Armigine

Armigine t1_jdvzicq wrote

Reply to comment by Nithuir in Maine Maple Failure. by JqD2_

this is a better idea than a card reader, both cheaper to set up and operate, plus unlike a card reader it's really hard to hijack. A bad actor can put a skimmer on an unattended credit card reader in like a minute

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Armigine t1_j860mgm wrote

It's not that low-income people CAN'T, it's that a nice looking and brand new apartment complex is likely not going to be priced at such a point that lower income people or families can live there at all

Should be a different world, but generally seems to be the way it turns out

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Armigine t1_j71xdpr wrote

>All taxes are regressive.

what

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> Very few areas need zoning for planning services. 90% of Zoning in Maine is Nimbyism created by flatlanders who move up here build a house fill the driveway with 2.5 Subarus and begin stopping people from doing exactly what they did.

ight. What do you think zoning is? It's not just "you can't build multifamily homes and must have cars everywhere", it's the entire concept of having regulations around which kinds of buildings can be which places. What zoning laws in maine are you envisioning here?

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Armigine t1_j71fyxh wrote

Most zoning rules are pretty good - I like not living next to a cement factory. Landowners can take out loans to build their own homes, generally, but banks will indeed treat them differently than a company known for already doing so. Sales taxes are regressive but school funding does need a mixup to be more equitable

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Armigine t1_j71fnm4 wrote

It's r/Maine, this state is one of the worst impacted by short term rentals eating away the otherwise normal housing stock, and attacking services like Airbnb might have more positive impact here statewide compared to most areas of the country. Between people having a second home in Maine to summer in and short term rentals catering to people doing the same, the street I live on is something like three quarters gobbled up by housing which sits vacant except when rich assholes vacation here for three months out of the year.

Even building more housing here likely won't help without this situation being addressed - since the 60s, Maine has built about one new house for every two people added to the population, but a supermajority of those new houses are not lived in by full time Mainers. New houses right now are majority built by developers looking to sell them to the highest bidder and tailoring them to that market, so it's mostly to the short term rental/vacation home people.

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Armigine t1_j6k0ev2 wrote

Some of the weirdness about Maine seems to be how such a high proportion of new builds are purchased by people who don't live here, and not just for purposes of renting them out. I'm currently effectively in a ghost town, most of the homes built in the last 10 years seem to not have year-round locals living in them

Everywhere is suffering from a housing crisis, it does seem to be a little worse here than some of the other states I was used to

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Armigine t1_ir7khhh wrote

That's true - I think people typically mean different things with those expressions (I think when people say Biden stole the election, they typically mean literally changed votes illegally), but that does possibly get some color from my political experience. It is indeed annoying when people are unclear in their communication, we have the language to be precise

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