South Portland’s Housing Dilemma: Why the Mahoney Center Wins Over Homes

South Portland’s city council set a 2025 plan to turn the old Mahoney Middle School into a community hub, while also aiming to add more affordable homes for middle‑income families. The 2026 agenda repeated the housing push and added a bond vote for city buildings in November. In practice, the Mahoney Center got the spotlight. In 2025 the council approved fifty‑six new market‑rate apartments, but no affordable units appeared. Unlike many cities, South Portland lacks a rule that forces developers to include low‑cost homes in their projects. Still, the city could have used incentives to make that happen. A recent deal with Ocean’s 170 LLC gave the developer a thirty‑year tax credit worth eleven million dollars, allowed the building to rise six stories instead of five, and lifted parking requirements. The savings from those parking changes could be tens of thousands per spot. Yet the city chose not to leverage this power and let all 208 studio and one‑bedroom units near the planned center stay market rate. Meanwhile, council time and money have focused almost exclusively on the Mahoney Center. What started as a plan to relocate City Hall turned into a multi‑million dollar project that has eclipsed the city’s workforce housing goals.The South Portland Housing Authority offered a plan that preserved Mahoney’s historic building and added affordable units. They sent the proposal when the city had already spent nearly two hundred thousand dollars on a facilities study, including thirty thousand from COVID ARPA funds. The city manager asked the council to approve four million dollars for the first phase of a new plan, but the authority urged instead to partner with them and avoid a seventy‑million dollar bond. The council’s consultant rejected the housing authority’s proposal. A new committee, “Mahoney Reimagined, ” was formed and a marketing push began, using public money for early planning. The council approved four‑and‑a‑half million dollars, half of which came from ARPA. The affordable housing committee had asked to redirect those funds into the city’s trust fund, but the manager and council denied it. Now the affordable housing committee may be dissolved because there is no money to support its work. One councilor admitted that a 194‑million dollar bond would be too much for taxpayers already burdened by decades of deferred maintenance and expensive replacements. The city’s leadership has prioritized a single, high‑profile project over the broader need for affordable housing, leaving many residents without options and putting a heavy financial burden on future voters.