Friday, Oct. 24, 2003 | 9:30 a.m.
AUGUSTA, Maine -- Even before a ballot is cast for a proposed Indian casino, some Mainers have applied for subsidized housing in Sanford, hoping to beat the rush and stake out a place to live if a casino job is in the cards.
But those optimistic Mainers may find little available living space -- subsidized or not -- if the casino-resort is approved Nov. 4 and becomes reality, state and local officials familiar with housing in southern Maine say.
In Sanford, the likely location for the gambling complex, some apartment owners will likely drop out of subsidized housing so they can charge bigger rents, said Bill Keefer, executive director of Sanford's housing authority.
"Unless you replace those units with something else, you have a real crisis," said Keefer.
A housing crisis isn't limited to that York County town of just less than 21,000. Southern Maine's scarcity of available rents and affordable housing is well-known and well-documented.
The region's housing market faces a crisis and adding 4,700 casino workers would only make it worse, says a memorandum prepared by the Baldacci administration, which opposes the casino.
"Southern Maine is an overstressed housing market," says the report by Public Safety Commissioner Michael Cantara, Gov. John Baldacci's point man on casino issues.
"While southern Maine's population has not grown dramatically, there has been a larger increase in the number of households and that is one of the driving forces in the need for additional housing," says Cantara's report, which based on state housing authority statistics from the U.S. census, real estate industry, housing surveys and other reports.
Those who want the $650 million casino built are not convinced a housing problem lies ahead.
Erin Lehane of the pro-casino campaign Think About It said the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy tribes who want to build the casino expect to hire from pools of unemployed and underemployed people who already live in the area.
Lehane said the tribes see jobless people in the Lewiston-Auburn area as potential employees and are committed to running buses to that area to bring them to work.
In addition, she said, the casino could hire some of the thousands of people who now live in York County but say their present jobs force them to commute too far to work.
"Most of the people who will work here are people who are already in (area) homes," said Lehane. "It's not bringing people in."
Keefer and others disagree.
While many low-income earners who already live in the area will likely move on to casino jobs, a new wave of people needed to fill their old jobs will likely arrive, will need somewhere to live and will probably not be able to afford rents, let alone homes.
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