As Bangor residents argue over a new proposed housing project, the city has been lagging much smaller Maine cities and towns in authorizing permits to build more units.
Southern Maine has been responsible for an increasing share of the state’s economic growth in recent years, and it has also been driving population growth as well, partially explaining why municipalities including Scarborough, Westbrook and other Portland suburbs are permitting more housing than Bangor, the state’s third-largest city at a population of nearly 32,000.
“In Maine, over the last like 10 years or so, economic growth and the growth in available jobs has been more concentrated in the Greater Portland area, which goes all the way down to York County,” James Myall, an economist with the liberal Maine Center for Economic Policy, said. “So there probably is a greater demand for housing there.”
Between 2017 and 2022, 315 new housing units have been permitted to be built in Bangor, according to data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. That is more than the state’s second-largest city of Lewiston, but it lags towns in southern Maine that are far smaller. Scarborough, for instance, has permitted 1,700 new units during that period. Kittery, with a population of just under 10,000, has approved nearly 500.
Bangor is seeing healthy growth, Code Enforcement Officer Jeff Wallace said, adding that he thought HUD’s numbers seemed low to him and other officials. Bangor has 383 approved units pending completion with 30 completed between July and the end of September, according to city data.
“I’ve definitely seen an uptick,” Wallace said.
Recently, the city green-lit a tiny home park on Hammond Street and roughly 30 duplexes, Wallace said. Penquis, the community action program in the region, has developed over 300 units of housing in Bangor in the last 17 years. Around 120 have been permitted in the last five years, Jason Bird, Penquis’ housing development director, said.
Wallace and Bird both suggested that Bangor’s low rate of permitting might be due to for-profit housing developers choosing to build their projects down south, rather than local zoning policies or less demand for homes being to blame.
“Permits are certainly being granted,” Bird said. “The challenge, though, is the economics of it, right? Rents are much higher in Portland.”
Building multi-family housing projects is a large, complex undertaking, Bird said. When the per unit cost to construct a building is the same in Bangor as it is in Portland, developers are wont to invest where prices are more competitive, he said.
“If you’re going to build at that cost, if you’re a for-profit developer, you might as well get as much money as you can in the southern part of the state where, you know, the rents are going to be higher and they’re going to continue to get higher,” Bird said.
Despite some Bangor residents showing up this week to oppose the Essex Woods housing development at a planning board meeting, Bird said that so-called not-in-my-backyard activism hasn’t historically stymied housing production in the city.
However, he acknowledged the concerns could chill development. Penquis doesn’t usually bring a project to the planning department unless they are sure it won’t be contested by neighbors.
“A lot of projects don’t even get to that stage because developers are leery or don’t want to spend the time and money litigating the issue over time,” Bird said.
