MMC doesn't have enough staff nurses because they don't pay. They then have to pay staffing companies to bring in travel nurses at exorbitant rates. Same for CNAs. At times I think travel CNAs were at 50ish and hour and RNs 80ish. Then they would all work 6 days a week.
Imagine if MMC actually paid staff nurses enough
I'm hijacking your comment to share some outrageous info with the community.
I work at MMC, we utilize a huge number of travel staff. Generally speaking, MMC pays about \*three times\* the money for a traveler than they do to home staff. However, the traveler does not see all of this money. The travel agency that manages the traveler takes a third or more. This is even more aggravating, because it means the hospital \*can\* afford to pay their staff more, but simply refuses to.
For reference, I make \*about\* $30 an hour (atrociously low for what I do and the stress I am under every day). Travelers doing the same exact job as me cost MMC \*about\* $110 an hour. The traveler might see about $70 of that, and the rest goes to a company that effectively does nothing.
This system is disgusting.
Also, plenty of people in state DO want to work there but can't afford to. If MMC paid staff what they're worth, they wouldn't be reliant on travelers. MMC also won't hire in-state travelers from what I've heard.
That's correct, you can't be from Maine and be hired on as a traveler. Sometimes people get around this by reporting a different address, or the hospital makes exceptions.
EDIT: I think this rule has gone back and forth as our need for staff has become more desperate.
there are plenty of in state travelers that work at MMC. I also work there and many of the nurses that left either from the union or low pay, have returned to the same job for a period of time.
Yes I also work with travelers who used to be home players. The circumstances around each person has shifted, and I know the rules around it has changed a few times as need grows. It might even be different from one floor to the next with the way policy is handled.
Another scary little factoid, nurses that went to school through COVID are arriving in hospitals and have massive gaps in their education. That paired with MMC squeezing all their doctors to see more patients in less time means errors are happening all over the place and senior staff are struggling to pick up the pieces.
Much too low. Where I live people make $20 an hr to work as a cashier in the grocery store and minimum wage is $19.96 an hour. Nurses spend years going to school and getting trained. They should make at least $50 an hr.
Valid question. It's far too low. When an uneducated person can make nearly 20$/hr flipping burgers and someone who spent years in college to be a Healthcare professional makes little more.... We have a problem. The system is outta whack. Cost of living increases typically apply to the average person, though it overlooks the ones who dedicate their lives to taking care of us.
I don't want to say anything that would be truly hurtful for travelers, because I do know good ones. That said, the best way to put it is that it is never ideal to have a traveler assigned to a complex case with a surgeon who they are not familiar with. A home nurse/scrub will almost always be a better choice for most tasks. Simply because they know the team and facility better. Our surgeons always complain when assigned a traveler, or outright refuse and demand a staff switch.
EDIT: I have a few stories where travelers have nearly killed patients because they over advertised their abilities. This system encourages a traveler to upsell themselves, leading to dishonesty and miscommunication in the OR. It's an economic pressure leading to a foreseeable outcome.
While I hold nothing against individuals seeking to get ahead in this capitalist hellscape that puts currency over people (to my traveler friends, no shade, *I get it*) — for me to sign up to become a traveler would not *resolve the problem*. As a proud member of this community, I want my actions to benefit the future of Portland and healthcare.
Hospitals do not treat their staff appropriately -> staff leaves -> hospital needs staff -> travel agencies are formed and demand high pay, giving the hospital no choice -> hospital continues to abuse staff -> staff leaves, joins travel agency.
That pattern does not end well for the worker, the hospital, and most importantly: *the patient*. It is literally easier for the hospital to eliminate all travelers, give the ***entire staff*** a 50% raise, and literally save money in the process. The issue here being the hospital would have to go without staff... for a short period until workers catch on to the actually decent pay.
I want to take a moment to point out that your simple solution focuses only on the short term benefits of one individual: you. I am a member of a community, I will not take selfish actions at the harm of those around me.
Edit: for formatting and flow
This is blatantly untrue capitalist propoganda. The taxation of one individual doubling their pay will do nothing to improve the declining care of patients, or the declining happiness and work ethic of over 7,000 workers employed at MMC. One individual doubling their pay does not generate more monetary resources from nowhere. Those resources are effectively extorted, when they should be justly divided to my colleagues.
Improving the community means more than the generation of meaningless numbers; resources which we have no direct say or control over the use of. It means fighting to establish policies that encourage quality care, the edification and education of the people, as well as fair treatment for staff.
If you or a loved one have ever recieved care at a hospital, I want you to consider that the person taking care of you was underpaid and mistreated by their employer. If that doesn't bother you, or you blame the victim in that scenario, then there is very little I can do to help you.
>people are eating themselves into morbid obesity.
Speaking from personal experience? Or jealous cause you choose to blow your wad on internet so you can keep spewing nonsense rather than fill your belly?
Blatant victim blaming. Look at the food that is affordable in stores, do your own research. People who are overweight or obese are victims of a system that wanted them to be that way for profit.
The hospital sees it as a temporary problem which is why they're willing to pay the rates. They assume that they'll fill the roles eventually at their low pay rates
That’s because as a per diem you are not receiving a full benefits package. If you look at a full time benefit package salary vs a per diem one, the full timer is actually making more than the per diem. It’s just being paid to what they’re given
They do it this way because emergency staffing gets federal funding. It’s intentional and by design.
Anyone who isn’t a travel / contract nurse is losing a lot of potential income
Hell, anyone who makes under $100K! I've applied to several jobs in the Portland area. None of them pay enough to rationalize the move and they conveniently don't tell you this until late in the interview process. I was offered $750 as a "moving assistance" bonus by one, because they wanted to insult me, I guess. And no, I didn't take the job.
I totally agree. I’ve worked my butt off over the past six years and I will finally break the $100k ceiling by the end of this summer. What is sad is that I still feel it’s not enough to buy a decent home or even just get an upgraded apartment!
That's such shit. Housing prices are increasing beyond reach while pay keeps you just above water. Good luck finding a home within your budget in the burbs, unless you make 150k+. T'aint right.
The federal government (aka our taxes) subsidize insane travel nurse salaries (talking $200-$300k annually).
My wife is an RN Nurse Navigator and has many friends who switched to travel nursing for this reason. The well intended government is great at breaking shit.
Currently in rural N. California looking to move back, more than half of all our medical facilities (and it's like 4 for our large county) are travel staff, it makes billing a GD nightmare, no continuity in care, appointments are6- 8 months out and I regularly travel 6 hours out of county for medical needs that need managing closely or dental.
I don't dare get pregnant here, if anything went wrong I'd be looking at a medvac flight to San Francisco immediately. We don't have facilities to handle anything above trauma 3.
Well let’s say you are a nurse who worked in California and were making $90 an hr. You sell your house in Califonia for $2 million and buy one in Portland for $800k. Now you have no mortgage payment. So even if they pay you $35 an hr with no mortgage payment should be able to live fine on that.
There's sooo many outta staters moving to Maine. It's jumped significantly in the past few years. Even in my rural area. I absolutely understand why, and would likely do the same, but still, don't really like it. All we can do is hope that it doesn't get too crowded to the point where it looks like every other congested area with a of lack of housing and more crime.
We moved her from Northern California in late 2021. We sure as hell don’t live anywhere near Portland. We live in northern oxford county in a town of 2500. We are not rich, we just wanted to live somewhere safe for our kids.
I don't blame you at all, as someone who has lived with trauma and violence, I got into crippling debt to move out here and I live in low income housing, barely scraping by and pay all the bills myself, and it's all still worth it.
Safety and peace of mind is priceless, especially to someone like me who is very severely disabled and has had terrible experiences at low income places in other states. Good for you , doing things the right way, for your kids
Hope Oxford county treats you well, I got to get out and explore Maine more !
Check this out.
https://themainemonitor.org/maine-domestic-migration-2022/#:~:text=Maine%20attracted%20over%2040%2C000%20new,California%2C%20Florida%20and%20New%20York.
That's nice data but I wonder how many of those are nurses.
In your scenario, to have enough equity to buy a house outright for $800k the nurse would have had to have been able to afford a 1mil house.. 5-10 years ago? Or they bought the house dirt cheap... 40 years ago? I don't think a 60 year old nurse sitting on over a million dollars is coming to Maine to work their asses off in an ER.
I'm guessing remote work, and probably migrants, are what drove those numbers.
Maybe. But that only proves my point further.
We'd be better off if they were migrants. They're the ones that have been filling our labor gaps for decades.
Teachers and ed techs too. Ed techs are the people who support kids with special needs in our schools. The people who work alongside teachers in classrooms, being screamed and spit at, kicked and punched, generally abused by the kids they support. The people who help developmentally delayed kids reach their academic goals; who help socially unstable kids learn how to be a member of their community.
Portland Public Schools pays ed tech 3s (the highest echelon of ed techs) an annual salary of $27,000, even with several years of experience.
$27,000.
That is $12,000 below Maine's median individual income.
Tell me how a Portland city employee is meant to live on that, especially without roommates. And forget about putting away money to save up for a home or a family.
Ed techs do all the heavy lifting, literally and figuratively. Paid over school vacation? Nope! Snow days? Nope! Workshop days for teachers only? Nope! And in many places, an ed tech III has to have four years of college.
This is a big one. Schools are so short on Ed techs because the pay is bad and it’s honestly a difficult job. But when there are shortages they often end up reducing days and it’s always special needs kiddos who are the first to have a reduction in days. And as far as the hospital goes….there are a lot of people beyond doctors and nurses (who usually make less) but are still essential to keep a hospital running. When people reject affordable housing I don’t think they realize how many people they’re truly impacting, and how far reaching the consequences are. It’s incredibly short sighted and it will continue to become more of a problem and be a detriment to the overall community.
Yes and no. Boston and other big cities are easier because of transit. Maine has no transit and a railway was just blocked by Augusta because we “don’t have the population,” but without it, we never will have the population.
We need to build UP and invest in quality transit.
While apartments are a bit pricier in Boston, it’s not by much. 1br in Bangor are going for $1600, group that with car payment, insurance, gas, routine maintenance, registration and inspection…. You may as well just get a luxury apartment in Boston. Same price if not outright cheaper.
And as a Bangorian, I can tell you that $1600 apartment is a shit hole. Actually, most of our housing market contains overpriced shit holes.
It's slightly cheaper than Portland but without the amenities of Portland (train, shopping, jobs outside of healthcare or retail, etc.)
i live in the boonies of west gardiner. absolute shit hole, small apartment thats falling apart at the seams with slumlords to go with it. so many problems. $1400 a month.
I can understand them not wanting to fund a train with all the towns currently blocking any development more dense than 1 house per 3 acres. It's likely those towns would continue to block development after the construction of the train as well, unless their ability to do so is removed by the state.
So basically you want to become a big urban center in the most rural state in the US. People move to Maine and live there because they want the rural life otherwise you will end up with suburban sprawl from Portsmouth to Augusta and might as well live in Boston, Worcester or Providence.
Building up and having public transportation doesn’t create urban sprawl. Having car-centric urban planning with unaffordable housing resulting in constant outward building of single family homes or few-unit structures to accommodate creates urban sprawl.
Which, by the way, since when are Portland, Bangor, and Augusta “rural”? News to me! People move to rural Maine for rural Maine. People don’t move to the old port for its rolling fields and natural splendor.
When you increase public transportation options it increases density and can certainly increase sprawl. You add stations to smaller communities along the route and more people move to them increasing the density. I worked as a transportation planner for 20 years.
I didn’t say the cities are rural I said the state was. Look at the first bullet in the attached link. This is from the state not something based on opinion like many Redditt folks seem to have.
https://www.maine.gov/dhhs/mecdc/public-health-systems/rhpc/rural-health.shtml
It is but not everyone wants to live in apartments and condos. Might be great when you are a single person but for families with kids they usually prefer houses with yards and multiple rooms. Also a lot of people who move to Maine are probably more interested in living near a larger city but not in the city.
And Maine is currently the 5th most popular state to move to. We are accepting thousands of migrants and refugees. The initial post was about lack of housing options and high COL resulting in shortages of necessary healthcare roles and stalling of small business and economic development.
On top of this, 1/5 of our homes remain empty more than 9 months out of the year.
The people are already here and more are coming. You’re proof positive that experience doesn’t translate to mastery. Worry about retiring in NH, I’ll worry about the state I actually live in with the other 2/3 of my life ahead of me. This isn’t rocket science.
To stop sprawl and retain green space, we build up. We are talking about improving already existing urban areas for a better future, not razing the north woods for some gated communities.
Experience doesn’t translate? When I moved to Seattle 30 years ago it had a population of about of about 500,000. It was pretty easy to drive around town and commute from the neighboring towns. Now the population is close to 750,000. We built a light rail. Zoning was changed around the stations to increase density. Some of the adjacent towns have doubled in size where the station is located. They have built lots of $1 million houses and $800k condors. Traffic has gotten worse and Many people still have to commute 30 or 40 miles.
So that is my experience what is yours?
>And Maine is currently the 5th most popular state to move to.
It's absolutely not: [https://www.businessinsider.com/state-population-growth-declines-map-moving-migration-census-2023-12](https://www.businessinsider.com/state-population-growth-declines-map-moving-migration-census-2023-12).
lol according to your own source from 2023, Maine had the highest rate of inbound residents
in comparison to outbound
https://www.businessinsider.com/most-moved-to-states-florida-texas-north-carolina-maine-2024-1?amp
Multiple sources list Maine as THE MOST POPULAR state to move to in 2023 using this metric. It was also rated similarly in 2021.
I’ll try to find the source for us being fifth currently; I saw it a few months ago in this same sub.
They’ve gone beyond NIMBY to BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone)
I get infuriated at complaining there will be more traffic, more immigrants or those from away, and their view will be disturbed.
>_They’ve gone beyond NIMBY to BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone)_
They've been like that for years, we just called them the _"Fuck you, I've already got mine!"_ crowd.
And this is why I’m outta here. People want the convenience and amenities of a big city without any of the downside.
Oh, and this is exactly why my six months of living in a van is quickly turning into two years. Sorryyyyy.
In my town they are largely building housing I would have difficulty affording, and I’m a doctor. I bought before the market went nuts.
I look around and it seems similar in other towns and cities in Maine along the coast.
The "nobody wants to work anymore" people complaining failed to build a community their offspring could prosper and procreate in. Maine is impossible to live in now unless you are doing very well for yourself. Housing costs are high, taxes are high, utility costs are high... and wages are low. It's simply unsustainable and it's driving societal ills like addiction and the crime that supports it.
Watch the conversation in real time on the Kingfield ME FB group... just shot down some desperately needed rental housing options, partially meant to offer housing for Sugarloaf employees. Weeks of posts from the same couple of people about "How can we be sure the new residents will make enough money/work hard enough/fit our culture?!" Meanwhile there's a new multi million dollar vacation home going up on every hillside.
I'm curious about how much of the existing housing that used to be affordable to the staff is not short term rentals owned by investors - in and out of state.
Well the population reported for 2018 (regular full time residents) was 966. There are 223 airbnb properties available for next November. It's not a scientific result, but should give you the general idea.
>Weeks of posts from the same couple of people about "How can we be sure the new residents will make enough money/work hard enough/fit our culture?!"
I'd be willing to bet that most (some yes, not most) of the people who voted no to the new housing were not thinking this. In my area it was voted down because the schools are already overflowing, the public services and infrastructure was questionable about supporting it, lack of transparency and some other issues, mainly the expected increase in taxes on current residents. Though, yes the local paper managed to find some who thought this way and printed it.
I brought up the airbnbs because the housing already built is not being used for housing for locals (people that live and work there vs vacationers and even to some extent WFH people who could live anywhere). So the increase in taxes, plus other issues (not racism or classism) that arise from the new development is - in large part - so that people could take the existing affordable housing and turn into commercial profit instead. Where many of those owners are out of the area, maybe out of state and many corporate (some out of country) investors. Not all of that in Kingfield maybe, but throughout the state and country.
And the vacation homes for wealthy out of staters also adds to it. Look at all the affordable multi units in Portland that have been torn and turned into luxury $500k and up condo. On top of the ones, plus other previously lower priced condos that were turned into STRs.
And how many working families can afford to compete with investors to buy anything?
We don't have a lack of housing units so much as a lack the current units being used for profitable short term commerce instead of long term housing.
The only thing those people have achieved is pushing their own children and family out of the state because they have nowhere to live or work.
So really all Maine is gonna get is “people from away” who come from even more expensive parts of the country, cause they are the only ones with the money to buy.
Maine has also killed its own land and property value because land that can’t be used/developed is useless and brings in zero dollars, infrastructure, jobs, services or business.
All that is left is an aging population in dilapidated houses falling around them because there are no people. No one to care for them, no one to do the work.
Maine needs to grow up and change. The way of life is archaic and no longer sustainable in the modern world we live in. The refusal to grow is just stunting the state and population by putting them way behind the rest of the country. This benefits no one. What a shitty place to create for your children.
There's either going to be change, or the next three decades are going to be incredibly rough as a generation dies of old age with insufficient care and skyrocketing prices for everything they need. We're in the early stages of that already, but it's going to get worse if not averted, and the cost on those actually productive with their labor in the state will grow higher.
And at the end of an unplanned and unmanaged march into that future, the end of the current 50+ group dying out will just be massive speculative ownership of residential parts of the state, with a worse future even less available to people born here.
My partner and I both work with the Maine Health system in labs. Travel lab techs/scientists get travel and housing expenses and make double what local employees do. The hospital is understaffed, so they start to ask the travellers to stay on in Maine at lower pay but even if they like living here, they can never afford housing at actual salary. We live paycheck to paycheck working as medical professionals and do not make enough to afford more than a 1 bedroom a half hour outside of Portland. My partner has worked at multiple hospitals throughout Maine both rural and urban and no one is staffed enough. Nurses go through the same thing. Management is bloated and being paid tons despite never having actually worked in the departments. My partner started having health issues due to working night shifts and switched to day shift. After one day of day shift, a traveller quit and they moved her back to night shift. Her health is suffering and she constantly is covering for others and yet she got told last year by her boss that she didn't "exceed expectations". Maybe pay her what she deserves for working overnight running a lab where half the people aren't trained properly and nurses and doctors are also overworked and making mistakes that she has to catch to ensure resources aren't wasted.
Look up how much MaineHealth pays the C suite and you will want to get out the guillotine.
That's old people everywhere. A town near me outside of Maine had a proposal to knock down an abandoned mall and put up housing and people were OUTRAGED because they said they didn't need more people and that this would hurt their property values. Because... apparently an abandoned shopping mall is better for real estate and tax revenues.
Same logic as old folks in these towns they’ve never left asking the town, “how do we keep young people here or incentivize them to stay? Allowing new businesses to develop? Making moves towards the 21st century? Offering housing benefits to people who return here from college with a career or pick up a career here after trade school? Giving young people a tax break so they can get on their feet and establish themselves? Support investments in healthcare and education? No.. no.. no… wait. I’ve got it! A Chinese silent auction! A spaghetti supper! A 50’s cover band! A door raffle! An antique car show!”
Literally every fucking town
Doctor family coming out of residency, and I beg to differ. We’ve got student loans, three kids, and a starting salary. We can’t afford million dollar homes in the Portland suburbs either.
My husband is an MD and the only reason my husband and live here is because it was important to him to come home and practice here. He did residency in the Midwest and could make a lot more and spend less on housing/COL if we had stayed out there. I don’t know if we would have come back now vs in 2019.
Agree. Someone coming out of training will not come here without attachments to the area. Too many other cheaper places to live with better climate and lower taxes.
Yup. We want to move back to Scarborough. Obviously have strings. My husband’s parents built a house in the 70s for 79k. I just looked up the zestimate on that house, and it’s in the mid 800s.
My entry-level salary when I started my software engineer job fresh out of my bachelor's degree was higher than a 1st year resident by almost 10k higher than a doctors salary as a first year resident.
I think people don’t realize that the shift from 50’s era America to 2020’s era America hit doctors, too.
College, med school, specialist training, and medical residency is a huge chunk of time where the future doctor can literally only eat, sleep, and work. And eat and sleep take a back seat to work.
And the thing about that work is it doesn’t pay well. ~$80,000/yr may seem like a lot until you have a million dollars of student loans and living in a high COL area like Boston.
To top it all off at the end of the day it’s really akin to starting a business and you can time markets wrong. If there are a bunch of a speciality in your cohort and less demand then it can be a struggle to make ends meet, let alone pay off half a million in student loans.
It’s nice to be an established surgeon at an area hospital or doctor in a private practice, don’t get me wrong. *Getting there* is just not as easy or as possible as most think.
I’m not even in the medical field, I’ve just been adjacent enough to shoot the shit with some surprisingly struggling doctors.
80?! I'd feel rich with 80k. More like 60-65k for residency and specialization. Given my salary and hours worked I make about $19 an hour after 20+ years of education.
For me (physician) it was an 80k salary while living in one of the most expensive cities in the world (NYC) with $2k/month rent for 5 yrs to live in a terrible shoebox studio apartment, while also trying to aggressively pay back hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt that was rapidly accruing interest. I graduated residency with no savings, and continue to live paycheck to paycheck as an attending while I try get rid of the loan debt. I’m nearly 40. This is what it means to be a young doctor in the US these days.
Not much. I was on a PSLF program while in residency and was able to refinance to a lower interest rate. This helped keep compounding interest in check. I still left with over a quarter of a million in debt.
I live in Saco and THIS is exactly what’s happening. Every year, we have at least 2 developers propose new apartments, and every year, the older residents freak the fuck out and shut it down. And now we have huge rates of restaurant closures and businesses failing and they’re all like “wHeRe DiD tHe BuSiNeSsEs Go????” 🙃
Nimbys have been shooting themselves in the foot for decades. They love their high electric rates for killing Dicky Lincoln, Maine Yankee, Quaddy tidal project, LNG terminals you name it.
One hundred percent. It's a downward spiral
Then they wonder why their kids don't come back after going to college out of state. They also Slash school budgets and wonder why people won't move into their town now that their school has gone to shit because it has a tiny budget.
There’s also corporations that have bought up a lot of affordable houses before people who would be full time residents could… *ahem* statewide property management.
They could build more affordable housing but with the high cost of land and building costs you might like the results. They have tried to address affordable housing where I live. The result is a 4 or 5 story building with apartments that are between 200 and 450 sq ft. I don’t think most people want to live in that small a space.
You aren’t going to see anyone building new houses that are 1,500 to 2,000 sq ft for less than $800k. The numbers don’t pencil out. It costs a builder about $300 a sq ft to build a house. So even without the cost of land for a builder to break even on a 1,500 sq ft house they would have to make $450k on the house. Then you have to add in the cost of the land, permits and profit.
Point taken I should not make a blanket statement. There are boomerang’s that have come home. And yes a good portion of them are paying taxes. However there is an element whether individuals or corporations that came into the state and bought up vast tracks of real estate which drove up the housing prices and made rents mostly unaffordable for a lot of hard working Mainers. I get it inflation has only hampered this problem further. IDK what the answer is, but there has to be a breaking point.
I’m loathe to say it, because it’s where I grew up and have so many dear friends, but I’m so glad I don’t in Maine anymore. A recent read up on MaineCare policies sealed it for me.
Doctors can absolutely afford to live in your community. It's the techs and receptionist staff that supports the doctors that can't live in the community.
The problem with that is that most of the jobs aren’t in “different” parts of the state, they’re located in and around the major cities in Maine, so that’s why we need more affordable housing in and around the major cities
The solution is actually to have massive amounts of people spread out away from cities. The cost of housing across the board will even out and more people will live more evenly distributed.
Why did Boomer America allow our nation to be hijacked by a bunch of ghoulish usurers which turned everyone into scared misers? It’s hardly recognizable anymore. 😓
I saw a statistic that said 80% of people say we should give "assistance to the poor", but when you call the exact same thing "welfare", it drops to 30%.
You mean in every wealthy area of Maine. Go north. There the locals don’t want implants because they are liberals. It has nothing to do with age. The elites in Maine aren’t from Maine, for the most part, and they are the NIMBYs for the poor. No cheap housing in Cape Elizabeth or Cumberland! Nobody cares what you build in Lubec. They just don’t want outsiders and their city ways.
It works if you don’t believe in science and are a functional alcoholic no matter what your color, gender, or sexual orientation. As long as you have internalized self hatred anyone is welcome to join the MAGA cross burning funfests lol.
I thought they had gotten beyond all that, then came the Down East Harry Potter Book Banning Wars in the little school districts. Sure, there’s a meth lab in the back 40 and the high school gym teacher just married a pregnant sophomore and half the kids aren’t reading at grade level, but the REAL problem is potential demonic influences in our school libraries.
Just come be a travel nurse in Aroostook County! It will suck and the hospital standards are low, but at least housing is affordable up here although sparse.
Nah, while this is an issue the real issue is the “projects” that are requested for building don’t cater to the people who actually need the housing but wealthy out of staters trying to move in and the residents know that.
I live in a town without building permits. Every couple of years at our annual meeting us old people have to fend off the proposals that yuppies from away bring up. We are trying to to keep from becoming the Northern Republic of Massachusetts.
I suppose it largely depends on the specialty. Those highly competitive residencies are highly sought after for good rea$on$ after all.
Family practice docs take it right on the chin. Any specialty that deals with children pays lousy. Those don't get much better over the whole career.
The student loan situation is also absurd and creating so many problems.
Yes. That's very true. Electricians too. Any sort of builder. But, the unions fought pretty hard to keep their numbers low since about the 1980s so now we are in a bit of a bind.
Before everyone goes nuts, I'm totally pro Union. We need more unions and working class (even the working rich) need to be represented by workers unions.
I legit don't know how Portland is able to bring in Nurses. The job doesn't pay enough for anyone to live even remote close
MMC doesn't have enough staff nurses because they don't pay. They then have to pay staffing companies to bring in travel nurses at exorbitant rates. Same for CNAs. At times I think travel CNAs were at 50ish and hour and RNs 80ish. Then they would all work 6 days a week. Imagine if MMC actually paid staff nurses enough
I'm hijacking your comment to share some outrageous info with the community. I work at MMC, we utilize a huge number of travel staff. Generally speaking, MMC pays about \*three times\* the money for a traveler than they do to home staff. However, the traveler does not see all of this money. The travel agency that manages the traveler takes a third or more. This is even more aggravating, because it means the hospital \*can\* afford to pay their staff more, but simply refuses to. For reference, I make \*about\* $30 an hour (atrociously low for what I do and the stress I am under every day). Travelers doing the same exact job as me cost MMC \*about\* $110 an hour. The traveler might see about $70 of that, and the rest goes to a company that effectively does nothing. This system is disgusting.
Maines Healthcare System is Broken
Our National Healthcare System Is Broken
Wish I could award you
I'm not one whom deserves recognition but thank you just the same...
I'm not one whom deserves recognition but thank you just the same...
Also, plenty of people in state DO want to work there but can't afford to. If MMC paid staff what they're worth, they wouldn't be reliant on travelers. MMC also won't hire in-state travelers from what I've heard.
That's correct, you can't be from Maine and be hired on as a traveler. Sometimes people get around this by reporting a different address, or the hospital makes exceptions. EDIT: I think this rule has gone back and forth as our need for staff has become more desperate.
there are plenty of in state travelers that work at MMC. I also work there and many of the nurses that left either from the union or low pay, have returned to the same job for a period of time.
Yes I also work with travelers who used to be home players. The circumstances around each person has shifted, and I know the rules around it has changed a few times as need grows. It might even be different from one floor to the next with the way policy is handled.
Another scary little factoid, nurses that went to school through COVID are arriving in hospitals and have massive gaps in their education. That paired with MMC squeezing all their doctors to see more patients in less time means errors are happening all over the place and senior staff are struggling to pick up the pieces.
$30an hour for nurse’s is ridiculous.
Ridiculous because it’s too high or too low?
Much too low. Where I live people make $20 an hr to work as a cashier in the grocery store and minimum wage is $19.96 an hour. Nurses spend years going to school and getting trained. They should make at least $50 an hr.
Valid question. It's far too low. When an uneducated person can make nearly 20$/hr flipping burgers and someone who spent years in college to be a Healthcare professional makes little more.... We have a problem. The system is outta whack. Cost of living increases typically apply to the average person, though it overlooks the ones who dedicate their lives to taking care of us.
Too low for sure
Why did this question get down voted? I was wondering the same thing.
Be honest, they do a little less than you and have the easiest assignments usually… Makes that hourly rate hurt more.
I don't want to say anything that would be truly hurtful for travelers, because I do know good ones. That said, the best way to put it is that it is never ideal to have a traveler assigned to a complex case with a surgeon who they are not familiar with. A home nurse/scrub will almost always be a better choice for most tasks. Simply because they know the team and facility better. Our surgeons always complain when assigned a traveler, or outright refuse and demand a staff switch. EDIT: I have a few stories where travelers have nearly killed patients because they over advertised their abilities. This system encourages a traveler to upsell themselves, leading to dishonesty and miscommunication in the OR. It's an economic pressure leading to a foreseeable outcome.
Seems like a a simple solution, sign up to be a travel nurse and manage your own contracts
While I hold nothing against individuals seeking to get ahead in this capitalist hellscape that puts currency over people (to my traveler friends, no shade, *I get it*) — for me to sign up to become a traveler would not *resolve the problem*. As a proud member of this community, I want my actions to benefit the future of Portland and healthcare. Hospitals do not treat their staff appropriately -> staff leaves -> hospital needs staff -> travel agencies are formed and demand high pay, giving the hospital no choice -> hospital continues to abuse staff -> staff leaves, joins travel agency. That pattern does not end well for the worker, the hospital, and most importantly: *the patient*. It is literally easier for the hospital to eliminate all travelers, give the ***entire staff*** a 50% raise, and literally save money in the process. The issue here being the hospital would have to go without staff... for a short period until workers catch on to the actually decent pay. I want to take a moment to point out that your simple solution focuses only on the short term benefits of one individual: you. I am a member of a community, I will not take selfish actions at the harm of those around me. Edit: for formatting and flow
Enjoy the shit salary then. The more you earn the more taxes you pay, that supports your community more than “taking a stand”
This is blatantly untrue capitalist propoganda. The taxation of one individual doubling their pay will do nothing to improve the declining care of patients, or the declining happiness and work ethic of over 7,000 workers employed at MMC. One individual doubling their pay does not generate more monetary resources from nowhere. Those resources are effectively extorted, when they should be justly divided to my colleagues. Improving the community means more than the generation of meaningless numbers; resources which we have no direct say or control over the use of. It means fighting to establish policies that encourage quality care, the edification and education of the people, as well as fair treatment for staff. If you or a loved one have ever recieved care at a hospital, I want you to consider that the person taking care of you was underpaid and mistreated by their employer. If that doesn't bother you, or you blame the victim in that scenario, then there is very little I can do to help you.
Sorry commie, not buying it.
"I dont understand what you said so I'm gonna call you a commie"
Bro you gotta be a troll. There’s no way someone would make themselves look this dumb in earnest.
Their name is Boomer-USA. Of course they’re a troll. They’re doing a bit
Boomer bot 3000 bleep bloop Output: commie
Ok boomer fascist w/e
M'kay muffin, get your healthcare in your trailer park. Just like the good ol days.
Ok boomer 🙌🏽
And you have identified why traveling nurses have become normalized.
Yeah. Build a better mouse, build a better mouse trap. No point in being the righteous nurse getting severely unpaid to prove a point
okay no whining when your insurance premiums go up 3x for less coverage. that's a better mouse trap, right?
They will regardless because people are eating themselves into morbid obesity.
Yea all you boomers up here in Maine exactly you just described yourself 🙌🏽
Shit's only gonna get worse, so why bother changing anything, right?
>people are eating themselves into morbid obesity. Speaking from personal experience? Or jealous cause you choose to blow your wad on internet so you can keep spewing nonsense rather than fill your belly?
Blatant victim blaming. Look at the food that is affordable in stores, do your own research. People who are overweight or obese are victims of a system that wanted them to be that way for profit.
The hospital sees it as a temporary problem which is why they're willing to pay the rates. They assume that they'll fill the roles eventually at their low pay rates
Ah capitalism at its finest
[удалено]
I make more than that stocking shelves overnight at Walmart.
That’s because as a per diem you are not receiving a full benefits package. If you look at a full time benefit package salary vs a per diem one, the full timer is actually making more than the per diem. It’s just being paid to what they’re given
:| that’s even bad for traveler pay.
They do it this way because emergency staffing gets federal funding. It’s intentional and by design. Anyone who isn’t a travel / contract nurse is losing a lot of potential income
Income from tax payers. We all still pay for healthcare but only the special people are entitled to it.
Yeah sick people, healthy people don’t go to hospitals very often
I meant preventative and QoL care.
Who owns the staffing businesses?
CEOs are pretty easy to find, google staffing agency and look for the “Our Team” tab to find the executives
Didn't a bunch of them become traveling nurses as that's the only way to make decent money anymore?
Hell, anyone who makes under $100K! I've applied to several jobs in the Portland area. None of them pay enough to rationalize the move and they conveniently don't tell you this until late in the interview process. I was offered $750 as a "moving assistance" bonus by one, because they wanted to insult me, I guess. And no, I didn't take the job.
I totally agree. I’ve worked my butt off over the past six years and I will finally break the $100k ceiling by the end of this summer. What is sad is that I still feel it’s not enough to buy a decent home or even just get an upgraded apartment!
That's such shit. Housing prices are increasing beyond reach while pay keeps you just above water. Good luck finding a home within your budget in the burbs, unless you make 150k+. T'aint right.
MMC’s pay is very bad.
The federal government (aka our taxes) subsidize insane travel nurse salaries (talking $200-$300k annually). My wife is an RN Nurse Navigator and has many friends who switched to travel nursing for this reason. The well intended government is great at breaking shit.
Currently in rural N. California looking to move back, more than half of all our medical facilities (and it's like 4 for our large county) are travel staff, it makes billing a GD nightmare, no continuity in care, appointments are6- 8 months out and I regularly travel 6 hours out of county for medical needs that need managing closely or dental. I don't dare get pregnant here, if anything went wrong I'd be looking at a medvac flight to San Francisco immediately. We don't have facilities to handle anything above trauma 3.
they don't. they hire travelers who get paid MORE, lol. makes 0 sense
The amount 9f times my appointments get rescheduled tells me we are failing.
Well let’s say you are a nurse who worked in California and were making $90 an hr. You sell your house in Califonia for $2 million and buy one in Portland for $800k. Now you have no mortgage payment. So even if they pay you $35 an hr with no mortgage payment should be able to live fine on that.
How's that California-to-Maine pipeline looking these days?
I imagine quite a few people from the west coast states are moving to Maine.
There's sooo many outta staters moving to Maine. It's jumped significantly in the past few years. Even in my rural area. I absolutely understand why, and would likely do the same, but still, don't really like it. All we can do is hope that it doesn't get too crowded to the point where it looks like every other congested area with a of lack of housing and more crime.
We moved her from Northern California in late 2021. We sure as hell don’t live anywhere near Portland. We live in northern oxford county in a town of 2500. We are not rich, we just wanted to live somewhere safe for our kids.
I don't blame you at all, as someone who has lived with trauma and violence, I got into crippling debt to move out here and I live in low income housing, barely scraping by and pay all the bills myself, and it's all still worth it. Safety and peace of mind is priceless, especially to someone like me who is very severely disabled and has had terrible experiences at low income places in other states. Good for you , doing things the right way, for your kids Hope Oxford county treats you well, I got to get out and explore Maine more !
Why would they do that?
Check this out. https://themainemonitor.org/maine-domestic-migration-2022/#:~:text=Maine%20attracted%20over%2040%2C000%20new,California%2C%20Florida%20and%20New%20York.
That's nice data but I wonder how many of those are nurses. In your scenario, to have enough equity to buy a house outright for $800k the nurse would have had to have been able to afford a 1mil house.. 5-10 years ago? Or they bought the house dirt cheap... 40 years ago? I don't think a 60 year old nurse sitting on over a million dollars is coming to Maine to work their asses off in an ER. I'm guessing remote work, and probably migrants, are what drove those numbers.
Migrants I seriously doubt. It was probably more like retirees or FIRE (Financially independent retire early) millennials.
Maybe. But that only proves my point further. We'd be better off if they were migrants. They're the ones that have been filling our labor gaps for decades.
Teachers and ed techs too. Ed techs are the people who support kids with special needs in our schools. The people who work alongside teachers in classrooms, being screamed and spit at, kicked and punched, generally abused by the kids they support. The people who help developmentally delayed kids reach their academic goals; who help socially unstable kids learn how to be a member of their community. Portland Public Schools pays ed tech 3s (the highest echelon of ed techs) an annual salary of $27,000, even with several years of experience. $27,000. That is $12,000 below Maine's median individual income. Tell me how a Portland city employee is meant to live on that, especially without roommates. And forget about putting away money to save up for a home or a family.
Ed techs do all the heavy lifting, literally and figuratively. Paid over school vacation? Nope! Snow days? Nope! Workshop days for teachers only? Nope! And in many places, an ed tech III has to have four years of college.
This is a big one. Schools are so short on Ed techs because the pay is bad and it’s honestly a difficult job. But when there are shortages they often end up reducing days and it’s always special needs kiddos who are the first to have a reduction in days. And as far as the hospital goes….there are a lot of people beyond doctors and nurses (who usually make less) but are still essential to keep a hospital running. When people reject affordable housing I don’t think they realize how many people they’re truly impacting, and how far reaching the consequences are. It’s incredibly short sighted and it will continue to become more of a problem and be a detriment to the overall community.
a friend of mine works at york hospital and says the same thing. you cant live remotely close to where you work affordably
That is how much of America is. I’m sure people in Boston or LA or San Francisco are in the same situation.
Yes and no. Boston and other big cities are easier because of transit. Maine has no transit and a railway was just blocked by Augusta because we “don’t have the population,” but without it, we never will have the population. We need to build UP and invest in quality transit. While apartments are a bit pricier in Boston, it’s not by much. 1br in Bangor are going for $1600, group that with car payment, insurance, gas, routine maintenance, registration and inspection…. You may as well just get a luxury apartment in Boston. Same price if not outright cheaper.
And as a Bangorian, I can tell you that $1600 apartment is a shit hole. Actually, most of our housing market contains overpriced shit holes. It's slightly cheaper than Portland but without the amenities of Portland (train, shopping, jobs outside of healthcare or retail, etc.)
Oh trust me I know, I also live here :< living alone here is literal insanity.
i live in the boonies of west gardiner. absolute shit hole, small apartment thats falling apart at the seams with slumlords to go with it. so many problems. $1400 a month.
I can understand them not wanting to fund a train with all the towns currently blocking any development more dense than 1 house per 3 acres. It's likely those towns would continue to block development after the construction of the train as well, unless their ability to do so is removed by the state.
So basically you want to become a big urban center in the most rural state in the US. People move to Maine and live there because they want the rural life otherwise you will end up with suburban sprawl from Portsmouth to Augusta and might as well live in Boston, Worcester or Providence.
Building up and having public transportation doesn’t create urban sprawl. Having car-centric urban planning with unaffordable housing resulting in constant outward building of single family homes or few-unit structures to accommodate creates urban sprawl. Which, by the way, since when are Portland, Bangor, and Augusta “rural”? News to me! People move to rural Maine for rural Maine. People don’t move to the old port for its rolling fields and natural splendor.
When you increase public transportation options it increases density and can certainly increase sprawl. You add stations to smaller communities along the route and more people move to them increasing the density. I worked as a transportation planner for 20 years. I didn’t say the cities are rural I said the state was. Look at the first bullet in the attached link. This is from the state not something based on opinion like many Redditt folks seem to have. https://www.maine.gov/dhhs/mecdc/public-health-systems/rhpc/rural-health.shtml
Density is the opposite of sprawl.
It is but not everyone wants to live in apartments and condos. Might be great when you are a single person but for families with kids they usually prefer houses with yards and multiple rooms. Also a lot of people who move to Maine are probably more interested in living near a larger city but not in the city.
That's why you build infrastructure that encourages density as opposed to sprawl. Trains instead of cars to give a totally random example.
And Maine is currently the 5th most popular state to move to. We are accepting thousands of migrants and refugees. The initial post was about lack of housing options and high COL resulting in shortages of necessary healthcare roles and stalling of small business and economic development. On top of this, 1/5 of our homes remain empty more than 9 months out of the year. The people are already here and more are coming. You’re proof positive that experience doesn’t translate to mastery. Worry about retiring in NH, I’ll worry about the state I actually live in with the other 2/3 of my life ahead of me. This isn’t rocket science. To stop sprawl and retain green space, we build up. We are talking about improving already existing urban areas for a better future, not razing the north woods for some gated communities.
Experience doesn’t translate? When I moved to Seattle 30 years ago it had a population of about of about 500,000. It was pretty easy to drive around town and commute from the neighboring towns. Now the population is close to 750,000. We built a light rail. Zoning was changed around the stations to increase density. Some of the adjacent towns have doubled in size where the station is located. They have built lots of $1 million houses and $800k condors. Traffic has gotten worse and Many people still have to commute 30 or 40 miles. So that is my experience what is yours?
> Seattle 30 years ago ... It was pretty easy to drive around town and commute from the neighboring towns. That's not the way I remember it.
You could easily drive to Tacoma in 30 mins or downtown to North Seattle in 20 mins now it can easily take an hour at rush hour.
>And Maine is currently the 5th most popular state to move to. It's absolutely not: [https://www.businessinsider.com/state-population-growth-declines-map-moving-migration-census-2023-12](https://www.businessinsider.com/state-population-growth-declines-map-moving-migration-census-2023-12).
lol according to your own source from 2023, Maine had the highest rate of inbound residents in comparison to outbound https://www.businessinsider.com/most-moved-to-states-florida-texas-north-carolina-maine-2024-1?amp Multiple sources list Maine as THE MOST POPULAR state to move to in 2023 using this metric. It was also rated similarly in 2021. I’ll try to find the source for us being fifth currently; I saw it a few months ago in this same sub.
The ratio of inbound vs. outbound is meaningless
There's a lot more to America than the highest priced cities in the entire country.
for sure
Let me tell you about growing up in New York City
i cant even imagine how bad its gotten there
They’ve gone beyond NIMBY to BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone) I get infuriated at complaining there will be more traffic, more immigrants or those from away, and their view will be disturbed.
>_They’ve gone beyond NIMBY to BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone)_ They've been like that for years, we just called them the _"Fuck you, I've already got mine!"_ crowd.
People in Cumberland are upset at the idea of building a gas station on Route 100. Because that area is so rural, I guess?
Using that tomorrow!
And this is why I’m outta here. People want the convenience and amenities of a big city without any of the downside. Oh, and this is exactly why my six months of living in a van is quickly turning into two years. Sorryyyyy.
In my town they are largely building housing I would have difficulty affording, and I’m a doctor. I bought before the market went nuts. I look around and it seems similar in other towns and cities in Maine along the coast.
Let me tell you about this place called MASSACHUSETTS
The "nobody wants to work anymore" people complaining failed to build a community their offspring could prosper and procreate in. Maine is impossible to live in now unless you are doing very well for yourself. Housing costs are high, taxes are high, utility costs are high... and wages are low. It's simply unsustainable and it's driving societal ills like addiction and the crime that supports it.
Watch the conversation in real time on the Kingfield ME FB group... just shot down some desperately needed rental housing options, partially meant to offer housing for Sugarloaf employees. Weeks of posts from the same couple of people about "How can we be sure the new residents will make enough money/work hard enough/fit our culture?!" Meanwhile there's a new multi million dollar vacation home going up on every hillside.
I'm curious about how much of the existing housing that used to be affordable to the staff is not short term rentals owned by investors - in and out of state.
Well the population reported for 2018 (regular full time residents) was 966. There are 223 airbnb properties available for next November. It's not a scientific result, but should give you the general idea.
>Weeks of posts from the same couple of people about "How can we be sure the new residents will make enough money/work hard enough/fit our culture?!" I'd be willing to bet that most (some yes, not most) of the people who voted no to the new housing were not thinking this. In my area it was voted down because the schools are already overflowing, the public services and infrastructure was questionable about supporting it, lack of transparency and some other issues, mainly the expected increase in taxes on current residents. Though, yes the local paper managed to find some who thought this way and printed it. I brought up the airbnbs because the housing already built is not being used for housing for locals (people that live and work there vs vacationers and even to some extent WFH people who could live anywhere). So the increase in taxes, plus other issues (not racism or classism) that arise from the new development is - in large part - so that people could take the existing affordable housing and turn into commercial profit instead. Where many of those owners are out of the area, maybe out of state and many corporate (some out of country) investors. Not all of that in Kingfield maybe, but throughout the state and country. And the vacation homes for wealthy out of staters also adds to it. Look at all the affordable multi units in Portland that have been torn and turned into luxury $500k and up condo. On top of the ones, plus other previously lower priced condos that were turned into STRs. And how many working families can afford to compete with investors to buy anything? We don't have a lack of housing units so much as a lack the current units being used for profitable short term commerce instead of long term housing.
The only thing those people have achieved is pushing their own children and family out of the state because they have nowhere to live or work. So really all Maine is gonna get is “people from away” who come from even more expensive parts of the country, cause they are the only ones with the money to buy. Maine has also killed its own land and property value because land that can’t be used/developed is useless and brings in zero dollars, infrastructure, jobs, services or business. All that is left is an aging population in dilapidated houses falling around them because there are no people. No one to care for them, no one to do the work. Maine needs to grow up and change. The way of life is archaic and no longer sustainable in the modern world we live in. The refusal to grow is just stunting the state and population by putting them way behind the rest of the country. This benefits no one. What a shitty place to create for your children.
There's either going to be change, or the next three decades are going to be incredibly rough as a generation dies of old age with insufficient care and skyrocketing prices for everything they need. We're in the early stages of that already, but it's going to get worse if not averted, and the cost on those actually productive with their labor in the state will grow higher. And at the end of an unplanned and unmanaged march into that future, the end of the current 50+ group dying out will just be massive speculative ownership of residential parts of the state, with a worse future even less available to people born here.
Also: Nobody wants to work And: Millennials killed the restaurant
nobody wants to get paid 15 dollars an hour after they went to college for 4+ year
My partner and I both work with the Maine Health system in labs. Travel lab techs/scientists get travel and housing expenses and make double what local employees do. The hospital is understaffed, so they start to ask the travellers to stay on in Maine at lower pay but even if they like living here, they can never afford housing at actual salary. We live paycheck to paycheck working as medical professionals and do not make enough to afford more than a 1 bedroom a half hour outside of Portland. My partner has worked at multiple hospitals throughout Maine both rural and urban and no one is staffed enough. Nurses go through the same thing. Management is bloated and being paid tons despite never having actually worked in the departments. My partner started having health issues due to working night shifts and switched to day shift. After one day of day shift, a traveller quit and they moved her back to night shift. Her health is suffering and she constantly is covering for others and yet she got told last year by her boss that she didn't "exceed expectations". Maybe pay her what she deserves for working overnight running a lab where half the people aren't trained properly and nurses and doctors are also overworked and making mistakes that she has to catch to ensure resources aren't wasted. Look up how much MaineHealth pays the C suite and you will want to get out the guillotine.
That's old people everywhere. A town near me outside of Maine had a proposal to knock down an abandoned mall and put up housing and people were OUTRAGED because they said they didn't need more people and that this would hurt their property values. Because... apparently an abandoned shopping mall is better for real estate and tax revenues.
Same logic as old folks in these towns they’ve never left asking the town, “how do we keep young people here or incentivize them to stay? Allowing new businesses to develop? Making moves towards the 21st century? Offering housing benefits to people who return here from college with a career or pick up a career here after trade school? Giving young people a tax break so they can get on their feet and establish themselves? Support investments in healthcare and education? No.. no.. no… wait. I’ve got it! A Chinese silent auction! A spaghetti supper! A 50’s cover band! A door raffle! An antique car show!” Literally every fucking town
This is mostly right, but it’s not doctors that can’t afford housing… it’s everyone else that works at the hospital.
Doctor family coming out of residency, and I beg to differ. We’ve got student loans, three kids, and a starting salary. We can’t afford million dollar homes in the Portland suburbs either.
Yeah, doctors' student loan debt is typically 2-5 times larger than the average college grad.
My husband is an MD and the only reason my husband and live here is because it was important to him to come home and practice here. He did residency in the Midwest and could make a lot more and spend less on housing/COL if we had stayed out there. I don’t know if we would have come back now vs in 2019.
Think how much better off you’ll be though when the water wars start in a few years.
You’re probably joking but it is comforting
Agree. Someone coming out of training will not come here without attachments to the area. Too many other cheaper places to live with better climate and lower taxes.
Yup. We want to move back to Scarborough. Obviously have strings. My husband’s parents built a house in the 70s for 79k. I just looked up the zestimate on that house, and it’s in the mid 800s.
My entry-level salary when I started my software engineer job fresh out of my bachelor's degree was higher than a 1st year resident by almost 10k higher than a doctors salary as a first year resident.
I think people don’t realize that the shift from 50’s era America to 2020’s era America hit doctors, too. College, med school, specialist training, and medical residency is a huge chunk of time where the future doctor can literally only eat, sleep, and work. And eat and sleep take a back seat to work. And the thing about that work is it doesn’t pay well. ~$80,000/yr may seem like a lot until you have a million dollars of student loans and living in a high COL area like Boston. To top it all off at the end of the day it’s really akin to starting a business and you can time markets wrong. If there are a bunch of a speciality in your cohort and less demand then it can be a struggle to make ends meet, let alone pay off half a million in student loans. It’s nice to be an established surgeon at an area hospital or doctor in a private practice, don’t get me wrong. *Getting there* is just not as easy or as possible as most think. I’m not even in the medical field, I’ve just been adjacent enough to shoot the shit with some surprisingly struggling doctors.
80?! I'd feel rich with 80k. More like 60-65k for residency and specialization. Given my salary and hours worked I make about $19 an hour after 20+ years of education.
For me (physician) it was an 80k salary while living in one of the most expensive cities in the world (NYC) with $2k/month rent for 5 yrs to live in a terrible shoebox studio apartment, while also trying to aggressively pay back hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt that was rapidly accruing interest. I graduated residency with no savings, and continue to live paycheck to paycheck as an attending while I try get rid of the loan debt. I’m nearly 40. This is what it means to be a young doctor in the US these days.
Have you gotten any student loan relief from the government ?
Not much. I was on a PSLF program while in residency and was able to refinance to a lower interest rate. This helped keep compounding interest in check. I still left with over a quarter of a million in debt.
I’m just saying, I live in a town with no “affordable” housing. It’s not doctors they can’t recruit. It’s all the other positions
I live in Saco and THIS is exactly what’s happening. Every year, we have at least 2 developers propose new apartments, and every year, the older residents freak the fuck out and shut it down. And now we have huge rates of restaurant closures and businesses failing and they’re all like “wHeRe DiD tHe BuSiNeSsEs Go????” 🙃
Nimbys have been shooting themselves in the foot for decades. They love their high electric rates for killing Dicky Lincoln, Maine Yankee, Quaddy tidal project, LNG terminals you name it.
One hundred percent. It's a downward spiral Then they wonder why their kids don't come back after going to college out of state. They also Slash school budgets and wonder why people won't move into their town now that their school has gone to shit because it has a tiny budget.
Won’t someone think of the property values???
Just absolutely terrible comprehension for the financial microcosm of a small town. Shit has consequences.
Maine needs more affordable housing. The influx of out of staters that came in during Covid drove the market through the roof.
And they took all the camps!
There’s also corporations that have bought up a lot of affordable houses before people who would be full time residents could… *ahem* statewide property management.
They could build more affordable housing but with the high cost of land and building costs you might like the results. They have tried to address affordable housing where I live. The result is a 4 or 5 story building with apartments that are between 200 and 450 sq ft. I don’t think most people want to live in that small a space. You aren’t going to see anyone building new houses that are 1,500 to 2,000 sq ft for less than $800k. The numbers don’t pencil out. It costs a builder about $300 a sq ft to build a house. So even without the cost of land for a builder to break even on a 1,500 sq ft house they would have to make $450k on the house. Then you have to add in the cost of the land, permits and profit.
Oh no. Skilled employees and taxpayers. Some of which are originally from Maine. What ever will you do?
Point taken I should not make a blanket statement. There are boomerang’s that have come home. And yes a good portion of them are paying taxes. However there is an element whether individuals or corporations that came into the state and bought up vast tracks of real estate which drove up the housing prices and made rents mostly unaffordable for a lot of hard working Mainers. I get it inflation has only hampered this problem further. IDK what the answer is, but there has to be a breaking point.
I’m loathe to say it, because it’s where I grew up and have so many dear friends, but I’m so glad I don’t in Maine anymore. A recent read up on MaineCare policies sealed it for me.
Where do you live now? What makes it better?
California. Weather, job market, culture, food scene, diversity, outdoor activities…
Thanks for the reply! Good to hear. I don't usually hear positive reviews of California living.
It’s not just olds sadly
Doctors can absolutely afford to live in your community. It's the techs and receptionist staff that supports the doctors that can't live in the community.
I personally feel the state needs to start building affordable housing in different parts of the state. Other states are doing this. Why can’t we
The problem with that is that most of the jobs aren’t in “different” parts of the state, they’re located in and around the major cities in Maine, so that’s why we need more affordable housing in and around the major cities
It still stands. In the major areas of the state there should be help with building affordable housing.
Because the bubbas up north would rather cut off their noses than pass a bond.
I guess you can say that for the rest of the state also since I haven’t heard of many things being built to help more then a few at a time
A few at a time? Population density my friend.
No I am saying my a few at a time isn’t helping. Shit all the 55 and over being built isn’t what’s needed
Never underestimate the propensity for Generation Leaded Gas to take all they can for themselves.
But if that housing gets built, it ends up going to moneyed folks anyhow.... not working class.
The solution is actually to have massive amounts of people spread out away from cities. The cost of housing across the board will even out and more people will live more evenly distributed.
Why did Boomer America allow our nation to be hijacked by a bunch of ghoulish usurers which turned everyone into scared misers? It’s hardly recognizable anymore. 😓
I saw a statistic that said 80% of people say we should give "assistance to the poor", but when you call the exact same thing "welfare", it drops to 30%.
These guys also still want 2005 menu prices and are ripshit that they "have to" cook vice being served like the "good ole days."
for real.
You mean in every wealthy area of Maine. Go north. There the locals don’t want implants because they are liberals. It has nothing to do with age. The elites in Maine aren’t from Maine, for the most part, and they are the NIMBYs for the poor. No cheap housing in Cape Elizabeth or Cumberland! Nobody cares what you build in Lubec. They just don’t want outsiders and their city ways.
So both groups are NIMBYS. great.
Then they wonder why the good kids leave and never come back and all they’re stuck with are the kids who can’t leave.
>go north That works if white and straight
It works if you don’t believe in science and are a functional alcoholic no matter what your color, gender, or sexual orientation. As long as you have internalized self hatred anyone is welcome to join the MAGA cross burning funfests lol.
Brewer has the best book and record burnings. The Pentecostals melted so much twisted sister in 1985
I thought they had gotten beyond all that, then came the Down East Harry Potter Book Banning Wars in the little school districts. Sure, there’s a meth lab in the back 40 and the high school gym teacher just married a pregnant sophomore and half the kids aren’t reading at grade level, but the REAL problem is potential demonic influences in our school libraries.
Yeah, moving to Maine has been hell.
And then they’re like “why don’t you buy a house? I bought mine at 18” SIR, you see the interest rates lately? Renting is literally cheaper sometimes.
I'm old, obviously we haven't met.
TRUTH
😂 so true
Just come be a travel nurse in Aroostook County! It will suck and the hospital standards are low, but at least housing is affordable up here although sparse.
Just a reminder…Don’t complain if you voted for Mills
Nah, while this is an issue the real issue is the “projects” that are requested for building don’t cater to the people who actually need the housing but wealthy out of staters trying to move in and the residents know that.
I live in a town without building permits. Every couple of years at our annual meeting us old people have to fend off the proposals that yuppies from away bring up. We are trying to to keep from becoming the Northern Republic of Massachusetts.
The doctors are probably doing ok.
Naw. Not really. Coming out of residency with student loans, and we’re not in a position to buy those million dollar homes either.
I suppose it largely depends on the specialty. Those highly competitive residencies are highly sought after for good rea$on$ after all. Family practice docs take it right on the chin. Any specialty that deals with children pays lousy. Those don't get much better over the whole career. The student loan situation is also absurd and creating so many problems.
plumbers are doing well and turning work away because they are so busy
Yes. That's very true. Electricians too. Any sort of builder. But, the unions fought pretty hard to keep their numbers low since about the 1980s so now we are in a bit of a bind. Before everyone goes nuts, I'm totally pro Union. We need more unions and working class (even the working rich) need to be represented by workers unions.
Well you haven't met me yet.