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The Bangor City Council dubbed 2024 “the year of housing.” With focused attention, the pace of housing construction increased in the city. This shows that identifying concrete steps — and taking them — can begin to address the big shortage of housing, especially affordable housing, in the city and across the state. As the need for more housing continues, every year for the foreseeable future should be a year of housing, in Bangor and throughout Maine.
Last December, Bangor leaders declared 2024 as the year of housing and pledged to “increase the opportunities for all residents to have access to quality housing that meets their needs.” The goal was to increase the availability of all types of housing, including rentals and units for those who were homeless.
Bangor’s declaration to prioritize housing came shortly after a Maine housing production needs study found the state needs roughly 38,500 homes to make up for historic underproduction. According to that study, Maine will need between 37,900 and 84,300 additional homes by 2030 to meet expected population growth.
In addition to seeking and supporting new development, city officials also prioritized reducing the number of vacant buildings in the city and developing a registry of rental properties to give the city an idea how many units are in the city and their condition.
The city has created the rental registry, and with new fees assessed on vacant properties the number of empty homes has decreased slightly.
More importantly, the amount of new housing permitted and built in Bangor grew over the previous two years. The Bangor Planning Board approved 75 new housing units in 2024, a significant jump from the 45 new units the city approved in both 2022 and 2023, but not as high as the 93 approved in 2020. This year, roughly 100 housing units were added and 321 more are still pending completion.
The city also made considerable progress on a new workforce housing development. Earlier this year, the city council approved using roughly $2 million in pandemic recovery funding to bring utilities and road infrastructure to the city-owned land on Grandview Avenue. The city believed this would spare a future developer from the cost of doing so later and make the land more attractive to build on.
A developer has agreed to build up to 75 housing units on the parcel.
The city is also working with Penquis CAP to convert the former Pine Tree Inn in Bangor into 41 units of permanent supportive housing for people experiencing homelessness. The project is expected to be finished in early 2025.
A new tiny home development in Bangor recently began accepting applications from prospective tenants.
“Everything that was on our to-do list this year, we’ve done,” Anne Krieg, Bangor’s economic development director, told BDN reporter Kathleen O’Brien. “We always want to do more, but I feel really proud of what the staff has accomplished this year.”
These gains show what is possible with a focus on specific steps that need to be taken to increase housing, both through new construction and fuller use of existing buildings.
Other communities across the state are trying innovative solutions. Stonington, for example, is looking to mobile homes as an affordable option for work-force housing. Cities like Augusta are working to turn unused retail space into housing.
These and other efforts show that there is still much work to be done to address the shortage of housing, especially affordable housing, in Bangor and throughout Maine, and that many innovative approaches need to be tried.
Bangor has taken some proactive steps and made some gains. But one year of housing won’t be enough. This modestly successful focus on approving and creating more housing must continue for years to come.