AUBURN — A proposed bill would make it illegal for municipalities to use income requirements as a condition for home construction. If passed, Auburn’s agricultural zone would no longer have the building restrictions it’s had for decades.

With years of public debate over the regulation of the zone, and its implications for new housing, city officials and landowners are keeping a close eye on the bill as it heads to a public hearing Feb. 14.

State Rep. Bruce Bickford, R-Auburn, who introduced LD 1884, “An Act To Create Affordable Agricultural Homesteads,” said Thursday that he wants to make it easier for residents to build a home who may not even live on usable agricultural land. He said the income standard has long been “unfair” and that municipalities need more options to address a shortage of housing.

However, the proposal has already reignited concerns that development will strip away acreage that could be used for farming, recreation or open space at a time when that type of land is disappearing.

In Auburn, a new home can only be built in the agricultural zone if the landowner can prove that they’ve made at least 30% of their income from agricultural business. Until just two years ago, the income requirement was 50%.

Eric Cousens, director of planning and permitting in Auburn, said the city is keeping close tabs on the bill.

“The (agricultural) zone has really served as an urban growth boundary to really concentrate development where we already have services,” he said.

When the standard shifted in 2020, it added a stipulation that the income could be measured as 30% of the area median income. That means that in order to build a home, someone needs to make roughly $15,000 from agriculture.

“This would make that illegal if it passes,” he said. “We would have to start doing things differently than Auburn has been doing for 60 years now.”

Officials are already looking at ways they could tweak the zoning regulations if needed. Cousens said staff will be putting forward recommendations next month on changes the city could make to “protect some of the land that’s important to protect,” for agriculture and other uses.

He’s hoping to get public feedback on what the community sees as the most important land to protect.

Kathy Shaw, chairwoman of Auburn’s Agriculture Committee and owner of Valley View Farm, said the bill would break up important land at a time when the real estate market would essentially create a land rush in Auburn and throughout the state.

“If passed, our 18,000 zoning-protected acres in Auburn that have been sheltered since 1964 — down from the original 35,000 acres — will be capable of being built and developed,” she said. “No other municipality has this land mass, and pressure to develop will be strong. Given the current land prices of developable lots and the inflated housing construction costs, fear is that all of this land will be broken up and sold to the highest bidders.”

At the same time, the state is urging municipalities to get creative in the face of a housing shortage that’s caused home prices to balloon.

Bickford said removing the income standard would tie in with recommendations from a recent state commission on housing, which calls for municipalities to consider zoning regulations that encourage new housing and more housing types.

“We’re in a housing crisis in this state,” he said. “We don’t have enough housing for our population.”

He said it’s common for landowners to have chunks of land in the agricultural zone that are unusable as farmland or other agriculture-related purposes. So, he said, the land just sits untouched.

In response to concerns about how it could impact property taxes, Bickford said taxes would only go up accordingly for landowners who decide to build a home, but would remain the same elsewhere in the zone.

According to the proposed language, the bill would also prohibit municipalities from placing other conditions in an agricultural zone that are considered “more restrictive than any condition on farmland under the state’s farm tax law.”

It would also prohibit setting a minimum lot size in zones primarily used for agriculture “that is more than twice the minimum lot size of the most restrictive residential zone in that municipality.”

Auburn Mayor Jason Levesque, whose policy direction has been hyperfocused on new housing growth, has long argued against the income standard.

On Thursday, he called Bickford’s proposed bill “a critical first step to eliminating and preventing socio-economic discrimination within the state of Maine.” He said the income standard deprives the city of the economic benefit from the land, with large swaths of the land having “no benefit from (agriculture) or farming.”

While the standard is meant as a way to ensure the land is used for agriculture and resource protection, Levesque argued there are “other ways to make sure the land is used for agricultural purposes.”

Shaw said Thursday that she simply wants people to “educate themselves” on the issue, and talk about what they want for the future of this land. She said she doesn’t want development to occur around her property but she knows that’s not universal.

But, she said, once land is developed, it stays that way.

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