PORTLAND (WGME) — The Portland City Council approved a six-month moratorium on new hotel construction in the city, in a 6-2 vote.

Councilwoman Kate Sykes, who proposed the moratorium, hopes the order will increase housing development instead of hotels.

“We are in a crisis, so everything we can do must prioritize building housing, not building hotels,” Sykes said.

The moratorium is designed to give the city time to review a zoning ordinance known as Hotel Inclusion Zoning. That zoning rule requires developers to build one low-income housing unit for every 28 hotel rooms built. If developers do not comply with this requirement, they will have to pay a fine of $4,700 per room.

The goal of the ordinance is to create housing for hotel employees, but Sykes said it hasn’t worked so far.

“They don’t provide the workforce housing we need to fill the jobs they create,” he said.

Since the zoning rule was enacted in 2019, several hotel projects have been approved, but none have built the required housing. Sykes argued that the fines are too low to incentivize the construction of affordable housing.

Portland Mayor Mark Dion, however, argued that freezing new hotel projects is unnecessary to make changes to the ordinance.

“We’re going to take over the hospitality industry and tell them you have to sit here while we think about our job,” Dion said.

Members of the public agreed and spoke at Monday’s council meeting.

“We still can’t build basic, small-scale apartment buildings in most of the city, but we want to blame someone, so we want to blame the hotels,” said Portland resident George Rheault.

Others warned that increasing fines on developers could slow construction altogether.

“You may be able to delay a couple of hotel projects or stop a couple of hotel projects, but the result will be that there will be no projects and there will be empty properties,” said Eamonn Dundon, advocacy director for the Portland Regional Chamber of Commerce. .

Despite concerns, the council ultimately voted to move forward with the moratorium, with the goal of halting construction of new hotels until the ordinance is reviewed.

“I think it’s important to take a pause if it allows our city staff to really dig into this,” said Councilwoman Anna Bullet.

The moratorium will not affect any pending hotel projects and will take effect in 30 days.