Action Alert: Support more housing in Maine along existing infrastructure!
A public hearing for LD 1673 is scheduled for Friday, May 12, 2023 at 9:00 am before the Legislature's Joint Select Committee on Housing.
LD 1673, An Act To Encourage Affordable Housing And Mixed-Use Development By Establishing A Thriving Corridors Program, establishes a program to assist municipalities in redeveloping high-impact corridors proximate to downtowns or village centers into mixed-use, mixed-income, walkable neighborhoods by enabling significant infill and redevelopment of underutilized land into housing and other uses.
The program will provide technical support and financial incentives to municipalities for:
Coordinating planning of the public street along with planning for the adjacent private land parcels.
Developing policies and tools that allow for increased development of affordable housing and other uses along the corridors.
Gaining public support for reconfiguration of the roadway to slow traffic, which may include the number of vehicle travel lanes and adding parking, protected bike lanes and/or sidewalks, to improve safety for all roadway users.
Establishing tax increment financing districts within high-impact corridors to finance public improvements without adversely affecting revenue sharing.
Benefits of the Bill:
This program focuses energy and resources on underutilized land that has already been impacted and has significant potential for infill and redevelopment. It directs development to places that tend to be located on water and sewer, where people are generally supportive of additional development.
Creates safer streets by replacing stop-and-go traffic that fluctuates between too fast and too slow with more consistent, slower flow movement that is safer for everyone and less frustrating for drivers.
Provides a strategy for aligning land use and transportation goals to more effectively meet both while creating an opportunity for towns to generate taxable value, without impacting their revenue sharing.
Questions related to this bill? Reach out to the Policy Action 2023 Complete Streets working group point person Zoe Miller at zoe@movingmaine.org.
The public hearing for LD 1752 is scheduled for Tuesday, May 9, 2023 at 1:00 pm before the Legislature's Joint Select Committee on Housing.
Begin your letter with:
Dear Senator Pierce, Representative Gere, and Members of the Joint Select Committee on Housing,
My name is [ ENTER NAME] and I live in [ ENTER TOWN].
Describe your reasons for supporting LD 1673.
The goal of Policy Action 2023 is to address barriers to and create incentives for equitable, sustainable growth and development that strengthens downtowns and villages of all sizes while pulling development pressure away from productive and open natural areas. We do so acknowledging that Maine has urban, rural, and suburban settings for which any solution may/not be a fit and a variety of people who deserve to be welcomed to their communities.
For information on all Policy Action 2023 bills, click HERE.