Testimony of Nancy Smith, CEO of GrowSmart Maine
In Support of LD 659, An Act To Reduce Housing Costs By Not Requiring Fire Sprinkler Systems For Single-Family Homes And Duplexes
March 6, 2025
Senator Curry, Representative Gere and Honorable Members of the Joint Select Committee on Housing and Economic Development,
My name is Nancy Smith, I live in Ellsworth, and I am the CEO of GrowSmart Maine. We are a statewide non-partisan non-profit organization helping communities navigate change in alignment with smart growth. We advocate for comprehensive policies and funding for smart growth practices and outcomes.
We partner with Build Maine to co-host a transparent crowd-sourcing of policy proposals that has drawn together over a hundred people from across Maine and beyond. Policy Action 2025 follows Policy Action 2023 from the 131st Legislature. Each session we strive to meet this goal, “to address barriers to and create incentives for equitable, sustainable growth and development that strengthens downtowns and villages of all sizes while pulling development pressure away from productive and open natural areas.”
This testimony represents the position of GrowSmart and Build Maine.
As it pertains to LD 659, removing the requirement imposed by municipalities for single-family homes and duplexes to have fire sprinklers would eliminate a significant cost in the process of developing desperately needed housing in communities around the state. It’s hard enough to build new affordable housing, and the additional expense of a sprinkler system can be the difference between a project happening or not.
We appreciate that the safety of Mainers is paramount and should rightfully be prioritized in the development of new homes. However, fire death data in Maine suggests that the presence of a functional smoke detection system has far greater impact on mitigating these events than sprinkler systems and at a fraction of the cost. The overwhelming majority of fire deaths since 2012 have been in houses that were built before 1980 – 1979 being the year when fire detectors started being required in new homes.
At a moment when high construction costs are already straining budgets for new builds, and in light of the soaring demand for new housing, we believe that this is a way forward. It’s critical to lower barriers for building ADUs and smaller homes if the state is to meet its housing goals – and eliminating this sprinkler requirement would create more consistent, cost-effective, and predictable conditions for producing these types of housing in all communities.
GrowSmart Maine and Build Maine are willing to assist the committee in any way that is helpful.
Nancy Smith, CEO
GrowSmart Maine
Kara Wilbur, Chair
Build Maine