Portland City Council Exploring Options to Keep Warming Shelter Open Next Winter

The Portland City Council’s Health and Human Services Committee met on Thursday to discuss various options related to how the city can continue operation of its homeless warming and cooling shelters.

Portland partners with private organizations that receive funding from the Maine State Housing Authority (MaineHousing) to operate a cooling shelter in the summer months and a warming shelter in the winter months.

The warming and cooling shelters are classified as low-barrier shelters, meaning they can be used by individuals actively using illegal drugs, and do not require residents to submit to criminal background checks, to provide identification or income verification, nor to participate in any mental health or substance use disorder program.

For the past two winters, MaineHousing provided funding for an overnight warming shelter at First Parish Church at 435 Congress St. in downtown Portland, which is directly across from Portland High School.

The warming shelter only opens on nights when a certain temperature or snow accumulation threshold is met.

In the winter of 2023-2024, when the threshold for the warming shelter was a daily high temperature of 20 degrees or snow accumulation of more than 10 inches, the shelter was opened on 17 nights.

In an effort to open the shelter on more nights, the temperature threshold was changed for the 2024-2025 season to a daily low of 15 degrees, an adjusted metric resulting in the shelter being open for 34 nights — double the number of the previous winter. The shelter held about 50 to 100 guests per night that it was open.

This past winter, services at the First Parish warming shelter were provided by the nonprofit organization Commonspace.

In January, Commonspace provided a memo to the Health and Human Services and Public Safety Committee meeting stating that they believe First Parish is not an ideal space or location of a warming shelter.

The nonprofit cited the church’s proximity to Portland Public High School, which necessitates additional support from the Portland Police and Public Works Departments, as well as the fact that the bathrooms deadbolt from the inside, creating a risk in case of an emergency, such as a drug overdose.

Additionally, First Parish has not offered their space for a warming shelter beyond the 2024-2025 winter, meaning the city now has to look for a new location or other options for opening one or more warming shelters next winter.

In a presentation to the Council’s Health and Human Services and Public Safety Committee on Thursday, City Emergency Management Coordinator Caity Hager put forward four different options the city could pursue for next winter, based on an analysis of how other municipalities in New England and nationwide with similar climates to Portland handle warming shelters.

Hager said the city could continue its current approach of facilitating partnerships with nonprofit organizations with funding from MaineHousing, hire an additional full-time staff member dedicated to the coordination of warming and cooling centers, try centralizing at a single site that would be open nightly during the winter or try to facilitate the opening of multiple smaller sites as warming shelters.

According to Hager, the biggest barrier to any of the potential solutions is the significant fiscal impact they would entail and a lack of a physical building suitable for a seasonal warming shelter.

While the committee did not reach a conclusion on Thursday, City Councilor and Committee Chair Anna Bullett said that Portland Mayor Mark Dion would be reaching out to the Greater Portland Council of Governments, as well as the Cumberland County public health department for possible regional solutions.