MAINE Zoning Atlas

 

The Maine Zoning Atlas, sponsored by the Portland-based Roux Institute at Northeastern University, is in the initial stages of collecting zoning data to inform the creation of a statewide atlas. Team members include representatives from the Governor’s Office of Policy, Innovation, and the Future, Maine DECD and DACF, and Southern Maine Planning and Development Commission. The team is seeking collaborators—contact us if you’d like to pitch in!

    • LD 2003: A statewide bill passed in April 2022 allows homeowners to build accessory dwelling units in residential districts, requiring municipalities to approve up to two units on single-family lots. In certain “growth areas,” up to four units are allowed on single-family lots.

    • ReCode Portland: Maine’s most populous city is rewriting its zoning code to simplify it and produce more housing units. Its website offers a historical overview of Portland zoning and the effort to recode. 

    • Housing Policies in Maine: A Historical Overview: Policy analyst Frank O’Hara details the broad evolution of housing policy in Maine, offering that “community” has become among the most salient dimensions of housing as a political issue.

    • Bipartisan will: A Portland Press Herald Article provides a pandemic-era view of the increasingly bipartisan efforts to address the housing crisis in Maine. 

    • National Low Income Housing Coalition: A report contours Maine’s affordable housing shortage, showing an alarmingly high number of renters who are cost burdened and severely cost burdened, spending more than half their income on housing.

    • Maine Towns Without Zoning: Researcher Salim Furth explores the regulatory impact of the ordinances of about 200 towns without zoning controls in Maine.

  • Co-Directors: Eleanor Snyder, James Rather

    Research Contributor: Salim Furth