NEWS

Maine homeless suffering, surviving

With temperatures plunging below zero early Tuesday morning, many of Portland’s homeless faced life-threatening cold.

Preble Street, a private nonprofit social service agency, sends teams of outreach workers to campsites in the city each morning to offer extra blankets, flashlights and hand warmers, and to offer people help to find permanent housing.

"When it’s cold, it’s a life-or-death issue," said Bill Burns, the coordinator of adult day shelter services for Preble Street. "It creates this real kind of foreboding. Nobody is immune from that terrible image of freezing to death." [Click here to read the full story on the Portland Press Herald website]