While most of the United States experiences a progressively concerning yearly increase in temperature, Maine is warming faster than any region in the U.S. – that is, while the rest of the country is projected to reach 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit in warming, the Northeast will reach 5.4 degrees.
In the upcoming election, climate activists in Portland are taking a stand against climate change like never before – a much-needed stand, as exemplified by Maine’s rapidly changing climate. More specifically, People First Portland, an advocacy group consisting of Democratic Socialists of America members and unhoused residents, has created five referenda that would work to increase workers’ wages, preserve tenants’ rights and build more affordable housing, all while increasing the development of sustainable housing and infrastructure. Of particular note is the referendum Question C, a Green New Deal for Portland. The key ideas of this measure involve inclusionary zoning that mandates increased affordable housing, increased environmental regulations for such housing and better worker conditions and higher wages in the construction of such development.
Yet, Building a Better Portland, a political action committee that includes affordable-housing developers, has come out strongly against this measure and against the rent control (Question D) and short-term rental (Question E) measures. Their opposition to the Green New Deal for Portland is alarming. Is the group’s choice to fight this measure a suggestion of its lack of critical thinking skills? Or is it perhaps motivated by a desire to maintain the hegemony of real estate development while refusing to problematize its questionable outcomes?
The opposition group’s main points of contention are that the regulatory measures of Question C would increase expenses for affordable housing, and thus make it far more difficult to build and develop the much-needed residences. Yet, even now, Portland’s affordable-housing market is immensely underdeveloped. According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Portland should be adding between 136 and 159 units of affordable housing per year. Instead, that number is currently between 65 and 90 units per year, according to the city’s Affordable Housing Fund.
From this data, it is clear that Portland has an undeniable housing problem. One only needs to step outside to see the immense number of people who are still unhoused. Yet, rather than examine the symptoms that have contributed to this crisis of homelessness and call the development process into question itself, the affordable-housing developers in Building a Better Portland merely see affordable-housing development as the catch-all solution to fighting homelessness and expensive rents, completely discounting other factors that contribute to poverty, like unlivable wages and inhumane working conditions – factors that the Green New Deal for Portland is hoping to change.
Additionally, building development accounts for 40 percent of carbon emissions in Maine. This number cannot simply be mitigated by the market forces that dictate development, on which most developers rely so much. Rather, the sustainability practices put forth by the Green New Deal for Portland will influence affordable-housing development positively in slowing temperature increase in the state.
Scientific and policy-based methods of development have been obfuscated by organizations like Building a Better Portland. Developers maintain a delusional reliance on market forces that fails to adopt a critical lens in analyzing the potential shortcomings of today’s real estate market in environmental and economic terms.
For instance, already in Maine, tidal flooding has cost the real estate market $70 million. Such damage can be mitigated by adopting an environmentally regulated model of housing development like the policies put forth in Question C. Ultimately, what’s more costly: the increased expenses of implementing up-to-date environmental standards for each building development, or the millions of dollars in damage that will occur if this referendum isn’t passed? You decide. Vote “yes” on Question C, and in doing so, work to dismantle the inequitable real estate development establishment that values economic prosperity over the future of our state and its residents.
This column was corrected at 1:50 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 28, to clarify the membership and mission of the Building a Better Portland PAC.
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