- Speakers
- Jason HowePanelistChris MarshallGuestShannon RichardsHostElizabeth FrazierPanelist
- Show signals
- SuitabilitySafeBiasNot political
Today we're here to discuss the WIN Act and other relevant and current housing issues here in the state of Maine.
I want to know why the WIN Act is a win for housing and in particular a win for middle housing, the missing middle.
Marita has been instrumental and hard at work to advance housing initiatives.
The WIN Act addresses incentivizing density predominantly, but Jason, can you please give us more details since you basically wrote it?
So the WIN Act was, we originally called it the Home Act, but we had to amend the name.
The WIN Act is a density incentive program with no fiscal notes or any costs associated to municipalities or to the state.
where if a developer moves into a qualified area and develops within that qualified zone, they have the ability to increase the number of units that they're allowed to develop.
And the size of that increase in units really depends on which of the bandwidths of workforce housing they target.
And I've heard people say 220 is too high, but The reality is that even if you're just two tradespeople who work a little bit of overtime, you're bumping up well past what's available right now.
So the 220 AMI, especially in more rural areas, is what your average middle-class family would be perceived as being, a teacher and a firefighter.
That's up in that range, especially when you get outside of Portland and you get outside of the southern portion of the state.
So developers, in order to make the math work, And in order to incentivize housing that is required to be workforce, they get more units up to as much as 75% density bonus on the number of units allowed already.
And a portion of those, by undertaking the program, a portion of those have to be set aside for workforce units, which means that the buyer or the tenant has to meet those workforce standards for income coming into the project.
It effectively guarantees that the developer taking advantage of this program, they'll get to build some market rate stuff if they choose to, but they'll also be required to build a bunch of workforce housing, which goes towards the set of people right now in Maine who can't find homes.
They don't make enough to buy market because you're not gonna pay a million bucks for a starter home in Portland.
but they don't make little enough to qualify for traditional subsidized, capital A, affordable tax credit housing.
And it's important to note that tax credit housing, although affordable, does not reach huge portions of the working population who would ordinarily live and work in a town.
Today we're here to discuss the WIN Act and other relevant and current housing issues here in the state of Maine.
I want to know why the WIN Act is a win for housing and in particular a win for middle housing, the missing middle.
Marita has been instrumental and hard at work to advance housing initiatives.
The WIN Act addresses incentivizing density predominantly, but Jason, can you please give us more details since you basically wrote it?
So the WIN Act was, we originally called it the Home Act, but we had to amend the name.
The WIN Act is a density incentive program with no fiscal notes or any costs associated to municipalities or to the state.
where if a developer moves into a qualified area and develops within that qualified zone, they have the ability to increase the number of units that they're allowed to develop.
And the size of that increase in units really depends on which of the bandwidths of workforce housing they target.
And I've heard people say 220 is too high, but The reality is that even if you're just two tradespeople who work a little bit of overtime, you're bumping up well past what's available right now.
So the 220 AMI, especially in more rural areas, is what your average middle-class family would be perceived as being, a teacher and a firefighter.
That's up in that range, especially when you get outside of Portland and you get outside of the southern portion of the state.
So developers, in order to make the math work, And in order to incentivize housing that is required to be workforce, they get more units up to as much as 75% density bonus on the number of units allowed already.
And a portion of those, by undertaking the program, a portion of those have to be set aside for workforce units, which means that the buyer or the tenant has to meet those workforce standards for income coming into the project.
It effectively guarantees that the developer taking advantage of this program, they'll get to build some market rate stuff if they choose to, but they'll also be required to build a bunch of workforce housing, which goes towards the set of people right now in Maine who can't find homes.
They don't make enough to buy market because you're not gonna pay a million bucks for a starter home in Portland.
but they don't make little enough to qualify for traditional subsidized, capital A, affordable tax credit housing.
And it's important to note that tax credit housing, although affordable, does not reach huge portions of the working population who would ordinarily live and work in a town.
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