Campaign Phone
207-232-7444
Housing. No issue stands alone, they are often connected. We don’t have enough housing of all kinds, but especially rentals and first time home buyers starter homes. Half the people in Knox County can’t afford a two bedroom apartment. But, this problem is also made worse by the fact that Maine is a low income state. Too many working Mainers don’t make enough money to pay for essentials like housing, heat, electric bills, and food. That is just wrong.
Back when I was first elected to Rockland’s City Council, it was a time where council was divisive and distrusted, lots of drama. I started a morning breakfast twice a month inviting people to ask me about the issues, why it matters, talking about my position, how I arrived at it and what the other position is with as much honesty as I could. I invited our then legislative representative, Pinny Beebe-Center and members of school board to come and speak to the issues. That group is still meeting. I and now, State Senator Pinny Beebe-Center also plan to expand this conversations by bringing them to neighborhoods, holding local pot lucks to talk about local concerns, putting out regular newsletters and being accessible when people call.
I have been working on the housing issue since I was first elected to City Council in Rockland 10 years ago. I have a Master’s degree in Green Design. That program looked at the ways regulations and ordinances prevented new housing in towns and cities. It looked at what makes a healthy community like not dividing a community by income, the ability to walk to services, work locally and the ways poorly built housing leads to high utility bills. I did the work of getting into the weeds of ordinances to figure out what was preventing housing. I sponsored ordinances that rolled back things like requiring fire sprinkler systems in every new or renovated home, requiring every house to be a certain size, therefore preventing smaller homes.
Since serving in the House, I have submitted legislation to increase housing, change the school funding formula that unfairly denies funding for Rockland, and Owl’s Head communities, leading to high property taxes. I have submitted legislation to increase the minimum wage, voted to protect reproductive health care, increase childcare, protect the environment, improve education and provide funds for communities and businesses that experienced significant storm damage.
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