Survey: Housing crunch growing worse in Maine

PORTLAND – David McCusker spent several months living in a homeless shelter when he moved to the city last year. He slept on a floor mat while looking for a good job and a decent place to live.

Now the 36-year-old taxi driver, who can no longer afford to share an $800 per month apartment in Gorham, is again feeling the squeeze of Maine’s affordable-housing crunch.

A new survey by the National Low Income Housing Coalition has found that rental housing in Maine became even less affordable in 2002.

The hourly wage that a full-time worker in Maine must earn to afford a two-bedroom apartment increased from $11.80 to $12.37 during the last year, a 5 percent increase, according to the survey.

In the Portland area, the same wage increased by 9 percent to $16.25, and in York County it went up 7 percent to $16.96. The two-bedroom housing wage increased by only 2.6 percent in Bangor to $11.31.

Housing is considered affordable when full-time workers can pay 30 percent or less of their income toward rent. That means someone earning the minimum wage of $5.75 an hour can afford to pay rent of up to $299 a month.

The current fair-market rent on a two-bedroom apartment is $643 statewide, $845 in the Portland area, and $588 in Bangor, according to the national coalition’s survey.

And according to figures from the Maine State Housing Authority, the annual rental inflation rate is 18 percent in the Portland area, 17 percent in the Biddeford area, and 17.5 percent in Brunswick.

The state agency also reports that 14,383 Maine families cannot find homes at affordable rents. The problem is exacerbated in the Portland area, where 23,000 jobs were created in the last decade, but only 3,000 apartments were built.

The Southern Maine Affordable Rental Housing Coalition has formed a leadership council made up of housing advocates who will work to increase construction of affordable housing.