The City of Portland’s Social Services Division, in charge of administering the city’s General Assistance program, has nearly tripled its number of full-time staff in recent years amid an influx in migrants arriving in the city and an ongoing homelessness crisis.
[RELATED: City of Portland Looks to Hire Two Full-Time Migrant Resettlement Case Managers…]
General Assistance is Maine’s municipal welfare program, and provides vouchers to the poor and indigent to assist them with buying food, medicine, fuel, paying their rent, and meeting other basic needs.
The city has been using its General Assistance program to help house the thousands of homeless migrants who have arrived in Portland in recent years, and city officials have been lobbying in Augusta for additional state reimbursement of their welfare spending.
Since January 2020, Portland has resettled an estimated 4,200 migrants through their resettlement program, who have been housed using General Assistance vouchers to pay for hotel rooms, as well as in the city’s homeless shelters.
[RELATED: Migrants Arrive at US Border With Address of Portland, Maine Shelter: Mayor Mark Dion on WGAN…]
Following a 50-bed expansion of the city’s Homeless Services Center, and the opening of a new 179-bed for single migrants in November, the city increased the number of shelter beds citywide from 300 in FY22, to 583 beds in FY24.
According to data published alongside City Manager Danielle West’s proposed $277 million fiscal year 2024 (FY25) budget, the number of full-time employees in Portland’s Social Services Division increased from 79 in FY15, to 163 in FY24, and is expected to increase again by 58 employees under the proposed FY25 budget to 222 full-time staff members.
If approved, the FY25 budget would increase the size of the city’s Social Services Division to be larger than the Police, Public Works, and Parks and Recreation Department, and have more full-time employees than Portland’s Barron Center nursing home facility.
The dramatic acceleration in the expansion of Portland’s Social Services Division in recent years can be seen in the visualization below, created by the city’s Finance Director Brendan O’Connell.
An examination of public records obtained by the Maine Wire from the Department of Health and Human Services in August of last year showed that Portland accounts for an massively outsized share of General Assistance spending statewide — expending an average of $1,164.93 per resident on municipal welfare over the last four and a half years.
The records revealed that Portland accounted for $79.6 million of all General Assistance welfare spending in the state of Maine from Jan. 1, 2019 to June 30, 2023, and during the same period consumed 72.8 percent of all General Assistance spending statewide, which totaled $109.3 million.
In an April 8 letter sent to Portland Mayor Mark Dion and the City Council regarding her proposed FY25 budget, City Manager West said that the city “had to double down our lobbying efforts in Augusta since General Assistance (GA) funding (to address the homeless crisis) is the most significant challenge we faced throughout the development of this budget.”
[RELATED: MaineHousing Grants Portland $364,000 to Extend City’s Migrant Resettlement Program For 12 Months…]
“Our ability to receive GA revenue continues to be critically important to our operations and overall budget,” West wrote. “We remain the largest social services provider in the State when it comes to serving people who are at risk of or experiencing homelessness – whether that is by assisting those who are chronically homeless or asylum seekers who have come to Maine.”
As part of the city’s efforts to overcome an anticipated $20 million shortfall in their FY25 budget, West said the expansion of shelter beds last year reduced the city’s reliance on using GA vouchers to cover the cost of putting up homeless families in hotels — resulting in a net savings of $2.7 million.
Following a March health inspection at Motel 6 in Portland, where the city has been paying for the housing of migrant and homeless families at a cost to the taxpayer of $225 per night since 2019, the city revoked the lodging licenses for all but five of its 128 rooms due to a cockroach infestation.
The City Manager’s proposed budget, which is expected to bring a 4.9 percent property tax increase, was unanimously voted by the City Council Monday to be sent to the Finance Committee for further consideration.
<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="27353 https://www.themainewire.com/?p=27353">3 Comments
“the city revoked the lodging licenses for all but five of its 128 rooms due to a cockroach infestation.” I take great umbrage at the descriptive employed herein calling the illegal aliens “cockroaches”.
Gotta keep bringing those illegal aliens in!
The collateral cost of being a sanctuary city, the portland residents voted in this administration