The city of Portland helped nearly 700 homeless people find housing last year, an increase officials credited in part to a collaboration with other agencies.

Maggie McLoughlin, director of the city’s Health and Human Services Department, said an increased focus on communication between city departments, mobile outreach and wraparound services have helped people who are homeless connect with resources and move into stable housing.

Last year, 1,641 people used the city’s shelters, according to the department’s annual report for 2025 released this week. The city saw a sharp drop in people using a shelter set up for asylum seekers, which closed this month.

The city reported that, as of this week, more than 380 people had used the winter warming shelter, which Portland stepped in to operate after no other organizations offered to run it.

Every guest at city shelters has the opportunity to work with a housing team member to find permanent housing and see if they are eligible for programs that provide support or resources.

McLoughlin said the housing navigators can assess the barriers a person faces to finding and keeping housing, including getting physical or behavioral health care and accessing vital documents. By addressing those issues early, it’s more likely that the person’s housing placement will be successful in the long run, she said.

“Wraparound services are often the difference between stability and recurring experiences of homelessness,” McLoughlin said.

In 2025, 682 people were placed into housing with the support of staff, according to the report. Among them were 160 people — including 31 families — who were housed without entering the shelter system. In 2024, more than 500 people were placed into housing, according to the city.

Through Project HOPE (Housing Opportunities for People in Encampments), 46 people who were living outside worked with navigators to move directly into housing, McLoughlin said.

Andrew Bove, vice president of social work for Preble Street, which collaborates with the city on Project HOPE, said it targets the most vulnerable among the unsheltered population. He said it’s a group that people sometimes write off as resistant to shelters or services.

“That is categorically untrue. I don’t know anybody who wants to live outside,” Bove said. “They want to be well and get off the streets.”

The program was the idea of the Encampment Response Team, a group of city leaders, community partners and advocates who were looking for solutions to the city’s homelessness crisis. They wanted to create a way to bring people directly from the streets into permanent housing, rather than moving them first into shelters.

The Project HOPE pilot program was launched in May 2024 using $226,000 from a city housing fund and $452,000 from MaineHousing. That money was used to hire a program coordinator and three housing navigators from nonprofits Preble Street, Milestone Recovery and Commonspace.

The funding also provides people in the program with financial assistance for security deposits, transportation and items they need for their new homes, such as bedding and cleaning supplies.

Bove said the program allows navigators to address the immediate needs of people who are unsheltered and “in crisis every day as they try to survive.”

“Once their basic needs, including food and medication, are met, they’re able to engage in the process of finding housing and stability,” he said.

The program was renewed for the current fiscal year and McLoughlin said the city anticipates continuing it next year. The City Council has prioritized the program for funding through the city’s opioid settlement funds. The scale of the program is in question while officials wait to see if MaineHousing funding will be available, she said.

The MaineHousing funding came from the Emergency Housing Relief Fund, a state fund for homelessness response that was part of the last two-year budget. It is likely to be funded again by the Legislature this year, but that is not yet final, according to a spokesperson for the quasi-state agency.

Bove is hopeful the funding will be in place to continue the program into a third year.

“Homelessness is a solvable problem,” he said. “If you invest resources and money into programs to assist folks, results happen. That’s what we saw with this program.”