I share the outrage and shock of everybody concerning the dramatic and sudden lease will increase at Redbank Village. Six months after their condo complicated was purchased by the California-based firm JRK Property Holdings, residents are left with the selection of paying between $200 and $600 extra a month in lease, or transfer.
The will increase usually are not solely tone deaf, however unnecessarily exacerbating and untenable in mild of the present state of affairs surrounding the supply of inexpensive housing.,The results will probably be widespread.
First, many tenants usually are not going to have the ability to afford the rise and could also be pressured to maneuver, however to the place? At a minimal, their family budgets simply bought blown up. There will probably be an instantaneous human disaster that the Metropolis of South Portland and the social service businesses should cope with. This comes on prime of the present disaster of looking for housing for asylum seekers and people who find themselves experiencing homelessness.
Second, it will put extra demand in the marketplace for inexpensive and decrease revenue housing the place even present housing voucher holders can’t discover housing. There isn’t sufficient naturally occurring inexpensive housing, nor assisted and sponsored housing, nor housing for folks with reasonable and center incomes. This can merely make it worse.
Merely put, the sale of an condo constructing or complicated shouldn’t end in speedy displacement from protected and secure housing for anybody in Maine, however we’re seeing it all around the state. Redbank is simply the latest and largest instance we’ve seen.
So many individuals within the housing business from each nook of the state have been working so arduous the previous couple of years to enhance the standard and amount of Maine’s housing inventory. These vary from constructing extra inexpensive housing initiatives like South Portland’s Thornton Heights to offering small workforce rental models in rural areas, to creating island housing that working folks can afford, to creating it simpler for renters to purchase their first house. Drastically growing the lease for 500 modest residences undercuts all these efforts in a single fell swoop. For all the native landlords who attempt to be good company residents, this solely provides frustration.
The state has stepped up with a brand new state inexpensive housing tax credit score and by investing federal emergency COVID reduction funds to housing improvement; however proper now, Better Portland faces a significant, speedy disaster. To supply acceptable COVID well being protections, Portland’s homeless shelters needed to unfold folks out. Native resort homeowners responded. Now, they want the rooms again for vacationers. In the meantime, we’re receiving increasingly more asylum seekers on daily basis with no place for them to sleep at night time – and now this.
Massive, nationwide housing firms can discover stability sheet justifications all day lengthy for substantial lease will increase like this, however they aren’t the native landlords, actual property brokers and metropolis officers who work head to head with Maine folks on daily basis attempting to assist them remedy their housing issues.
To JRK, I say, “Disgrace on you.”
— Particular to the Press Herald
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