Housing

Build more homes.It's the fix that lasts.

Maine is tens of thousands of homes short, and it still isn't building enough to catch up. When there aren't enough homes, prices and rents go up. Rent control divides up the shortage. Building ends it.

Sources: State of Maine Housing Production Needs Study, October 2023; U.S. Census Bureau, Building Permits Survey, housing units authorized

What's in the way

Most of what makes a home expensive is decided before the first nail.

Minimum lot sizes, limits on how many homes can go on a lot, long permit reviews, parking rules, and building rules each add cost and time. Add them up and the starter home, the duplex, and the small apartment building are the first things that stop making sense to build.

Good intentions can stop building too. Portland's 2020 slate raised the share of units in larger projects that must be affordable to 25 percent. The city approved a record 1,420 units in 2025 and saw 187 completed; developers point to that rule, along with costs and interest rates.

Maine has started to fix this. The 2022 housing law, LD 2003, made towns allow accessory apartments, at least two homes per lot, and extra density for affordable housing. Laws passed in 2025 and 2026 raise the floor to at least three homes per lot, and four where there's public water and sewer or a growth area, starting in July 2027. It's a start. It isn't enough to close a gap of tens of thousands of homes.

Sources: Portland Press Herald, April 22, 2026; Portland Press Herald, May 8, 2026; 30-A M.R.S. §4364-B; 30-A M.R.S. §4364-A; 30-A M.R.S. §4364; Maine Legislature, LD 1829 (Public Law 2025, chapter 385); Maine Legislature, LD 2173 (Public Law 2025, chapter 733); State of Maine Housing Production Needs Study, October 2023

The wrong turn

Rent control divides up the shortage.

Sources: Portland City Code, chapter 6, article XII (rent control), current compilation; City of Portland, rent control FAQ (October 2025); Portland Press Herald, September 10, 2026; City of Portland, official results, November 7, 2023 election

What the research found

It helps the tenants it covers. The renters and owners around them pay.

Where it has led

In two revolutions, going after rent came first.

Rent control isn't always a step toward socialism. The United States used it in World War II, and so did plenty of governments that were nothing like socialist. But in the two great socialist revolutions of the last century, going after rent came early.

In Russia, within weeks of taking power in 1917, Lenin drafted a law to confiscate apartment buildings and have rent paid to the new Soviets. In Cuba, ten weeks after the revolution in 1959, rents were cut 30 to 50 percent; the State Department reported that construction came to a standstill. By October 1960, renting out a home was against the law.

Venezuela went the other way this year. In August 2026 its interim government lifted rent control on new leases. Its own National Assembly president had said the old law kept about 200,000 homes off the rental market.

Sources: V. I. Lenin, Theses for a Law on the Confiscation of Apartment and Tenement Houses, November 1917; U.S. Department of State, memorandum on Cuba's first six months, July 1, 1959 (Foreign Relations of the United States); U.S. Foreign Claims Settlement Commission, decision describing Cuba's Urban Reform Law of October 14, 1960; Acceso a la Justicia (Caracas), on Venezuela's new lease law, September 1, 2026

What we'd do

Let Maine build.

1. Homes by right.

   Where there's water and sewer, let owners build duplexes, triplexes, and small apartment buildings without a special permit or a zoning fight.

2. A clock on permits.

   A town should answer a complete housing application within a set number of days, and a silence past the deadline should count as a yes.

3. Price every new rule.

   Every new building or energy-code requirement should come with its cost per home, and starter homes should get a simpler path.

4. Make landlords partners.

   Back the landlords who rent to people leaving homelessness: a state guarantee that covers damage and unpaid rent, and a fast hearing before a court magistrate or a referee both sides choose, with the guarantee paying the landlord when the landlord wins. Maine's small program for damage ended last year.

5. Taxes owners can plan for.

   Bring back a state limit on property tax growth and revalue on a regular cycle, so no owner is hit with a tax increase the rent can't cover.

6. One rule on rent.

   Join the more than 30 states that don't let cities adopt rent control, and help renters directly instead, through the Property Tax Fairness Credit and rental aid for the households that need it.

7. Grow the tools Maine already has.

   Towns can already use tax increment financing for housing, and the state's affordable housing tax credit, capped at $10 million a year, now runs through 2036. Raise the credit, and make it easier for towns to use TIFs for rentals working families can afford.

8. Count it every year.

   Publish housing permits by town every year and hold Augusta to the state's own goal: at least 8,500 homes a year.

Sources: Portland Housing Authority, landlord incentives (the state program ended December 31, 2025); Urban Institute, “Rent Control: Key Policy Components and Their Equity Implications,” August 2023; 30-A M.R.S. §5225, what a municipal TIF may pay for, including housing; 36 M.R.S. §5219-WW, Maine's affordable housing tax credit; Public Law 2025, chapter 699 (LD 2116), extending the credit through 2036

Rent control divides up a shortage. Building ends it.