Scott Larsen lives in South Paris.

Angus King III’s housing plan calls for building 10,000 homes per year. Sounds ambitious. Ambition, however, is not the same as strategy or common sense.

As far as I’m concerned, King’s plan does not answer the hard questions: Where will the workers come from? What materials will be used? What will the homes actually cost? How will towns be held accountable? How will infrastructure be paid for? How will heating, maintenance and long-term affordability be addressed? A number is not a plan. 

Maine does not need more “leaders” who try solving future problems with ideas from the past. We should not respond to a 21st-century housing crisis by simply building more 20th-century homes.

The question should not only be, “How many homes can we build?” The better question is, “What kind of homes should Maine be building, and what kind of future are we building them for?”

Maine is a cold-weather state with old housing, high heating costs, aging infrastructure, constrained labor and one of the strongest forest-resource bases in the country. A serious statewide housing strategy should understand those realities. It should not just count units that do nothing to improve housing conditions or increase affordability. It should lower the total cost of owning and living in a home over decades.

A home is not affordable because someone can barely qualify for the mortgage. A home is affordable when a family can buy it, heat it, maintain it, insure it and live in it safely for the long term.

There is a role that state government can play, but plans that only swipe at things that sound good fail even the sniff test of producing positive change.

Government does not need to build every house; in fact, government needs to be as “hands-off” of every aspect as possible. However, government does need to steer the market toward the outcomes Maine actually needs. That means using both the carrot and the stick.

The carrot should be meaningful. Maine should provide incentives for builders, towns and manufacturers that help modernize the housing market. That includes factory-built housing with modern materials, modular and panelized construction, passive-ready standards, advanced Maine-made building products, better insulation, resilient infrastructure, underground utilities in new developments and financing that recognizes total monthly cost — not just purchase price.

If a developer is willing to build high-performance homes that cost less to heat and maintain, they should get faster permitting, tax incentives, infrastructure support and access to state-backed financing.

If a manufacturer is willing to produce modular housing components, advanced wood products, insulated panels or other cold-climate building systems in Maine, the state should help make that investment viable.

If a town is willing to adopt modern zoning, streamline approvals and support smart growth, the state should reward that town with infrastructure dollars.

What does this look like? One model would be a green mortgage buydown through MaineHousing, local banks, credit unions or a green bank structure. Instead of subsidizing every buyer, the state could offer a lower interest rate only for homes that meet the Maine Modern Home standard. The logic is simple: if the home costs less to heat, maintain and insure, the buyer has a lower monthly risk profile; that should justify better financing.

Maine already has pieces of this ecosystem. Efficiency Maine offers home energy loans for qualifying upgrades, and income-qualified borrowers may receive lower interest rates. I used this program in 2018 to supplement the heat in my home. This is a logical expansion without increased risk or substantial cost to the taxpayer.

The stick, however, matters too.

Communities and market participants that refuse to participate in solving the housing crisis should not be allowed to simply block progress while still expecting state support. If towns maintain outdated rules that prevent reasonable housing growth, there should be consequences.

If local processes create needless delays, those communities should not be first in line for state infrastructure funds. If vacant, speculative or underused properties are being held in ways that worsen the housing shortage, higher fees or tax penalties should be on the table. That is not punishment. That is accountability.

Lastly, Maine should be honest about property taxes. If we want people to own homes, stay in their homes and build long-term stability, we cannot ignore a tax structure that encumbers homeowners at every stage of life.

Property taxes make it harder for young families to qualify, harder for working families to keep up and especially harder for senior citizens who bought responsibly, paid their mortgage, maintained their property for decades and still never truly stop paying for the right to remain in their own home.

A serious housing strategy should look at reducing, capping, deferring or restructuring property taxes for owner-occupied homes — especially for seniors and fixed-income residents — so homeownership actually means security, not a permanent lease from the government. 

Maine cannot afford a “campaign” style housing strategy where everyone agrees there is a crisis, but every serious solution dies in local resistance, outdated permitting or business-as-usual construction practices.

If the goal is only 10,000 homes per year, we may spend enormous public effort re-creating the same problems: homes that are expensive to heat, expensive to maintain and poorly matched to Maine’s future.

This is where vision and leadership matters. Maine needs more than a production target. It needs a housing modernization strategy.

Build more homes? Yes. But build them differently. Build them smarter. Build them with Maine materials where possible. Build them with lower lifetime costs. Build them with resilient infrastructure. Build them for Maine’s next 50 years, not its last 50.

Maine families deserve homes they can afford to buy. They also deserve homes they can afford to live in.