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Housing was discussed at Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate. My parents provided a teacher, a hospice social worker, and a nurse practitioner to this state, yet housing remains a pressing concern for my parents as they age, and for many others throughout the state, myself included.
Immigrants may impact the equation (I’m no expert). However, a staggering fact shared by a friend who lives on an in-town street in Rockland highlights another angle (fact-checking available from Rockland town records and my friend’s ability to count to 13).
His single street has 26 houses on it; 13 of the 26 homes on his street are owned by “out-of-staters” as a second (Third? Fourth?) home; they come primarily during summer. Arguably, none of those 13 homes is owned by an immigrant family vacationing in Maine for a couple of the year’s best months. Few of the 13 homes get used for AirBNB, whose guests at least bring tourism dollars to the area (this relatively new company’s effect on housing shouldn’t be neglected).
If one applies this single, one-street “metric” to the entire city of Rockland, consider how many homes are sitting empty while the local hospitals are short on nurses, schools suffer staffing shortages, and multiple businesses have “Help Wanted” signs in the windows.
I grew up in the state of Maine. People have been coming to Maine for the summer months all of my life. But never have so many homes and properties been scooped up for, as Tim Walz justly noted, the commodification of home-ownership.
Lynne Nichols
Portland
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