SOUTH PORTLAND — City Councilor Sue Henderson and Assistant City Manager Joshua Reny have some ideas for the council to consider when thinking about combatting homelessness in the community.
In January, Superintendent of Schools Ken Kunin reported that there are over 100 students in South Portland Public Schools without secure housing situations. This is up from what the district has seen in the past, about 30 to 40 homeless students in the past few school years.
Henderson and Reny reported five different types of recommendations and support methods, asking for city councilors’ support, on March 9. The reccomendations involve street outreach, health care access, general assistance and housing navigation as well as creating incentives and breaking regulatory barriers.
Because the homeless population is diverse, everyone has different needs, Reny said.
“It’s a complex issue where there’s really no one solution,” Reny said. “There needs to be a broad array of tools used to address this and there needs to be enough built in flexibility so that you can meet people at their need as individuals and help them get back to stable housing.”
The team spoke with organization leaders and used focus groups to gain information before creating recommendations, Reny said.
Outreach and trust relationships are important, Henderson said. The city could pursue relationships with organizations like Preble Street and Amistad in order to achieve more communication with homeless individuals.
The recommendation to the council was that the city put aside money in the budget to have a person from an organization provide outreach services, Henderson said.
“It needs to be the expectation that maybe initially people will refuse services, but then someone needs to go back and say, ‘Hey, how are you doing?'” Henderson said. “And then build a relationship to get someone to a place where they have their essential human needs met for shelter and food.”
The city should try to work with Greater Portland Health in order to provide healthcare and save cost on police calls and other services, Henderson said. “What there needs to be is outreach so that person has access to a primary care provider,” she said. “Probably every person in crisis like this needs access to a primary care provider where they can have their acute needs met.”
Sandra Warren, community development coordinator, said that Operation HOPE, a Scarborough program, is already in place to provide treatment for those suffering with drug addictions. This is a resource South Portland can use.
Another recommendation involved the city pursuing a new case coordinator position so that a person could better navigate services, Henderson said. “So we really think a case coordinator position in the social services department could deliver a broader scope of support services and provide specialized assistance to both general assistance and non-general assistance clients,” she said.
Henderson also proposed an idea regarding zoning overlay changes that would include alternative development standards for more affordable housing inside a structure.
Councilors spoke in favor of these recommendations. However, Councilor April Caricchio said she was worried changing zoning overlays creating separate communities.
Carrichio was also in favor of creating policy changes to prohibit background check fees which landlords charge for new applicants. “For a lot of people, that means maybe they can apply for one apartment a month,” she said. “They can’t run out and apply for 20 apartments, and it’s very competitive now.”
Councilor Katelyn Bruzgo said she is in favor of the city creating new policy to ban background checks completely.
From her experience as a case worker and working with homeless individuals, Councilor Deqa Dhalac said she has seen a lot of obstacles embedded in the overall system that might be difficult for South Portland to overcome.
“I don’t know what kind of a policy we can make and say, ‘You cannot do this,’ because the system is built that way and the system is stronger than what we are doing,” Dhalac said. “Sometimes it comes to legality, and can we break that? So I think we should do what we can in this situation and see if we can help with these folks who are in desperate need.”
She is in favor of all of the recommended suggestions, especially a new case manager staff position, she said.
In response, Henderson said she agrees with Dhalac. She believes that the issues need to be addressed.
“I guess one thing we can do is when it’s broken, we have to say publicly, it’s broken,” she said.
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