A new housing complex for asylum seekers in Brunswick has prompted outrage from national conservatives including Donald Trump Jr., who attacked it while campaigning for his father in New Hampshire last week.
“Up in this part of the world, and up in Maine, they are giving illegal immigrants free housing — multi-million dollar free housing, while they’re kicking out veterans in the street,” he said in a news clip shared by the conservative Maine Wire. “I mean, what’s going on?”
Trump Jr. is referring to the 60-unit housing complex in Brunswick Landing completed last year that offers apartments to asylum seekers. Since it opened in December, the project has made the rounds in the conservative media, including a headline in The Blaze saying migrants are getting “2 years of rent-free living.”
But the families who are living there have committed to pay 30 percent of their incomes as rent if they get jobs while working there. Asylum seekers cannot work for at least six months after entering the country. They are also in the U.S. legally at this point, and Maine runs many other housing programs open to veterans.
Here are the facts about the project.
A mix of public and private money is funding the project.
MaineHousing, the state housing authority which forms half of the public-private partnership that constructed the apartments, put $6 million into constructing the complex and set up an escrow account that guarantees two years of rent for the asylum seekers to be housed there using funds approved by the Maine Legislature in a 2022 budget bill.
Developers Collaborative, a for-profit, Portland-based housing developer, forms the other half of the partnership. It put $7 million into the complex’s construction and owns the property. Kevin Bunker, the company’s founder, said he proposed the partnership to rent apartments for asylum seekers because there’s a lack of transitional housing in Maine for them.
Fewer than 3 percent of the $1.24 billion MaineHousing has allocated in the last two years was for asylum seeker-specific housing, Scott Thistle, a spokesperson for the agency, said.
The precise numbers of how many asylum seekers have come to Maine recently are tough to pin down. Portland, the state’s largest city, received at least 1,600 newcomers last year. Smaller communities like Sanford are also grappling with how to accommodate asylum seekers, whose arrival played a role in exacerbating southern Maine’s existing housing crisis.
The “free” rent is intended to be temporary.
The asylum seekers housed in Brunswick are expected to pay rents when they gain an income. The state assistance is only supposed to tide these families over as they wait for their federal work authorization and secure employment, Thistle said.
Ten of the 24 households living in the Brunswick apartments have secured that authorization, signaling their intent to do so soon. Thistle underscored that the inability for asylum seekers to work immediately after arriving in Maine — something politicians here want the federal government to change — is stressing cities and towns and led to this response.
“They are not expected to have rent for the most part, but as they get jobs, they will start contributing 30 percent of their income towards rent,” Bunker said.
After two years, the Brunswick apartments will revert back to “regular old housing” open to anyone, unless the Legislature approves more money for the escrow account, Bunker said.
If that happens, eight of the units will be restricted to those earning 50 percent of the area median income, and 28 will be for those who make 80 percent of the area median income. The rest will be market rate units, Bunker said.
Asylum seekers are in Maine legally.
Asylum seekers are not in Maine “illegally,” as Trump Jr. suggests. Those seeking asylum from persecution are often undocumented when they arrive in the U.S. but are here legally while they await action on immigration cases. Maine has been noted nationally for generous aid to asylum seekers that has drawn many people who travel from African countries to the southern border.
Bunker added that despite assertions online that he’s neglecting other vulnerable groups such as homeless veterans by providing transitional housing for asylum seekers, he is also doing projects for homeless veterans. Other recently completed projects include two apartment complexes in Portland for homeless women and eight apartment buildings for seniors.
Veterans have access to federal Section 8 vouchers and MaineHousing programs specifically catered to them, such as grants for homes and first-mortgage programs, Thistle noted. Just one veteran voucher program administered by MaineHousing paid for 193 years worth of rental assistance for Maine veterans last year, he said.
Bunker said he’s seen “vile” and racist social media comments about the project’s catering to asylum seekers, and the director of the Brunswick Housing Authority said he receives a couple of angry phone calls or emails a week from people about the project even though his organization has nothing to do with it.
“It’s valid to have different political opinions, there’s nothing wrong with it, but you have a lot of people who are much happier to stay home and hop on their keyboard than go out and help anyone,” Bunker said.
