A sign at the former Harbor View Park homeless encampment warns those living there that the City of Portland would be clearing the park soon. After delays, the encampment was cleared on Jan. 2. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer
The city of Portland hopes to launch a new program to get people living outside into permanent housing – without first putting them into an emergency shelter.
The City Council will vote Monday on an emergency measure to spend $226,000 from a housing fund to launch the effort, combined with $452,000 from MaineHousing.
The program, Housing Opportunities for People in Encampments, aims to get those living outside directly into housing.
The city says this will fill a critical gap in its efforts to bring people indoors. While the city’s Encampment Crisis Response Team was set up to get people living outdoors into a shelter, this group will skip that step and bring them directly into housing.
“People weren’t being helped with access to longer-term housing right away, they were just being offered shelter,” said Aaron Geyer, the city’s social services director.
He said it became clear that some homeless people would not agree to go into a shelter because of trauma, addiction or a host of other challenges, no matter how much outreach the city did.
After a series of sweeps over the last year, there are no large homeless encampments left in the city, but the city’s tent tracker clocked 40 tents on Thursday.
The goal is to permanently house at least 45 people over the next year.
The combined funding will go toward hiring four people to run the project, including a program coordinator and three housing navigators from three nonprofit partners – Preble Street, Milestone and Commonspace.
The money will also cover financial assistance with security deposits, transportation, and necessary home items such as bedding or cleaning and moving supplies.
“We’re really excited about the possibility,” said Andrew Bove, vice president of social work at Preble Street.
Bove said he helped develop the program along with city staff and believes it could reduce homelessness in the city because it is focused on long-term housing.
“Housing is possible in Portland, even with the crazy rental market right now, but it takes persistence, dedication and focus,” said Bove.
He said that often when homeless people receive housing support from caseworkers those people are also supporting them in other areas of their life.
“Maybe they’re also taking them to the methadone clinic or helping them get support for a disability and then also working on housing, but we will have one person who does nothing but help them with housing,” said Bove.
Councilors Anna Bullett and Roberto Rodriguez said they support the idea.
“Overall I feel optimistic about it and I anticipate supporting it on Monday so long as the funding all makes sense,” said Rodriguez.
“I think this is an all hands on deck situation dealing with the housing crisis,” said Bullett. “At this juncture, unless someone gives me some crazy reason otherwise, I’m in support of it.”
The mayor and other councilors did not respond to messages Thursday asking about the plan and whether they will support it.
The council is also being asked to approve a measure Monday to keep the 50 extra beds, added as part of a temporary emergency expansion of the shelter in November, through June 3.
The future of the city’s encampment team has been in limbo since the last encampment was cleared on Jan. 2, but Geyer said the group will continue to meet regularly even if the HOPE program is approved.
“I see this as the second phase of the ECRT because it’s a component that we didn’t have before,” said Geyer.
“One of the pitfalls of the ECRT to begin that was that it didn’t offer new funding or resources,” said Bove. “This program does.”
As the weather warms up, some community partners believe more tents may pop up around the city. They say having both the existing encampment team and the HOPE program in place would help the city tackle homelessness more effectively.
“If you want to solve unsheltered homelessness you can’t just do one thing. Everything plays together and the more layers you align the more likely it is that things will work out. It’s like with COVID, you wear a mask and you get your vaccine and you wash your hands,” said Bove. “You do all of it concurrently.”
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