I recently took a walk up Portland Street in Bayside. It was an eye-opening experience.

People were seated and camped on the sidewalk in front of 55 Portland St., Preble Street’s headquarters and center to help trafficking victims. At Dyer’s Variety, people leaned against the walls, smoking. Folks with belongings in shopping carts surrounded the Learning Collaborative, a Preble Street and Maine Medical Center health care facility, spilling into the parking lot of the neighboring day care.

People filled the sidewalks around Preble Street’s 40-bed ultra-low-barrier shelter. Adjacent tenants’ doorways, behind which low-income and immigrant children live, were blocked. Scattered at each location was trash and evidence of intravenous drug use.

I wondered how this has been allowed to happen, when neighborhoods elsewhere have received so much assistance resolving encampments, repairing parks, and connecting struggling people with services and housing. Why is this neighborhood – with Portland’s poorest and second-highest amoubt of minority residents – treated differently?

We, as a city, need to do better – to get ahead of housing and addiction and not allow another impossible crisis like an encampment. We can start by giving Bayside’s people – housed and unhoused alike – the attention and dignity they deserve.

Nonprofits must work together again and collaborate to get people into treatment and mental health services. The city police department, public works, parks and outreach teams need support to provide consistent and effective responses.

We must raise Bayside up from this decadeslong neglect – and, in so doing, raise us all.

Nancy English
Portland

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