants program so rural homeowners can create rental housing on their property – either by making an apartment inside an existing building or by adding an accessory dwelling unit nearby.

Currently, according to King’s office, these grants are underused and receive limited funding that can only cover small costs and repairs. Through the Farmhouse-to-Workforce Housing Act, low- or medium-income residents would be eligible for grants up to $100,000. The funding also would establish a required landlord education program to help homeowners learn to manage rental housing. The units would need to be rentals for at least five years to keep homeowners from flipping their property and selling it at an increased value.

The bill aligns with Maine’s L.D. 2003, a landmark state law that allows for accessory dwelling units on any property zoned for residential use. These units often serve as additional housing for family and rental income sources.

It’s the latter that King hopes to see with his bill, which his office said is intended to make it easier for Maine people in rural areas to access housing in the communities where they work.

“Maine is one big small town connected by long roads, and when I drive those long roads I see potentially available properties in the same communities that are facing crisis levels of housing availability,” King said in a statement. “This bill makes it cheaper and easier for Maine people and residents across the country to renovate their homes or build new ones on their land, and ease the shortfall.”

UNIQUE CHALLENGES

Kara Wilbur tried to figure out how to make the numbers work for new construction in rural Maine. It’s how she first got into modular building, now the bread and butter of her development company, Dooryard. She thought the ready-made materials would make it more cost-effective, and it did, but it still didn’t make projects viable.

That’s where Maine’s Rural Affordable Rental Housing Program helped. Launched in 2022, the $20 million program funds small developments between five and 18 units for low- and moderate-income households.

Wilbur said the program is targeted toward smaller-scale developers who are trying to invest in their communities. King’s bill targets homeowners.

She recently completed an 18-unit affordable project in Madison and is now working on projects in Newcastle and Rumford.

“Normally, development is high risk, high reward,” Wilbur said. “With the (rural program) they cap the development returns so you’re doing the project because it’s a way to actually get something built, which wouldn’t be possible to build in the current market conditions.”

The housing crisis may seem like less of a problem in rural communities, which often have significantly lower housing costs than in southern Maine – the median home sale price in Cumberland County last month was $592,000, compared to $168,000 in Aroostook County. But municipalities outside of Maine’s cities face unique challenges, said Kara Hay, CEO of Penquis, a Bangor-based nonprofit working to fight poverty in rural parts of the state.

Development can’t happen at the same pace it does in Portland – there aren’t enough developers and contractors to build, plumb and electrify new homes.

“In areas of Aroostook County, it can take months to a year to book a plumber,” Hay said. Rural areas also have more single-family homes spread across large swaths of land and the isolation can reduce access to supports like weatherization, heating and electricity, she added.

There’s a delicate balance for officials to strike between renovating existing homes (which also requires contractors) and building new supply.

“Rehabbing and expanding older residential properties is vital so we don’t lose our current housing stock,” Hay said, but “Maine has not built enough homes for decades, so the focus must be on building new homes.”

While Wilbur’s entire business model is dedicated to constructing new housing, she agreed that boosting funding to rehabilitate the state’s existing housing stock should be a top priority.

“We have all these beautiful buildings, they’re still beautiful and the bones are still there, we just need investment,” she said. “The people who live in these communities, that’s what they want. When you come in with these new projects, people are like ‘That’s great, but we have 100 buildings that are vacant.’ People are attached to them. They have history and they have stories,” she said.

WORKFORCE CHALLENGES

Wilbur sees the rural rental program as a way for developers to reinvest in neighborhoods that likely haven’t seen investment in a long time.

A housing shortage doesn’t just hurt residents, it can also hurt businesses, said Liza Fleming-Ives, executive director of The Genesis Fund, a nonprofit community lender that focuses on development in rural areas. 

“Employers … have a hard time attracting candidates to jobs because of the lack of availability of housing and the affordability, and then that discourages or is a factor in decisions of business expansion,” she said.

For years, city officials have worked to recruit more businesses to Presque Isle.

The 400-acre Skyway Industrial Park is now home to more than 60 businesses, including big-name tenants like Frito-Lay and CocaCola. The city has been tapped for a $4.5 million aerospace research center.

Revitalization efforts also have also hit the downtown, including a new tax increment financing district, the renovation of a 90-year-hotel and a traffic improvement plan.

These are all positive signs for Presque Isle, but the lack of housing could stall the efforts just as they’re ramping up.

“We have companies … that would love to expand immediately,” Brown said. “But you need the workforce. It’s an uphill battle. It’s something we know we need to address immediately. We don’t want our businesses to leave to go find a labor force.”

City officials plan to launch a housing study this fall, with a request for quotes from developers in the spring. 

Brown, the city manager, said he’s encouraged by programs like King’s bill and the rural affordable rental program, and said there’s a lot of interest statewide in solving the housing crisis.

“They want to be part of this housing revolution here in Maine, it’s just making the numbers work,” he said. “If we can somehow bridge that gap or offer some sort of incentive, I think we could get there.”

Copy the Story Link