Lawmakers, advocates push for enhanced tenant protections amid statewide housing crisis / by Evan Popp

_{^{Advocates rally outside the State House for affordable housing | Beacon}}

_{Originally published in the Maine Beacon on March 10, 2023}

A broad coalition of lawmakers and advocates are pushing for bills that would reform Maine’s housing laws by preventing discrimination against a tenant for a prior eviction and raising notice requirements landlords must give for rent increases — two measures among a slate of legislation to address the state’s affordable housing crisis.

The bills were heard at a public hearing Thursday before the legislature’s Judiciary Committee. One of the measures, LD 557, sponsored by Rep. Ambureen Rana (D-Bangor), would bar landlords from asking people about any previous evictions and from using a potential tenant’s eviction history as a basis for denial. The other bill, LD 701, sponsored by Rep. Chris Kessler (D-South Portland), would raise the notice that landlords have to give tenants before a rent increase from 45 days to 90 days. Following Thursday’s hearing, the measures will be voted on by the Judiciary Committee at a later date.

The bills come as Maine remains in the grips of an affordable housing crisis. As Beacon previously reported, 40% of Maine renters are considered cost-burdened by rent, homelessness has increased and there is still a shortage of about 20,000 affordable housing units in the state.

Preventing discrimination based on evictions

Rana’s bill is co-sponsored by a series of other lawmakers, most of them Democrats. The measure received support from a variety of advocates during Thursday’s hearing but was also met with fierce resistance from landlords and industry groups.

In support of the bill, Frank D’Alessandro, legal services director for Maine Equal Justice, told lawmakers that evictions fall hardest on certain types of people. He said women and people of color, along with tenants with children, are disproportionately more likely to be evicted than other groups. By passing LD 557, D’Alessandro said lawmakers can ensure that such individuals are not punished again and again in their housing search for having been evicted.

Meagan Sway, policy director for the ACLU of Maine, also submitted testimony in favor of Rana’s bill. Sway pointed out that the state is in the midst of a surge in evictions, with that number increasing 27% in 2022 over the previous year. LD 557 could help alleviate some of the struggle for people who are evicted, Sway said.

“An eviction filing, regardless of the outcome of the case, follows a renter for years. For many tenants, eviction can have a domino effect of devastating consequences, including job loss, health issues, marital hardship and even homelessness. This bill would help ensure that a history of eviction does not have quite such a devastating effect and does not prevent marginalized populations from securing housing,” Sway said.

Another supporter of the bill, Michael Beck, told lawmakers his story of being evicted as a way to illustrate why LD 557 is so important. Beck said in 2014, he and his family moved to a rental property in Georgia, which had numerous issues, some of which were never addressed by property managers despite frequent requests. Beck said he and his family notified the company of their intent to withhold rent until the issues were resolved, only to be served with an eviction filing. They eventually came to a deal in which Beck and his family were let out of the lease and the eviction case was dropped. However, because the company had filed for eviction, that notice followed Beck and his family around as they tried to look for other housing, making the process much more difficult.

“The outcome of the filing didn’t matter to prospective landlords. We had a recent eviction on our record — that’s all they needed to know,” he said, explaining that his family was denied housing again and again. He said that his case shows eviction filings are subjective and that no two cases are the same.

Unsurprisingly, LD 557 received an array of pushback from landlords and housing industry interests. The Maine Association of Realtors testified against the bill, arguing that eviction histories are a critical data point that serve to “protect the safety of existing tenants” and allow property owners to “safeguard their assets.”

James Ernst, manager of Sherwood Properties, also said screening tenants by looking at eviction data and other factors is “crucial for landlords to find good tenants and maintain good properties.” Ernst also claimed that “tenants who have been evicted are not good people to rent to,” although he acknowledged that most evictions are because of financial reasons.

Increasing notice for rent hikes

The other housing bill before the committee Thursday was Kessler’s measure to double the notice period landlords must provide tenants for rent increases. In his testimony, Kessler noted that rents in Maine have skyrocketed recently, with more than half of Maine renters experiencing price hikes during the past year.

Given the scope of Maine’s housing crisis, Kessler said Mainers deserve time to make significant decisions about their housing in the face of rent increases.

“We know that stable housing is foundational to the health of our citizens,” he said. “The reality on the ground is that with just 45 days, folks … are likely to make a decision that puts them and their children in a worse situation than they were in before. Ninety days is simply the minimum amount of time it takes to sort these things out.”

Cheryl Harkins, an advocate with the group Homeless Voices for Justice, submitted testimony in favor of the measure. Harkins highlighted the challenges posed to tenants and urged lawmakers to provide people with more time to figure out situations such as a rent increase.

“The current notification time of 45 days for a rental increase is not sufficient in this current fiscal atmosphere,” she said. “A time of 90 days will give the tenant the time to shuffle budgets and to find extra employment if need be. The 90-day notice time would allow the tenant to find the extra money necessary to ensure the stability of their home.”

Like Rana’s bill, Kessler’s measure received pushback from many in the housing industry. One such opponent, the Central Maine Apartment Owners Association, said the measure could cost landlords money. The group added that many of the organization’s landlords have said that if Kessler’s bill passes, in order to meet expenses “they will not be willing to negotiate lower move in costs, lower monthly rent (which many currently do to get or keep a good tenant), will spend less on unnecessary improvements, and will increase their consideration to get out of the business by selling and recouping the equity they have built over the years of ownership.”

However, not all property management groups feel that way. Debora Keller of Bath Housing, which owns and operates 175 apartments, submitted testimony in support of the measure.

“We wholeheartedly support LD 701. It is a reasonable and fair step — albeit a small step — to give tenants a chance to plan in the face of a rent increase,” Keller said. “And we see no negative impacts on a landlord. In fact, it allows the landlord to plan ahead as well.”

She said the company consulted with landlords and landlord representatives it works with about the bill and found that they agreed the measure would have “no detrimental impact on landlords.”

_{Evan Popp studied journalism at Ithaca College and interned at the Progressive magazine, ThinkProgress and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. He then worked for the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper before joining Beacon. Evan can be reached at evan@mainebeacon.com.}

Community aid groups scramble as coming cold snap puts unhoused people at risk / by Evan Popp

_{^{Photo: Francisco Javier Medina Gomez/ Creative Commons}}

_{Originally publishd in the Maine Beacon on February 1, 2023}

Temperatures are set to drop precipitously in Maine later this week, creating dangerous conditions for unhoused people, with community aid groups scrambling to find shelter and services for those in need.

An Arctic front will bring harsh cold to the state Friday and Saturday, and temperatures are projected to reach as low as 30 and 40 degrees below zero with the wind chill factored in.

Maine’s annual point-in-time count of unhoused people from 2022 found that 4,441 people were homeless in January of that year, a sharp increase from the year before—meaning that thousands will likely be in danger from the upcoming weather system.

That comes as Maine’s housing crisis — a significant contributing factor to homelessness — continues to escalate, with prices rising and thousands of people on voucher waiting lists. Further, evictions in the state rose 27% in 2022 over the previous year, with the end of emergency rental assistance contributing to that growth. At the same time, advocates have argued that cities such as Bangor, Portland and other local communities — along with state government —haven’t done enough to set up services to help unhoused people and have instead sometimes resorted to clearing out homeless encampments, leaving gaps that mutual aid organizations have attempted to fill.

In Bangor, for example, the group Needlepoint Sanctuary of Maine — in conjunction with other community aid organizations — is raising funds this week to provide warmth and shelter during the coming cold snap. The organization, which has long done mutual aid work at homeless encampments in the Bangor area, is looking to raise $5,000.

“Across Maine temperatures will plummet this weekend,” the group’s fundraiser reads. “For many Mainers this will mean a few days of bundling up on the way to work and hunkering down at home, but for community members experiencing homelessness or insecure housing, this cold snap could result in death if they are unable to find shelter.”

Needlepoint said the money raised will go toward buying hotel rooms for unhoused people in Bangor as well as Sanford, with any additional funds going to buying food and warm gear for unhoused people and creating care packages for partner organizations to distribute. Questions can be directed to needlepointsanctuary@gmail.com or by calling 207-370-4782.

The group is also calling on local municipalities to address the coming cold weather by working with the community to create additional warming centers to provide shelter overnight from Thursday evening until Sunday morning.

The Bangor Daily News reported Tuesday that there are five warning centers currently operating in the city. Those include the Bangor Area Homeless Shelter at 263 Main Street, the Union Street Brick Church at 126 Union Street, the Mansion Church at 96 Center Street, the River Church at 146 Center Street and the Bangor Public Library at 145 Harlow Street.

In addition, the Unitarian Universalist Society of Bangor is allowing Needlepoint Sanctuary to run an overnight warming shelter at its church at 120 Park Street. That shelter will be in operation from 6 p.m. to noon Thursday into Friday, 6 p.m. to noon Friday into Saturday, and 6 p.m. to 10 a.m. Saturday into Sunday. The group is looking for volunteers to sign up for four hour shifts during those times.

A list of statewide emergency shelters can be found here. In addition, other communities are already setting up plans to create pop-up warming shelters during the cold snap.

Another place that will be providing help this weekend is Mid-Maine Homeless Shelter and Services in Waterville. Katie Spencer White, CEO of that group, said in addition to its 48-bed shelter, the organization will be operating a warming shelter staying open 24 hours a day this weekend to help people survive the cold. The warming center and the group’s shelter are located at 19 Colby Street in Waterville.

Spencer White added that the organization’s facilities are low-barrier, meaning they don’t have sobriety tests and also accept people with pets. She said that is a rarity among shelters in Maine, with only a handful of low-barrier options receiving funding.

Spencer White said she’s often asked at times like these what people can do to help. While supplies such as clothing and food can be useful, she said financial donations are the most beneficial. While the group’s homeless shelter receives funding, warming centers don’t generally receive external support, Spencer White explained, making the continued operation of such centers reliant on donations and community aid.

Moving forward, Spencer White said she would like to see more state and federal help for shelters and warming centers as policymakers also work to create affordable housing to address homelessness in the long-run.

“We solve homelessness through housing,” she said. “But it is also the case that we need good shelter options today, and we would like to see more investment.”

Groups in the Portland area are also mobilizing in preparation for the cold temperatures. One such organization is the grassroots community organization Maine Needs, which this week is asking for donations of warm blankets; zero degree sleeping bags; waterproof mittens and gloves; waterproof boots; hand and toe warmers; and gift cards to stores such as True Value, Hannaford and Walmart to help people fill up propane tanks. The group can receive donations Monday-Friday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. (with hours going until 7 p.m. on Tuesday) and Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon at 332 Forest Avenue in Portland.

There will also be several warming shelters available in Portland during the cold weather, including the First Parish Church at 425 Congress Street on Friday and Saturday from 8 a.m. until 4 p.m. and the Downtown library at 5 Monument Square on Friday until 5 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Senate Republicans block proposed heating relief, housing assistance plan / by Evan Popp

_{^{Photo of chamber voting board for LD1 | Republicans block emergency winter energy relief plan}}

_{Originally published in the Maine Beacon on December 8, 2022}

Senate Republicans on Wednesday rejected Gov. Janet Mills’ plan to provide immediate aid to Mainers through direct checks, other relief for home heating and investments in housing assistance, dealing a blow to efforts to get funds to people before the winter.

Mills announced the details of the $474 million spending package late Tuesday, and lawmakers were poised to take swift action on the first day of the new legislative session, with the governor pushing for passage of the plan with a two-thirds majority that would allow funds to get to Mainers more quickly.

The House overwhelmingly passed the measure, but the bill failed to reach the two-thirds threshold in the Senate. The vote in the Senate was 21-8 in favor of the measure, with 6 senators excused from voting. All Democrats voting in the Senate supported the plan, while all Republicans voting rejected it. In addition, five of the six excused senators were Republicans, who as a party made high energy prices a centerpiece of their failed campaign to win back control of the Blaine House and the Maine House and Senate in the November election.

Republicans criticized the bill for not going through a public hearing, the normal path a bill takes before being considered by the full legislature, arguing that lawmakers shouldn’t approve hundreds in millions in spending without such a process. A Republican-led motion to refer the bill to a committee for a public hearing also failed Wednesday.

However, Mills pushed back against the GOP’s argument in a statement released Wednesday night, reiterating the seriousness of the issues facing Mainers as winter approaches, with heating costs high and a dire housing crisis facing the state. She also noted that the proposal had been negotiated beforehand with both Democrats and Republicans.

“The plan I proposed incorporates the feedback of Republican and Democratic leadership in the Legislature. It builds on the nation-leading inflation relief measure we delivered earlier this year — and it is the fastest, most direct way to get help to Maine people as we work to bring down energy costs in the long-term. Tonight, a minority of the minority choose to reject this help for Maine people,” Mills said, calling for Republicans to approve the plan.

Mills’ proposal, which would have been partially paid for using a forecasted $283 million budget surplus, was headlined by checks of $450 to a projected 880,000 Mainers, meant to help people pay for household heating. The checks were income-targeted, but a wide swath of Mainers, including those in upper-income brackets, would have received the money. Those eligible included single filers making less than $100,000, heads of household making less than $150,000 and couples filing jointly making less than $200,000. The governor’s office said in a news release that the plan would have provided an estimated $900 for the average Mainer, with funds arriving by mid-January.

Along with the direct checks — a similar proposal to the $850 checks Mainers received earlier this year — Mills’ plan included other spending such as $40 million for the Home Energy Assistance Program, which helps homeowners and renters pay for heating costs. In addition, the measure contained $10 million for the Maine Community Action Partnerships to help that group deliver emergency fuel for people who need it.

Separate from the spending bill, Mills also took executive action to help distribute heating aid to older, low-income Mainers, announcing that the state will provide a payment of $500 to about 13,000 households.

Also in the spending plan proposed to the legislature was $21 million meant to aid the Emergency Housing Relief Fund formed by Mills and the legislature earlier this year, which works to prevent people from experiencing homelessness.

Mixed reaction to plan from progressive lawmakers

While Democrats ultimately backed the plan before it was sunk by Republicans, some progressive lawmakers said the $450 checks could have been better targeted. They argued that those on the upper end of the income threshold — individuals making nearly $100,000 and couples making nearly $200,000 — didn’t need the money and that targeting the plan could have opened up funds to provide additional help for low-income people. Mills said she and other Democrats agreed to raise the income thresholds to include wealthier people at the request of Republicans, who still rejected the measure.

“There is necessary relief in the package to keep the most vulnerable Mainers housed and warm during the winter, but at the same time, the state will be sending checks to well off individuals and families who don’t need the help,” Rep. Grayson Lookner (D-Portland) said of the plan Wednesday morning before the legislature voted on it.

“We simply cannot continue governing crisis to crisis with the governor giving the legislature limited options for shaping budgets that fund desperately needed programs for all Mainers,” Lookner added.

Rep. Sophia Warren (D-Scarborough) also expressed concerns with the plan. She said while newly-elected House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross (D-Portland) pushed hard for a more equitable measure, other stakeholders were not willing to support such a package.

Like Lookner, Warren criticized the direct checks, arguing that high-income earners would receive money they don’t need. She said a better plan would be to lower the income threshold for checks to under $75,000 for single filers, which would free up additional money for the emergency rental assistance program, which is slated to soon run out of funds. Warren said securing funding for that program is an emergency and is something frontline communities have been asking for.

“This emergency measure has misplaced priorities inconsistent with the needs of Maine people,” she said, adding that the package did not “meet this moment and address this crisis.”

Other legislators also expressed concern about the plan even as they praised some aspects of the measure.

Rep. Sam Zager of Portland said the bill was good but not perfect. Zager said he fully supported the $21 million within the measure for emergency housing, which he noted Talbot Ross and others negotiated into the package. However, he said an even better bill would adjust the qualifications for the checks to better help low and middle-income people heat their homes and stay sheltered or use some of that money for other important policy priorities the legislature will consider this session.

“Longer term, we would be well served to optimize insulation and rapidly move to renewables like solar and wind. But the bill takes us some steps in a good direction … in time for winter,” Zager said Wednesday afternoon before the vote.

Rep. Ben Collings (D-Portland) added that while the bill is 95% beneficial, he and some other lawmakers “want to end the precedent of emergency relief going to households with close to 17k in monthly income,” calling it “absurd” that such households would have received the money.

Overall, Rep. Chris Kessler (D-South Portland) said the Democratic caucus worked hard to get aid to people who need it the most, such as those who are at risk of losing housing and those who are homeless. While the heating assistance plan could have been improved, Kessler said the bill would have helped people.

“I am not going to throw away the baby with the bathwater,” he said Wednesday morning.

Maine Poor People’s Campaign mobilizes for national ‘Moral March on Washington’ in June / by Evan Popp

_{^{Photo: A day of action organized by the Maine Poor People’s Campaign in Bangor in 2021 | Photo courtesy of Maine Poor People’s Campaign via Facebook}}

Mainers from across the state will travel to Washington, D.C., next month as part of a march to demand that those in power stop ignoring the 140 million poor and low-income people living in the U.S and work with them on a moral agenda of justice and equality.

The event, called the “Moral March on Washington & to the Polls,” will take place June 18 at 9 a.m. in the nation’s capital. The rally is being organized by the Poor People’s Campaign, a national coalition building power across marginalized communities to change the moral narrative in the U.S. and demand an end to a series of interconnected injustices. The organization is based on a campaign of the same name created by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others in the 1960s to unite poor and impacted people around the country.

In Maine, the state chapter of the Poor People’s Campaign is mobilizing to bring hundreds of people down to D.C. to participate in the June march.

“There’s going to be impacted speakers from across the country,” Joshua Kauppila, a Bangor-based organizer working with the Maine Poor People’s Campaign, said of the event. “We’re going to be lifting our moral agenda up to those down in D.C., and really highlighting how these interlocking injustices of systemic poverty, systemic racism, militarism, the war economy, ecological devastation and that distorted moral narrative of Christian nationalism are all part of the problem that we need to solve and that those solutions need to come from poor people.”

Kauppila said the event will feature speeches, music and cultural arts, and a voter registration drive as well as the opportunity for people across the nation to connect over shared issues of injustice.

“We’re facing just crisis after crisis and … poor and low-income people are so often shoved aside,” Kauppila said.

Along with building power through community connections and solidarity, Kauppila said the event will also serve as a way to advocate for the policy priorities the Poor People’s Campaign is pushing for. Some of those political goals include comprehensive COVID-19 relief that prioritizes essential workers and marginalized populations, quality health care for all, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and universal guaranteed housing.

Traveling to D.C.

Kauppila said the Maine Poor People’s Campaign is working with the bus share system rally.co to get people down to D.C. for the event. According to that site, there will be bus pickup locations in Auburn, Augusta, Bangor, Dover-Foxcroft, Lewiston, Portland and Waterville in the evening on Friday, June 17, to bring people to Washington. Kauppila said participants would return to Maine on Sunday morning, the day after the rally.

More information on the bus schedule can be found here. Information on how to RSVP for the event can be found here.

Kauppila said the group has raised funds to ensure that those who can’t pay for a bus ticket or other associated costs of the trip can still go, as the group wants as many low-income Mainers as possible to attend to demonstrate the potential political power of poor people.

“We recognize that group of voters has not been activated for the primary reason that their issues are not being addressed and the politicians who claim to promote their issues don’t follow through,” Kauppila said.

Marcella Makinen, treasurer for the Maine Poor People’s Campaign, added that the mass gathering in D.C. has the potential to be transformative in terms of demonstrating the reality of a U.S. system in which inequality has continued to skyrocket.

“It’s important to be changing the narrative on why people don’t have enough resources to eat and don’t have enough resources to pay their rent. It’s too easy to blame oneself and then that leads to depression,” Makinen said, arguing that “discovering that there’s a system where rich people get richer for not doing anything can be really liberating in and of itself.”

Willie Hurley, another organizer with the Maine Poor People’s Campaign, said he hopes the June rally will help connect disparate grassroots campaigns together in a shared push for justice.

“We have all these separate tiny little movements and organizations all working on their different things. This is an opportunity to bring all those things together,” Hurley said. “It’s 40 percent of the country, poor people. It’s the sleeping giant.”

_{Maine Beacon, May 11 2022, https://mainebeacon.com/}