In Portland, the issues of affordable housing and homelessness are front-and-center, as encampments have grown across the city. The issues have divided public opinion and dominated the city's five-way mayoral race.
Grace Benninghoff covers city hall for the Portland Press Herald. She told Maine Public's Robbie Feinberg that each candidate has very different ideas for how to tackle the key issues — including the debate over removing the encampments as winter approaches.
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Benninghoff: There's really different ideas about these sweeps, you know, Mark Dion and Justin Costa think they need to continue. They both feel like the encampments are not safe for neighbors, for the communities around them or for the people living in them and they just think it's ultimately unacceptable for people to be sleeping outside. So they're supportive of the continued sweeps, of course alongside efforts to get people into shelter, and to provide outreach and mental health and addiction services.
Other candidates, Dylan Pugh, Andrew Zarro and Pious Ali are not supportive of the sweeps. Andrew Zarro thinks we can wait, we can let the encampment stand as they are for now. And he'd like to build 100 units of transitional housing very, very quickly. He thinks that could go up, you know, in a matter of weeks, and then move people into there rather than forcing them to relocate to somewhere they might not even be able to go, might not have room for them. Dylan Pugh would like to sanction an encampment in Portland, and let them stand until people make their own decision to go into shelter. And Pious Ali would like to continue with outreach but stop sweeping the encampments.
So I think that everyone is definitely concerned about the state of them right now. None of these candidates want to see Portlanders sleeping outside in tents and living in dangerous conditions. But I think they just have different ideas for how to mitigate that and how to approach it.
Feinberg: On the issue of affordable housing, people often say that the solutions to those, they require years and years, they're long term solutions to some of these big housing problems. But what is really being put forward by these candidates? Is there any way that they're saying 'maybe we can make some progress pretty quickly on that issue'?
I think that like you said, you're right, a lot of people feel like this is a longer term issue. But there are some proposals for ways that we could support affordability in the short term. So again, yeah, Mark Dion had a proposal to create a rental assistance program through the city. So he was proposing starting a fund within the city where you know, people who fall below a certain income level could come to the city and say, 'Hey, I think I can get by with this month to month rent, but I can't afford the $5,000 upfront for the security deposit, first month's, last month's rent,' and the city would help them with that.
I think a lot of candidates have talked about incentives for developers to build more affordable housing. So currently, we have the inclusionary zoning rule, which says that any developer who comes into the city to build like luxury housing or a big hotel or something has to build at least 25% affordable units. But as it stands right now, developers can pay out of that -- there's a fee per unit, that's something around like $170,000 per unit.
And you know, some people don't think that's enough. Dylan Pugh would like that fee to go up tenfold or he'd like to eliminate the option to opt out of inclusionary zoning altogether.
Justin Costa is focused on, you know, small, like, 'hey, let's build a four-unit building, you know, by Shelley's fish and chips,' or 'let's build a three unit building here.' So he's sort of just looking for anywhere we can squeeze in a little bit of housing.
Andrew Zarro, has a much more ambitious proposal. He wants to build 10,000 to 12,000 units of housing in the next 10 years. So he feels like that's really the only path forward, he knows that housing is a huge issue for Portlanders, and it's contributing to the homelessness crisis. It's making it harder to attract diverse communities to Portland when it's just becoming so astronomically expensive. So he wants to build a lot more units of housing and he has ideas about how to fund that, through housing trusts and partnerships with the state.
Pious Ali would like to work towards getting a $50 million housing bond. And using that to build more housing.
We've got definitely a focus on building housing, but some proposals for shorter term action as well.
There is such a focus right now on the mayoral race. Just how much can a mayor actually do once one of these people does come into power next year?
Yeah, this is really interesting, right? Because we've seen since you know, the mayoral position has kind of has been an elected position here in Portland. We've seen three people hold the seat who've really approached it in very different ways.
So this position is one vote on the City Council. It's a role meant to sort of foster cohesion, to be a figurehead for the city. This is not a role where someone can go in and just, you know, say, 'okay, hey, we're building 10,000 units, don't care what anyone else says.' If the rest of the city council isn't on board, if this mayor can't sow consensus amongst the City Council, then these ideas that all these candidates are proposing aren't going to get anywhere.
I think that when we're thinking about mayor and what this person can really do once they're in that seat, a lot of it's going to be about first of all, yeah, bringing forth policy proposals, bringing forth concrete ideas and saying like, 'Hey, here's an idea, can we get this through,' but the second really important piece is going to be making sure that they communicate with the council in a way that allows them to get that five-vote majority because their vote counts just as much as the city councilor in district 4, just as much as the city councilor in district 1. It's all weighted the same when it comes to really making those decisions in the end.
