On Monday the Portland City Council will vote on extending an emergency order for the third time to prolong a 50-bed expansion to the city’s Homeless Services Center (HSC) into August.
The City Council initially voted to expand the shelter by 50 beds via an emergency declaration in November, in response to public health and safety concerns regarding well over 200 tents in homeless encampments throughout the city.
Current city data shows a total of 20 tents in the Portland in the area, with the majority being on private property.
[RELATED: Out of State Homeless People are Clogging Portland’s Shelters…]
While that initial order, which brought the total number of beds at the HSC to 258, was set to expire on Feb. 5, 2024, the City Council voted to extend the expansion for a second time to June 3.
If approved by seven affirmative votes during Monday evening’s meeting, the 50-bed expansion would be extended until August 19, 2024.
In the description of the proposed order on the meeting agenda, the city states that as a result of the expansion “outreach workers have had greater success in helping individuals access shelter, addressing urgent health needs, preventing fatalities, and mitigating the public health and safety consequences of hazardous encampments.”
The opening of a $4.59 million 179-bed shelter for single asylum-seeking migrants in Portland’s Riverton neighborhood in November also helped to free up about 100 beds at the HSC.
[RELATED: Migrants Arrive at US Border With Address of Portland, Maine Shelter: Mayor Mark Dion on WGAN…]
The most recent report from the city’s Emergency Shelter Assessment Committee (ESAC) showed the HSC took in a total of 97 people in April, with twenty of those homeless individuals being from “out-of-state.”
Despite ESAC listing “out-of-country” intakes at the HSC as a possible designation on their report, they choose to record any out-of-country intakes as out-of-state, “Because people are entering the country in other communities then relocating here, what would be considered out of country intakes are captured as out of state,” their report states.
<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="28317 https://www.themainewire.com/?p=28317">7 Comments
Portland , Next on the list of cities to fail after, LA, NYC, Chicago and Boston.
Wonder if these “homeless” shelters still ban drugs? My take is…if you’re getting help from taxpayer money, you should have to submit to mandatory drug testing in order to keep getting aid of any kind.
I called Portland home for many years. I made my living there first commercial fishing, then doing carpentry. There is not enough money in the world that if given to me would ever persuade me to live there again. The Portland that I spent about thirty years of my life in is no longer, and the Portland that is now has no interest to me because of policies such as these. Millions of tax payer dollars being spent on those who are not paying those dollars…when did government forget that a persons income is not the governments private bank account? Sadly this disfunction has spread to state level governance that I no longer wish to support, and I, a person who was born and raised in this state am moving to redder pastures. I will say goodbye to Maine this coming week, and although I will always be a Mainer at heart, that Maine no longer exists.
The homeless is americas growth industry, a money maker for some
Wait! Are you saying that Portland understated their shelter needs from day one? Oh no. Couldn’t be. Look at all the smart people who made those decision. And frugal? Only $30 million for 258 beds. OMG. Thank goodness Mark Dion was there to put his two cents into the plan.
What would we have done if not for the HSC? And thank you to the taxpayers who are funding the shelter. We are really getting our money’s worth.
Even that cruise ship idea at almost the same cost but with thousands of PRIVATE rooms at a third of the cost and room for expansion. Plus commercial opportunities and extra wharves and workforce housing and …. it wouldn’t soak up a lifetime of taxpayer money.
Well done Dion and Ray et al.
Wouldn’t it be cheaper to send them back on the same bus that dropped them off?
Please, call them what they are Illegal aliens. Quit playing the lefts word games.