Dear Editor:

Today, the terms “affordable” and “workforce” are often used together, obscuring HUD-specific meanings.

The paper from which the following quote is taken includes a definition for “affordable housing” but none for “workforce housing.”

Where affordable housing development is a municipal priority, especially workforce housing, conservation land trusts and their community partners can proactively identify properties near or adjacent to conservation land that might be suitable for housing. Working together, they can develop a plan that allows for both workforce housing development and important land conservation. source

By HUD definitions, “Affordable housing” means housing affordable to those making 80% or under the average median income for an area, including working people. “Workforce housing” means those making 80% to 120% AMI.

Affordable housing is a concept that was created to correct the inequities in the wealth divide. In Oct 2023, the State of Maine Housing Production Needs Study, published by the Governor’s Office of Policy and Innovation, identifies a need for affordable housing for renter households below 60%. adding that the coastal regions experience the highest need for cost-burden relief: (HUD defines cost-burdened as when the total housing costs are greater than 30% of income)

Renters in the Coastal Region experience the highest rates of cost burden, with the exception of the lowest income renters, around 80% of whom are cost burdened or severely cost burdened across all three regions…..policy makers should emphasize strategies to increase affordable housing production for low- and moderate-income households in addition to strategies to increase the supply of homes more broadly. At the local level, this may include weighting the income distribution of needed homes more heavily towards low- and very low-income populations to account for this need.

In HP1489, "Priority development zone" points to the definition of affordable housing in section 4301, subsection 1, without a Title, it makes for legal ambiguity. Affordable housing is otherwise defined three times in HP1489. By the clearly stated definitions, workforce housing does not meet the requirements of a priority zone. HP1489 mandates priority zones for affordable housing, not for workforce housing.

Susan M. Andersen

Boothbay Harbor