Dear Editor:

In a 2018 article in this newspaper, Erin Cooperrider outlines a plan to use low-income housing funds for 80% to 120% AMI housing, changing the language from low-income housing to “workforce” housing.

Workforce” is a term used by the government for workers in its targeted industry, including essential workers and its own corporate workers. The workers are as undifferentiated as the units developed to house them. An apt term is “serfforce housing” since the majority of the units are rentals, and those that are not increasingly exclude land and have greatly diminished equity value for the purchaser.

Thereafter, the Maine Legislature appointed Ms Cooperrider a “Commissioner,” a statutory term that allows private citizens to bypass constitutional rules for citizen-initiated legislation. The Commissioners who did the study for LD 2003 (HP 1489) were primarily realtors and developers, constituting a special interest group of private citizens who produced a law mandating that every Maine municipality establish housing “priority zones” where density cannot be regulated. With the recent enactment of LD 1829, the height of the structures can be 14 feet higher than otherwise allowed. Good times for developers.

LD 2003 could have been inspired by Chinese ghost cities, with blocks of unembellished and undistinguished towers for housing the workforce. After listing the units for almost nine months on Realtor website without a sale, Boothbay has its own housing ghost block financed by town, county, and state leadership using affordable housing dollars that place an income cap on the purchasers of the units priced at market rates with cost-burdened financing terms. Did leadership read the website before committing to affordable housing funding?.

Is it time for a leadership paradigm shift?

It seems that public financing for the BRDC occurred automatically once an approved initial investor donated, triggering a chain reaction in government funding.

But government affordable housing funding restricts upward mobility for the inhabitants. It is built into the centrally managed economy to discourage growth at the roots while using public funds to finance growth at the top, generating a continually widening wealth divide.

Susan M. Andersen

Boothbay Harbor