Portland Fire Chief Keith Gautreau joined Maine Public Broadcasting’s Jennifer Rooks on Monday’s Maine Calling program to discuss the city’s approach to its homeless encampments and the public health and safety issues posed by them.
Rooks asked Chief Gautreau whether the City of Portland has a specific policy related to when they decide to allow encampments, and when they decide to remove, or “sweep” them.
Gautreau described his work on the city’s Encampment Crisis Response Team (ECRT), which was formed in late May of this year.
The approach of the ECRT is to work alongside local nonprofits to do “extensive outreach” and offer services any available shelter beds or housing to individuals at the homeless encampments, Gautreau said.
One encampment at a time is designated as an “emphasis area,” and eventually a deadline is set to clear out the encampment.
The ECRT most recently conducted a sweep of the Marginal Way Park and Ride Encampment on Nov. 1, after prior sweeps of encampments along the Bayside Trail in the spring and the Fore River Parkway in early September.
The efforts to place homeless individuals at the Fore River encampment into shelters or affordable housing cost taxpayers $65,000, and resulted in just 18 people accepting the offer.
“I had hoped to have more success,” Portland’s outgoing Director of Health and Human Services Kristen Dow said in a September City Council meeting regarding the ECRT’s efforts prior to the Fore River encampment sweep.
Since the Nov. 1 sweep, an encampment in Harbor View Park below the Casco Bay Bridge has grown to contain over 120 tents, though the total number of tents citywide has fallen from over 282 at the start of November.
Chief Gautreau said the recent decrease in the number of tents “was expected coming into the colder months.”
Last week the city began its work to relocate homeless individuals in the Harbor View encampment into the approximately 170 newly-available beds at the city’s Homeless Services Center.
Those beds were made available through the opening of a new 179-bed shelter for single asylum-seeking migrants in Portland’s Riverton Neighborhood, and a 50-bed expansion to the HSC approved by the City Council last month.
[RELATED: Taxpayers Have Spent More Than $114 Million on Portland Homeless Shelters Since 2019…]
“[The ECRT’s] approach has always been working with community partners and our federal technical assistance folks from HUD, of taking the approach of housing first,” Gautreau told Rooks. “There is no real easy answer to what we’re dealing with here in Portland.”
Gautreau said that Portland experience a “sharp uptick” in the size of the city’s encampments in February, when there were 75 tents citywide, a number which stood at 208 tents last week.
“That was a just a really large increase for us — and I don’t think we were prepared for that,” the Fire Chief said.
Rooks then turned to the topic of public health and safety at the encampments, asking Gautreau what proponents of encampment sweeps mean when they say that “the encampments have become too dangerous.”
“We have the data that shows the calls for service have dramatically increased, for maybe overdose calls, or fire calls, medical calls, just medical issues,” Gautreau said.
“And then the surrounding area from the encampment could be local businesses or residents, stolen property that we’re seeing,” he said. “So it does become — although we really feel bad for the unhoused being out there, and in some cases it’s not their fault but that’s the situation they’re in — however there is an impact to the community, and the more immediate surrounding community.”
“From a public safety standpoint, I’ve taken an oath to protect everyone, and not just a certain population,” he added. “So you have to look at that and come with a balanced approach.”
Gautreau also referenced the safety concerns posed by the colder weather due to homeless individuals using propane heaters and open fires to keep warm.
[RELATED: Two People Found Dead After Tent Fires in Portland and Sanford this Weekend…]
“Being inside is definitely the approach,” the Fire Chief said, referencing the ECRT’s efforts to move people from the Harbor View encampment into the HSC.
…another duma$$! Just what did you think was going to happen with Biden/Jackboot Janet’s illegal alien policy!
It isn’t that difficult to solve. If you set up a camp on someone else’s property or public property you get removed and arrested.
This has worked for 300 years until now with liberal demons run this state and country.
Plenty of room in the welcoming, progressive, Martha’s Vineyard.
Thanks Janet Mills… welcome to Maine, new Mainers, now move to another part of town. Maybe talk to Janet’s “Office of New Mainers”?