Many cities in Maine are facing dueling crises at the moment that are both drawing on largely the same pool of resources — an influx of asylum seekers and an ever-growing homeless population.
In responding to these crises, cities are generally called upon to make decisions regarding the distribution of the same scarce resource — housing.
Particularly when considered in the context of the ongoing conversation surrounding the availability and construction of affordable housing, the ways in which different cities go about addressing these twin crises are especially interesting.
Portland is one city that has taken notably diverging approaches to solving the problem of finding housing for both asylum seekers and the city’s homeless population.
For the past several months, city officials have been working to secure alternative housing accommodations for the asylum seekers who had been living in the Portland Expo. With the shelter in the Expo set to close in advance of the upcoming basketball season, officials moved quickly to secure alternative arrangements.
Several weeks ago, the city finalized housing agreements for these asylum seekers with hotels located in Freeport and Lewiston. On the day of the Expo’s closure, the city provided the asylum seekers transportation to these hotels for themselves as well as for their belongings.
The city will be spending roughly $550,000 of general assistance funds to cover the costs associated with these arrangements.
At the same time, city officials have also been working to address Portland’s burgeoning homeless crisis. With a number of substantial encampments located throughout the city, there seems to be a heightened sense of urgency surrounding the issue.
For the past several months, the City of Portland has been working to clean up these encampments, but the availability of alternative accommodations for those who are displaced as a result of these efforts is unclear.
The city’s push earlier this year to close down the encampment located on the Bayside Trail between Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods reportedly left those who had been camping there with no place to go, as Portland’s shelters were already at capacity.
Likely as a result of this, a substantial encampment developed on the state-owned Park and Ride on Marginal Way. As a result of this, the Maine Department of Transportation made the decision to block off half the parking lot for the encampment.
Since then, there have been numerous incidents at the encampment that have proven dangerous both to those in the surrounding area and those who are living there.
Most recently, a machete was found on the property of a nearby business after having apparently been abandoned by one of the people living in the Park and Ride encampment.
Several business owners in the area have raised concerns about the safety of their customers and employees as a result of the camp’s presence, citing complaints over the discovery of human excrement on their property, as well as potentially dangerous interactions with those who were likely under the influence of drugs.
As Portland has taken steps to clear additional homeless encampments throughout the city, officials have promised to offer all individuals some form of housing, although the specifics of these arrangements were not disclosed.
Those working on the ground with the homeless individuals living in these encampments have said that the city needs to slow things down because there is simply not enough shelter space for everyone.
“There are not 50 shelter beds available in the city right now,” Donna Yellen, Vice President of Strategic Initiatives for Preble Street, told Maine Public. “That’s why we need the time to do this.”
Other cities throughout the state have also found themselves dealing with similar crises, although not necessarily to the same extent as Portland.
For example, South Portland has been struggling recently to house asylum seekers, as well as homeless individuals, in light of losing federal and state COVID-19 funding.
Hotels throughout the city have been housing asylum seekers, alongside some homeless Mainers, for some time now, but back in April, the City Council declared that all hotels were to cease acting as shelters by June 30th of this year.
Earlier this summer, however, plans changed. The Howard Johnson Hotel located in the city will now be allowed to continue serving as a shelter through June 30, 2024. As of June of this year, 128 hotel rooms were providing shelter to 367 “asylum seeking individuals,” 165 of whom were children.
The agreement states, however, that no further extensions beyond this point may be requested or granted.
It is unclear how many homeless Mainers have previously benefited from hotel housing, although given that the South Portland City Council refers to this as a “transitional housing program for asylum seeker,” it is unlikely that many — if any — will in the future.
In order to make the agreement with the Howard Johnson Hotel legal, the South Portland City Council passed two ordinances earlier this week, on September 5, to allow the hotel to operate as a “de facto shelter” for the time being.
The two ordinance amendments are specifically targeted at legalizing this agreement and would not affect the illegality of making similar agreements in the future. That said, it is worth considering whether the passage of these amendments will make it more likely that amendments along these same lines may be made again.
Lewiston — the location of the hotel where a number of those who had been living in the Portland Expo have been relocated — has been fighting a housing battle.
The Lewiston Housing Authority has had plans to purchase a former Ramada Inn to convert it into 177 affordable housing units for those who are on “the fringes of homelessness” — “people facing evictions or rent increases, homeless youth, people fleeing domestic violence, disabled veterans and others.”
In order to do this, however, the Housing Authority would need to obtain a zoning variance to decrease the minimum required dwelling size from 300 square feet to 282 square feet — the size of roughly 80% of rooms in the former Ramada Inn.
The Board of Appeals denied this request, however, stopping the plan in its tracks. Many members of the Board of Appeals believe that issuing the variance would “alter the central character of the property,” meaning that the request would fail to meet one of the four criteria that would need to be met in order for the variance to be approved.
The MaineHousing grant that would have covered roughly half the cost of the purchase price for the former hotel has since been reallocated.
[RELATED: Plans to Transform Former Lewiston Ramada Inn Into Affordable Housing Facility Blocked]
Just this week, the Lewiston City Council tabled proposals for regulating and placing a moratorium on such “transitional housing” pending conversations with the city’s planning board.
The proposed regulations would have required transitional housing facilities to abide by the same restrictions as homeless shelters — including a 120 bed cap, 24/7 staffing, and a location in the downtown business district.
The City Council is set to meet with the planning board on September 12 to discuss these restrictions, as well as the possibility of a moratorium.
It is unclear how these potential restrictions, as well as existing zoning requirements, impact the Lewiston hotel that is currently housing asylum seekers from Portland.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like cities in Maine will find themselves free of either of these crises anytime in the near future. It remains to be seen just how these municipalities will opt to handle these issues — as well as what their priorities will be — should these problems continue to persist.
So-called asylum seekers come to Portland because they’re told at the Texas border that benefits of all kinds are most generous there. They seem to come from many places in the world from which they seek “asylum” but we don’t know what it is they seek asylum from, do we? To this Mainer, it seems they want free food, clothing, shelter, medical care, education, and a stipend. That’s why they come here. They pass through many other countries on their way where they have asylum, but keep going until they reach here, so let’s stop calling they asylum seekers. What they’re seeking is The Big Rock Candy Mountain and I don’t’ like my tax money paying for them.
” an influx of asylum seekers” If the Maine Wire continues with this leftist form of lying, I will stop reading it. These are not seekers of asylum, they are Illegal Aliens, that is the proper, U S legal descriptor.
I live in Portland. My girlfriend works across from the Marginal Way encampment. I’ve seen 100% of what is discussing here, along with the brief Deering Oaks encampment, or tent city as so many of us are calling them, and the former Bayside tent city, and others not mentioned here. My girlfriend and I are marathon runners and alter our routes to avoid many of them. I have friends who stopped using the park & ride due to the Marginal Way tent city.
The joke around here is that our City Council is too busy to work on the homeless, crime, and drug crisis cause they are focused on fighting racism and climate change.
“Likely as a result of this, a substantial encampment developed on the state-owned Park and Ride on Marginal Way. As a result of this, the Maine Department of Transportation made the decision to block off half the parking lot for the encampment.”
This is the problem: they close one and it just opens elsewhere. Its a game of wack-a-mole. I can point to numerous areas where tents were shuttered by the police (thank you, by the way), a month later either new tents open in the exact same place or a neighboring property only a few hundred feet away. I swear the new tent city in the once cleared location, or in the new location, is bigger. I can think of one area near Thompson’s Point that had about 8 tents. A month later I went through running and it was cleared. Two months later there were 12 tents, plus another 8 on the next property, along with a bunch strewn around as if this was a little city only missing a town square and church. Clearing the areas is not the solution. We need to be pro-active, particularly since they are a source of drugs.
As for the tent city mentioned above, they closed off the parking lot. Are you kidding me? This is not the solution either! That’s literally going to make it worse, as now you’re giving the okay for tents to be put up! We know every square foot will be used for tents. (In Seattle they’ve started building tent cities in trees, one famously has become known as an Ewok Village.) So, now instead of clearing them, they’re allocating land for them? It was that line that caused me to post this comment. It makes me wonder if the joke of the City Council is true after all. So, Portland has just designated its first open air drug market! And, maybe some prostitution for the adventurous and doesn’t have cleanliness standards! Will this make the “Best Of Portland 2024” for “Best Place To Get Drugs Without The Cops”
As for asylum seekers? This would NOT be an issue if we hadn’t bussed folks in here. We’ve never bussed immigrants around America before and, surprise, never had this issue. We started bussing them and now we have problems all over the country, such as being reported from NYC. What a coincidence?! We might have had little bubbles of immigrants here and there over the centuries, but never a country wide immigration housing crisis.
I’ve been told that this is now a national trend, thus there’s no reason for Portland folks to worry …. but let’s think about this national trend. So, that’s basically that excuse is saying: We had a desire to virtue signal and bring in potential Democrat voters so we opened our borders and started bussing immigrants in, we made it easy for immigrants to come here and be a part of a nanny state system, many said problems would develop and we called them racist bigots likely Trumpsters and shut then down for spreading misinformation and how dare they compare asylum seekers with our own residents who can’t get housing or a broken VA, in a few years on we are facing a housing crisis, the problems are getting worse as we continue to have open borders, we have increased crime and drugs that we didn’t see before these immigrants were bussed in, some are saying we’ll have more problems when it comes to governments now needing to allocate their annual budget for this crisis while other things get less money, and others are saying the drug problems will get worse …………. but no big deal since everyone is dealing with this problem! No big deal means you’re leaving it to the next generation to fix, or not fixing it at all, or not owning up to the fact you did this, or not being willing to do something so you don’t hurt someone’s feelings.
There was no reason to bus immigrants in and around America. We were told in the news we had to as they were coming out of war torn South America, 1 in 4 women was being raped (it was like life on college campuses, LOL), folks were dying! Even though here in Portland only the most culturally insensitive know they’re almost all from Africa. Are we to believe they left a war torn Africa to move to a war torn South America and then hiked all the way to Mexico to reach the most racist country ever? Nah. Yet, that is the narrative. Except during covid, when we were all lockdown, and then suddenly the news was told that immigrants were being bussed into Portland – again. So, I have no job and can’t leave my house, but they can ride a bus around a country and live in an Expo … all hush hush. Funny how that works.
This is a problem the city created. This is a problem bad politics created. Sometimes when folks point out the slippery slope of the future they’re not evil bigot racists. They’re actually right. And, now we’re there. I actually feel sorry for the “asylum seekers” who are just pawns. On some level I do hope we give them decent lives, after all we’ve put them through just to get their vote and feel good about ourselves and how we’re helping humanity. Sadly, too many blogs are out there pointing out the increased crime and drug rates, so I’m guessing some have a different definition of “decent life” than me.
So, after ranting, I propose a solution to the asylum seekers: lets look at what other countries do that let immigrants in and bus them around. Let’s see how they have solved the problems. Let’s call on some of sister cities to share their wisdom! Oh, wait, no country does this, cause the idea is insane.
Also, last night I saw two needles in Deering Oaks Park while out for my marathon training. I’ve been running for 2 years and go through Deering Oaks 100% of the time. Never seen a needle. Very sad seeing that. I grew up in a small town in another state. I remember never seeing any needles. Then suddenly there was some needles showing up one year. It made the front page of the daily newspaper. Fast forward 20 years, the city has a full on drug problem, and a needle exchange program (that doesn’t help), and its a problem that is now accepted as normal. The reason? In the beginning the City Council discussed the new needle problem, didn’t do much, didn’t want to offend anyone, just did enough to look like something was being done (or things like the needle exchange which don’t show positive results, as they don’t prohibit just make things safer), discussed it more, and more, and more, and while they could proclaim to the residents that they were talking about things the problem got worse and worse and worse. But, its okay, they’re discussing the problem, and vote for them and solutions will be found … in just 100 days! I truly believe this is our future if we don’t take action.
As for that action: its condemning this, not providing needle exchanges or safe spots for overdoses or making the behavior less risky, which is the feel good approach for some. Human nature says if someone can do something safely they’re more likely to do it. So, if one can now put a tent in a parking lot – they will. If one can get free needles – they’re not going to give up doing drugs. If an asylum seeker can come to America and not pay rent for a year – can they bring a friend? Or, to put it this way: if you allow your teenage son to stay out all night and party with friends, does he suddenly say “Mom, I’m not going out with my friends, but instead going to have dinner with the family every night and then we can all sit and watch a nice rom-com on Netflix?” Nope, never in the history of parenting. So, dealing with other problems is not much different.
A documentary on this subject gives us the bigger picture, “Death County & the River of Broken Dreams” featuring Tom Homan. It and other videos can be found at defendtheborder.org