Portland City Council votes 9-0 to approve new housing program for homeless

One tent is blown over by the wind on Myrtle Street outside Portland City Hall in 2020. Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer, file

The Portland City Council voted unanimously Monday night to create a pilot housing program designed to get homeless people directly into long-term housing.

All nine members of the council voted for the program.

The program, Housing Opportunities for People in Encampments (HOPE), was proposed by city staff in conjunction with several community partners. It was approved as a one-year pilot program and will be funded by a $452,000 grant from MaineHousing and $226,000 from a city housing fund.

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 program will skip that step and put them directly into long-term housing.

The program aims 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 also will cover financial assistance with security deposits, transportation, and necessary home items such as bedding or cleaning and moving supplies. The program will provide support for months after its participants have been placed in housing to help make sure they are able to successfully stay housed.

The proposal was brought up as an emergency measure – meaning it skipped a traditional first read and went straight to a public hearing and a vote. It required seven votes to pass.

“The state and our partners would really like to get this program off the ground as soon as possible,” City Manager Danielle West said of the measure and its emergency designation. “The wheels of government sometimes move slowly, specifically when you’re trying to hire,” she said.

Terrence Miller, advocacy director at Preble Street, spoke in support of the program. “Our community severely lacks the resources for those outside the emergency shelter system. HOPE will ensure that people have a viable pathway out of unsheltered homelessness and into permanent housing,” Miller said.

Councilor Regina Phillips asked how much money will remain in the city’s housing trust fund after allocating the $226,000 toward this program. West said that the fund currently contains about $7.4 million, so about $7.2 million will remain after withdrawing funds for the program.

Councilor Kate Sykes said she would support the program, but expressed concern about using the funds from the city’s housing trust. Money from the trust is designated specifically for building new housing.

“I don’t want to set a precedent that will create a slush fund out of the housing trust fund,” Sykes said. “I really bristle at using these funds for something else, but I don’t want the perfect to be the enemy of the good.”

Phillips asked city staff if they will work with landlords outside of the city through this program. “We don’t have a lot of housing in Portland,” she said.

Portland city workers clear a large homeless encampment at Harbor View Park on Jan. 2. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

Aaron Geyer, the city’s director of social services, said staff does have relationships with landlords in nearby communities and that housing staff currently travel as far as Rumford to work with landlords.

SHELTER EXPANSION

In another unanimous vote, the council extended until June 3 the emergency order that expanded the city shelter by 50 beds. The order had been set to expire on Monday.

The vote also was an emergency measure, with the council voting to forgo a second reading because of the pending expiration.

According to city staff, the shelter has an average of 20 beds open each morning, so without the expansion, there would not be enough room to serve everyone.

Staff estimate it will cost about $52,000 per month to extend the order. That money will primarily cover increased food and staffing at the shelter and will be drawn largely from salary savings as a result of a number of open vacancies in the city.

“I think the conditions that drew us to expand the beds remains,” Mayor Mark Dion said.

The council considered the expansion three times in the fall before it was narrowly approved in November, but the continuation passed on Monday with widespread council support.

West said that the shelter expansion will be brought before the council again on June 3. At that time the council will decide whether to end the expansion, make it permanent, or temporarily extend it again.

RESETTLEMENT

The council also voted unanimously to accept a $364,000 grant from MaineHousing for the city’s resettlement program to offset a loss in federal funding, which also was passed as an emergency order.

City leaders and Maine’s delegation pleaded with federal and state officials last year to change the new federal Shelter and Services program that stripped the city of its funding for the resettlement program and replaced it with tight funding regulations. The program helps asylum seekers find stable housing and access financial support while they wait for work authorization. Asylum seekers must wait as long as six months for approval to work.

The program restricted the use of federal funds to within 45 days of a migrant’s arrival in the United States.

That means Portland, where many migrants – including asylum seekers – arrive well beyond that mark, would no longer qualify for that funding.

Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King, and Rep. Chellie Pingree asked U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas in December to remove that restriction. Former Mayor Kate Snyder also pleaded with state lawmakers last year to help fill the funding gap.

The MaineHousing grant, in conjunction with some city funding, will keep the program running for the next 12 months. City spokesperson Jessica Grondin said Monday that she did not know how much money the city plans to spend on the program.

Portland previously received $1.16 million in one-time funding for the program, but as of December, city staff believed it could continue its most vital work with an annual budget of $700,000.

“We were looking for creative ways to help asylum seekers achieve self-sufficiency,” West said of the new funding model, which will fund six staff members.

Since the program began in Maine in January 2020, it has helped nearly 1,300 asylum seeking families – or about 4,200 individuals – gain access to health care, food, immigration and legal support, housing placements, and help enrolling children in schools, the city says.

The city of Portland stopped counting asylum seeker arrivals in June 2023. At that point, about 1,600 asylum seekers had arrived in the city in that year, continuing a steady stream of new arrivals over the last few years.

However, the city is supporting fewer asylum seekers now than it was a year ago, Grondin said.