Affordable Housing Task Force to give final recommendations to Biddeford City Council

BIDDEFORD – The Mayor’s Affordable Housing Task Force voted unanimously Tuesday to send its recommendations and full report to the city council for consideration and action.

The nine-member task force, which was established last year to “substantially address a crisis in the community,” includes a member who rents within the city and a person that owns rental property within the city, as well as members of the city council and those involved with assisting low-income residents and the city’s unhoused population.

The task force has been meeting regularly over the past year to re-examine housing goals that were first established in 2020 and to develop new goals to address the current housing crisis, which has been deeply impacted by the COVID pandemic.

“It’s a super-complex issue,” said task force member Daniel Boucher shortly before the start of the meeting. “It’s daunting work, and a lot of it comes down to money.” Boucher, a long-time resident and former city council member, said the task force has “gone above and beyond” in looking for solutions that could be supported by the city council and the community as a whole.

Among the recommendations of the task force are the development of inclusionary zoning (IZ), the creation of an affordable housing fund and relaxing some current regulations related to residential developments and neighborhoods.

While the issue of affordable housing is not unique to Biddeford, the city does have a distinct level of challenges, most of which have been driven by the fact that the city is now a much more desirable location than it was 15 or 20 years ago when a trash-to-energy incinerator dominated the downtown landscape and former mill buildings were neglected and falling into disrepair.

Today, with the removal of the MERC incinerator, the city has enjoyed an economic renaissance fueled, in part, by commercial real estate developers who have been investing in the redevelopment of former downtown mill buildings. While Biddeford’s pristine coastline has long been a desirable housing location for retirees and upper income earners, its inner city area was predominantly driven by work-force housing needs that were more affordable for both renters and first-time home buyers.

Biddeford’s housing crisis was hit by a so-called ‘triple-whammy of economic factors.’ First, the city has become a target destination for homebuyers on the coastline between Portland and Boston. Secondly, the city has been impacted by market forces that have dramatically raised housing prices and rental costs across the nation. Finally, the city has been experiencing a surging population of younger adults with higher incomes, which leaves some longer- term residents struggling to keep pace with the demands of the current market-place.

“Going forward, these are going to be hard decisions for the council,” said City Councilor Marty Grohman, a member of the task force. Grohman and other task force members shared concerns that the task force recommendations could be buried by the city’s upcoming budget deliberations and development of a new comprehensive plan, both of which will be major topics for the mayor and city council in an election year.

“I’m just really worried that there’s not going to be any movement on this for a year or more,” said task force member Rev. Shirley Bowen. “We don’t want to let the urgent take over the important, and this is important.”

Real estate developer Richard “Chico” Potvin, a Biddeford native, addressed the task force during the public comment period and said that there are “many things we could do tomorrow to ease the situation.”

“It’s basic supply and demand economics,” Potvin said. “The faster we can increase our supply, the sooner the demand will ease. It's simply good common sense.”

However, task force member Ian Garcia-Grant, said “increasing supply is never going to get us out of the hole as long as we’re part of the coastal pipeline between Boston and Portland. I don’t see how we can keep pace with the market.”

One thing that the task force will not be recommending is the idea of rent control. The city of Portland is the only community in the state with a rent-control ordinance that was enacted in 2021 after voters approved a citizen referendum on the issue.

Earlier this year, City Councilor Doris Ortiz, who chairs the task force, said it was pretty clear from the beginning that there would be little to no support for rent control in Biddeford and that there has not been enough time to study the long-term impacts of Portland’s ordinance.

Ortiz praised her fellow task force members Tuesday for their effort and “heavy lifting.”

“You should all be proud of yourselves,” Ortiz said. “This is a challenging and very complex issue. I look forward to presenting this report to the council next week.”

You can read or download the full 61-page report and recommendations of the task force here.