No one should have to live outside. Everyone regardless of who they are or where they come from needs a safe place to call home.
There are hundreds of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness in Maine this winter, living outside in the cold… in parks, under bridges, beneath overpasses, and in many other places not meant for human habitation. Shelters are full across the state almost every night, and many people have nowhere to go. In Portland alone, the City of Portland’s Homeless Services Center, Family Shelter, and shelter for asylum seekers have been at or near capacity for much of the winter. Preble Street’s adult shelters (Elena’s Way and Florence House) are also full almost every night.
With areas shelters at capacity and a camping ban policy in Portland, the Bayside neighborhood, where Preble Street and many other service providers are located, has become the center of Portland’s unsheltered crisis. The people living outside and in Bayside have complex behavioral and mental health needs, only made worse by having to endure the elements and the cold.
To connect with these individuals, outreach providers from across the city, have formed a weekly community partner huddle. These outreach providers include Preble Street, the City of Portland’s Health & Outreach teams, and The Opportunity Alliance’s PATH (Project for Assistance in Transition from Homelessness). Together they coordinate care, outreach efforts, and create individualized plans for high-need people living outside in the Bayside community and all of Portland. Through this joint community effort, outreach workers have been able to achieve the following in roughly the past 11 months:
This legislative session, Preble Street is advocating for increased funding for critically important emergency shelters across Maine. Emergency shelter is often the first step someone takes to exit homelessness. Emergency shelters are the “emergency room” of the homelessness response system, where people can get connected with the supports and services they need to recover from homelessness and return to stable housing. However, Maine state funding for emergency shelters has remained the same since 2016. Sign up for our Advocacy Alerts here.
As a community, we have made great strides in helping some of Portland’s most vulnerable people, but there is still more work to be done. Working together, meeting people’s needs, and advocating at the city, state, and national levels for people who are unsheltered, we can get more people into safe and dignified shelters and, eventually, into housing.
The key solutions that give people the safety and dignity we all deserve are professionally staffed emergency shelters, Site-based Housing First programs supporting people who’ve been chronically homeless, and substance use and mental health treatment programs. Expanding these resources and increasing accessibility will require collective community effort, but with time, planning, and investment, we will see the results – in our families, our neighborhoods, our cities, and in Maine.
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