TEEN SERVICES Preble Street Teen Services provides low-barrier access to shelter, food, basic needs, casework, mental health supports, education and employment services, and a variety of housing options for youth experiencing homelessness between the ages of 12-24 in Maine. We are proud to work alongside young people who are the experts of their own experiences and to support … Read more
ADVOCATING FOR SOLUTIONS Read Preble Street’s Legislative Priorities for the regular session of the 132nd Maine legislature here. Preble Street is committed to motivating both the public and private will to end hunger, homelessness, and poverty in the lives of our neighbors and to building strong, equitable, and just communities. Healthy communities depend on dignity, … Read more
The mission of Preble Street is to provide accessible barrier-free services to empower people experiencing problems with homelessness, housing, hunger, and poverty and to advocate for solutions to these problems. OUR PROGRAMS From a nutritious meal to crisis intervention, from clean clothes to healthcare, from shelter to a permanent home, Preble Street programs not only … Read more
Over the summer, Teen Services staff and youth collaborated with Cultivating Community to plant and harvest a garden in the Teen Center courtyard. Tomatoes, strawberries, rhubarb, herbs, and an assortment of flowers all flourished, and much of the food was harvested and used by Preble Street Food Programs to prepare meals for the youth to … Read more
On a fairly regular basis, I am urged by a well-meaning friend or supporter of Preble Street to run the agency “more like a business.” And from conversations with other nonprofit executives, I’m quite certain I’m not the only one getting that advice. It drives me crazy to hear that. Of course we run the … Read more
There was a time when Tim Keefe was so hungry he ate a squirrel. “I felt like a primitive human being. I felt like a caveman, I really did. And that’s not the first time in this whole thing I felt like a caveman,” he says. Keefe was homeless at the time. He lost his … Read more
… Over the past year, Good Shepherd Food Bank and Preble Street have undertaken the first research effort of its kind to better understand trends of hunger and food pantry usage in Maine. The results from more than 2,000 surveys completed in 244 towns in every county show how much Mainers are depending on local … Read more
At first glance, statistics on the number of veterans in Maine who are homeless seem to point to a troubling trend. From 2008 to 2015, the number of homeless identified as veterans jumped 70 percent in Maine, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which annually organizes a census of the country’s … Read more
Holidays in America are centered around food. While many dream for weeks of sugarplums, ham and the perfect table settings, approximately 48 million more are thinking of food in a different light: Will there be enough to go around? Of those people, 208,000 live here in Maine, which ranks 12th in the nation and first … Read more
In Portland, Maine, Preble Street marks the 10th year of its housing-first project, which aims to solve, not simply address, the problem of chronic homelessness. Two staff members at Logan Place help define the housing-first model and explore its effectiveness as a therapeutic intervention, which transforms lives. Logan Place, Preble Street’s first residential housing project, … Read more