Housing advocates are calling on lawmakers to take immediate action to make housing more affordable and protect families from eviction.
Outside of the Cumberland County courthouse in Portland Thursday morning, activists noted that hundreds of eviction cases had been processed there in recent months. And Allina Diaz, a community organizer with Maine Equal Justice, said that 58 eviction cases were happening inside the courthouse that very morning.
She says affordable housing is already scarce, and the end of the federal emergency rental assistance program will only make the situation worse.
"Without essential programs like emergency rental assistance, evictions will continue to rise. And more Mainers will be in courts like this across the state, facing the loss of their home," Diaz says.
Victoria Morales, the executive director of the Quality Housing Coalition, says the state should invest in more rental assistance and build up to 1,000 affordable housing units each year.
"Anecdotally, every person in our system, right now, who is low-income, will not be able to support themselves and their rent. So we will see more evictions," she says.
Supporters of Gov. Janet Mills' heating and housing relief plan say it would provide funding through the winter for Maine families who had been receiving federal rental assistance, and they called upon the state Legislature to approve it.
