Build it, and they will have to stay somewhere.
AUGUSTA – Even before a ballot is cast for the Indian casino, some Mainers have applied for subsidized housing in Sanford, hoping to beat the rush and stake out a place to live if a casino job is in the cards.
But those optimistic Mainers may find little available living space – subsidized or not – if the casino-resort is approved Nov. 4 and becomes reality, state and local officials familiar with housing in southern Maine say.
In Sanford, the likely location for the gambling complex, some apartment owners will likely drop out of subsidized housing so they can charge bigger rents, said Bill Keefer, executive director of Sanford’s housing authority.
“Unless you replace those units with something else, you have a real crisis,” said Keefer.
A housing crisis isn’t limited to that York County town of just less than 21,000. Southern Maine’s scarcity of available rents and affordable housing is well-known and well-documented.
The region’s housing market faces a crisis and adding 4,700 casino workers would only make it worse, says a memorandum prepared by the Baldacci administration, which opposes the casino.
“Southern Maine is an overstressed housing market,” says the report by Public Safety Commissioner Michael Cantara, Gov. John Baldacci’s point man on casino issues.
“While southern Maine’s population has not grown dramatically, there has been a larger increase in the number of households and that is one of the driving forces in the need for additional housing,” says Cantara’s report, which based on state housing authority statistics from the U.S. census, real estate industry, housing surveys and other reports.
Those who want the $650 million casino built are not convinced a housing problem lies ahead.
Erin Lehane of the pro-casino campaign Think About It said the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy tribes who want to build the casino expect to hire from pools of unemployed and underemployed people who already live in the area.
Lehane said the tribes see jobless people in the Lewiston-Auburn area as potential employees and are committed to running buses to that area to bring them to work.
In addition, she said, the casino could hire some of the thousands of people who now live in York County but say their present jobs force them to commute too far to work.
“Most of the people who will work here are people who are already in (area) homes,” said Lehane. “It’s not bringing people in.”
Keefer and others disagree.
While many low-income earners who already live in the area will likely move on to casino jobs, a new wave of people needed to fill their old jobs will likely arrive, will need somewhere to live and will probably not be able to afford rents, let alone homes.
“Somebody in Sanford would have to have a combined income of $57,000 now to afford a house” in town, said Keefer.
Using job figures provided by the developers, David Versel of the Southern Maine Regional Planning Commission calculates the casino would create a demand for 2,400 new housing units, more than half of them multifamily.
Factoring in the region’s low vacancy rate and demands for housing from other market segments, a new casino “makes a bad situation worse,” said Versel, a senior planner.
“Even without the casino, there’s already a shortage of housing units,” Versel said. “What’s happening is there’s a lot of demand for new housing and there’s not nearly enough construction going on.”
York County’s acute shortage of rental housing is exacerbated by rents that are rising faster than incomes, making them increasingly unaffordable.
Using pay projections of $31,400 for casino workers and $25,600 for food and beverage workers, Cantara’s memorandum says few could afford homes or apartments at present rates in key communities near the casino.
The Kittery-York-Portsmouth, N.H., area is among the 10 least affordable housing markets in the country, based on local incomes, said Frank O’Hara of Planning Decisions Inc., which consults on housing issues.
Housing in the southern coastal towns such as Kennebunk and Wells has long been out of reach for lower-income earners, and Portland’s market is also very tight. The shortage puts the emphasis on building more housing.
“The major effect would be inland – Sanford, Waterboro, Shapleigh and Alfred – where new construction would be likely to increase substantially,” said O’Hara, whose clients have included the Maine State Housing Authority and pro-casino forces.
But the administration’s report sees no reason for optimism that local communities will provide affordable housing in the near future. It points to Scarborough voters’ recent rejection of the 397-unit Great American Neighborhood proposal, a mix of houses, apartments, condominiums and offices which supporters touted as a model for suburban growth.
Southern Maine’s tight labor pool has contributed in recent years to a slowdown in residential building activity, which was down about 8 percent in September 2001 from the same period in 2000, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
HUD also said a lack of available sites and costs of construction appeared to be the main reasons for a low level of construction of multifamily units, causing a tight rental market.
Single-family homes would also be too expensive for most casino workers, says Cantara’s report, which focuses on labor markets in the Biddeford, Kittery-York, Portland, Sanford and Sebago Lakes areas.
Casino workers could afford only 45 of the 2,060 single-family homes – about 2 percent – sold in the five labor markets during the first half of 2003, it says. Food and beverage workers could afford only 23 – or 1 percent – of them.
Among the five markets, the most affordable homes last year were in the Sebago Lakes region, the report says. But casino workers there could only afford less than 70 percent of the median-price home there, based on 2003 prices.
Average 2003 rents for two-bedroom apartments would also be out of reach for casino workers in three of the five labor markets, according to Cantara’s report. Food and beverage workers, who earn less, would not be able to afford two-bedroom average rents even where apartments are cheapest, the Sebago Lakes region, it says.
Despite the statistics showing a tight housing market, a new employer bringing in thousands of jobs may not trigger a crisis feared by some.
Sanford’s Keefer, trying to focus on solutions, sees possibilities of rehabilitating old public buildings and mills in the area into low-cost housing.
O’Hara pointed to communities like Belfast, a city of 6,500 where credit card company MBNA opened an office complex putting 3,000 people to work and no crisis developed.
Belfast City Manager Terry St. Peter said many of MBNA’s employees commute considerable distances – some from Augusta, Bangor and even as far as Mattawamkeag and Ellsworth.
“We’re tight, but we’re getting by,” St. Peter said. “It hasn’t been a crisis.”
St. Peter also questions whether new housing should precede a new business development – or whether it should follow. He cited examples of Maine boom towns of the past where industry came first – and housing followed.
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On the Net:
Southern Maine Regional Planning Commission: http://www.smrpc.org/
AP-ES-10-22-03 1538EDT
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