Mainers’ health, wellbeing, and economic stability all start at home, and there is no worse threat to that stability than eviction—or the forcible removal from that home. Eviction forces families out of their communities and away from their support systems, makes children change schools, negatively affects mental health, and causes job loss. These costs can be a disaster for low-income families, and they are also extremely costly to society.
The pandemic has pushed Maine’s housing affordability problems to a crisis point, showing us how vulnerable our state is to a wave of evictions: By late 2020the number of Maine households that have fallen behind on rent and facing eviction had risen to at least 20,000. Maine’s Emergency Rental Assistance Program has shown that many evictions are avoidable with access to ongoing rental assistance, which reduce and stabilize tenants’ housing costs. However the Emergency Rental Assistance Program is a temporary program.
“Eviction is a cause, not just a condition, of poverty” says author and housing advocate Matthew Desmond.
There is much that Maine, with federal support, can do to lessen evictions and keep families and individuals out of financial crisis. A Portland renter described the impact that rental assistance had on her ability to deal with rent increases and stay housed and healthy during the pandemic:
“I am a 70-year-old and have lived in the same place for the last 43 years...I recently received a notice of rent increase of 36.3%. A $300.00 increase effective July 1. Now, more than ever, I’m grateful for Section 8 housing assistance...All this in the middle of an emergency and I know there are many renters out there dealing with this on their own without any assistance.”
With a Section 8 voucher, this tenant’s rent amount will stay stable with her income, and the Portland Housing Authority will pay the rent increase. With Section 8, eviction and homelessness is a far less likely outcome.
Build Back Better would be an investment in housing our state desperately needs
We know that up until now, help with rent from Federal programs has been inadequate to meet the housing needs of Maine’s extremely low-income families. The National Low Income Housing Coalition estimates that Maine has a shortage of 21,015 rental homes for these members of our community. We see proof of this in the waitlists for the affordable programs and properties around Maine. Maine’s joint Section 8 waitlist which covers most of the state has over 25,000 households on it. These families wait years for needed assistance. Avesta Housing recently reported that over 11,000 seniors are on the waitlist for their senior housing projects located across Maine.
The federal funds for housing assistance Maine has received are inadequate to aid the thousands of Mainers on these waiting lists. The time-limited, federally funded Emergency Rental Assistance Program that Maine State Housing Authority recently implemented provides critical support to tenants but is only available to tenants who have COVID-related reduction in income or increase in expenses. It is also set to expire in the next couple of years.
Today, the policy reasons for expanding the number of Section 8 vouchers available to Maine tenants have never been stronger. It is extremely important that our congressional delegation support President Biden’s proposal to increase the number of Section 8 vouchers.
The House of Representatives passed the $1.75 trillion Build Back Better Act which includes a number of provisions for housing aid, including investments in public housing, rental assistance and down payment assistance. It now goes to the Senate, where it is likely to be changed again and sent back to the House for another vote.
In total, the legislation would distribute about $170 billion to affordable housing programs nationally. It’s the largest investment in affordable housing in history, according to the Biden administration, and will build or preserve more than 1 million affordable homes across the country. In order to tackle the problem of 20,000 in need of rental assistance in Maine over the long term, our state needs this investment in housing.
Maine’s affordable housing crisis
Even before the pandemic, Maine’s rental housing market was among the least affordable in the nation, and our state has not done enough to protect people who are being priced out of their homes. According to a Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report from 2019, 2 in 10 Mainers with low incomes are either homeless or pay over half their income on rent. While rental costs have risen across the state, wages haven’t kept pace.
While Maine’s low-income tenants have been suffering since the recession and during the pandemic, business has been booming in Maine’s real estate market. Property values have soared during the pandemic in every county across the State. The Maine Association of Realtors reported a 22% increase in median sales price between Fall 2019 and Fall 2020, with a 27% increase in the number of units sold. Recent data has shown that the typical “winter slow down” in Maine’s real estate activity is not happening this year. Gains are expected to continue, fueled in part by out-of-state buyers moving to Maine. Increasing property values are linked to gentrification, a process that displaces low-income community members, usually renters, when more affluent people move in. It’s spurred by speculation in the real estate market which incentivizes landlords to raise rents and/or evict tenants to pursue higher-end development. Gentrification is occurring not only in Maine’s cities, but also in rural parts of the State.
This increase in competition for housing is putting upwards pressure on rents throughout Maine and increasing the likelihood of eviction for rent-burdened low-income tenants. With so many severely rent burdened households throughout the State, Maine suffers from a longstanding eviction problem that preceeds the COVID-19 pandemic.
We need to also recognize the imbalance that exists when it comes to who is helped most with housing in the U.S. As Matthew Desmond writes in his book, Evicted, “most federal housing subsidies benefit families with six-figure incomes...We have the money. We’ve just made choices about how to spend it. Over the years, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have restricted housing aid to the poor but expanded it to the affluent in the form of tax benefits for homeowners. Today, housing-related tax expenditures far outpace those for housing assistance.”
Eviction impacts a whole community; deep disparities persist
Evictions cause financial losses to families who often lose their possessions and lose their jobs when they’re forced from their homes and communities. Each time a person is evicted, they lose most, if not all, of the minimal wealth they have built – a bed frame, a couch, a kitchen table – items that under such financial strain might be too expensive to move or put in storage while someone is unhoused. Eviction also causes enormous personal trauma with significant repercussions to economic and personal well-being. Eviction increases suicide and anxiety. For children, it results in emotional and educational decline.
These issues compound after eviction because landlords often deny housing opportunities to tenants with an eviction judgment on their record and damaged credit. Evidence shows that many housing providers screen prospective tenants out of the application process based on the existence of an eviction filing in a tenant’s name, regardless of the basis or the legal outcome. As a result, families who have been evicted are often forced into poorer neighborhoods and substandard housing.
At the same time, the costs to families of displacement and disruption arising from eviction create extreme costs to society. Research shows eviction increases emergency shelter costs, hospital costs (emergency room and in-patient), mental health costs, administrative burden for courts, and the deterioration of communities when people move away from their support systems.
While housing instability and eviction is always tragic, it is not a tragedy that befalls all families equally. Though Maine does not have a centralized database for evictions in the state, data from Maine State Housing Authority has shown that 26% of Maine’s homeless population on any given night is Black or African American, though only 1.4% of Maine’s population is Black or African American. Pine Tree Legal Assistance has also provided statistics that 12% of households they represented in eviction court were non-white, though only 5% of Maine’s population is non-white. This reflects national data evidencing extreme racial disparities in evictions across the country; myriad studies have shown that Black women are the most likely tenants to be subject to eviction in the U.S. even when studies control for poverty. Maine’s housing market is no exception.
Maine’s housing crisis pre-dates the pandemic and, without investing in long-term rental assistance for Maine’s tenants, it will continue when the COVID-19 pandemic is over and the ERA program expires.
Build Back Better could provide critical help for Maine
- Public Housing
- BBB allocates about $65 billion to preserve and rebuild public housing, including to “repair, replace, or construct properties.” The investment will also aim to reduce health hazards, increase energy efficiency and boost resilience to natural disasters.
- Rental Assistance
- The act allocates about $25 billion for rental assistance. Most of the funding will go to federal housing vouchers, which can help lower-income tenants afford rent and reduce homelessness.
- It includes about $24 billion for Housing Choice Vouchers, which would help an estimated 300,000 low-income households, including about 274,000 children, according to a new Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) report.
- Affordable Housing
- BBB also allocates about $15 billion to help build or preserve more than 150,000 rental homes for lower-income families, including funding for the national Housing Trust Fund.
With the bill now in the Senate, some worry that housing is one aspect vulnerable to being cut if changes are made. It is critical that Mainers contact our Congressional delegation and tell them to vote to keep the money for affordable housing in the Build Back Better bill.
Maine Equal Justice focuses its work on many of the issues that affect people’s daily lives – access to adequate health care, housing, transportation and childcare; food and income security; and higher education and training. Maine Equal Justice is a 501 c 3 nonprofit organization. Our EIN is 04-3346273. 