Portland residents and business owners are speaking out and asking the City Council for help to address what they say are unsafe and obstructive conditions in Monument Square caused by the presence of homeless people and drug users.
A letter to Portland Mayor Mark Dion from David Turin, the owner of David’s Restaurant in Monument Square, was read during the public comment portion at the City Council’s Monday meeting.
“Monument Square has become an unsafe place to work or visit, and has become a hostile and expensive environment in which to operate a restaurant,” Turin wrote.
Turin, who was not himself present at the meeting but had his letter read for the Council by a friend on his behalf, wrote that his employees have had their cars broken into six times in the last month, and have seen over a hundred instances both of littering and open drug use in front of his restaurant.
“Dining guests and staff are frequently abused and sometimes threatened,” Turin wrote. “We have had our front windows smashed twice in two years.”
“The square has long been a desirable destination for strolling, sitting outside, shopping, doing business and dining — now it looks like an encampment of some kind,” he wrote.
[RELATED: Portland Homeless Man Charged with Alleged Assault for Brick, Knife Attack…]
Turin said that the homelessness issue in the square is an “existential crisis and threat” to his business and other businesses in the area. “Please help us,” he ends his letter.
Ari Gerson, owner of Longfellow Books near Monument Square, also spoke on the issue of homelessness and public safety in the area during the Monday City Council meeting.
“Over the past year, we’ve seen a sharp increase in drug use, aggressive panhandling, and confrontational behavior right outside our front doors,” Gerson told the Council.
“We’ve found needles and drug paraphernalia in the planters and the sidewalk cracks,” Gerson said. “There are people passed out, clearly in distress, and sometimes frightening episodes of shouting or violence that scares off customers, staff and even myself at times.”
Several Monument Square neighborhood residents also spoke at the meeting and voiced similar concerns to the business owners.
“I have become frightened in my own neighborhood to go outside my own door, and to face the things that we are facing at this point,” one female resident said.
“Almost everyday when I leave my house I have to knock on my door, because someone is using in front of my door,” another woman said. “I’ve come home often to defecation or urine on the ground outside of my house.”
“When you call the police, they come, but it’s hard to offer any help,” she said.
“When I go home, or try to leave, and I have to wake somebody up or move them to get in or out of my front door, that’s not very comfortable,” another woman said.
Several of the speakers called for increased police presence and intervention in the Monument Square area, as well as for the city to direct more resources into shelters and support services for the homeless.
All Portland has become an unsafe place to viset. Pleas Trump clean it up. Our Governor is incapable of clean it up
Elections have consequences,
My Mother would take us kids to Portland every summer just before school started, to buy school clothes. It was always an enjoyable event for us county people to go to the big city. Later on my wife and I enjoyed shopping down town and at the Maine Mall, for Birthdays gifts, Christmas gifts etc, then dining at various restaurants in Portland, we would do that two or three times a year,Then, round about the time we retired the leftists began their apparent campaign to destroy Maine’s largest city. We go there now ONLY to fly in and out of the airport. So, congratulations Portland and State democrats, you succeeded in destroying a tradition probably for tens of thousands of families like mine, in order to secure a few votes from people you don’t really care about and who don’t really care about themselves. What a damn shame !! If in doubt, vote em out !! đź«Ź đź‘‹
I feel for these businesses. Some great restaurants. I spent a week in Portland last summer for a conference. I was shocked (and scared). Homeless people slept on sidewalks, open drug dealing, and shady characters roamed around. What a dump. I was thrilled to get back to Downeast. It used to be such a beautiful city. I have to go back this summer – I dread it.
Trying to blame it all on homeless and vagrants, when we all know its the damn protesters and all their rallys creating the mess. Leave it up up to a bunch of liberals to sheet where they sleep.
David was one of those business owners who supported and wrote a letter stating so, Mills’ unconstitutional shutdowns during china virus.
He votes liberal, this is what you get. Hopefully he learns a lesson and stops that.
All you have to do is look at other liberal cities and see the bad results.
It’s only going to get worse if you keep voting for democrats .
Democrats will destroy your entire state, not just Portland .
When are you going to wake up to this simple FACT . ?
Stop voting for democrats .
When I fly from Maine I now drive down to BOS and fly from there. PWM has gone very far down hill in the past twenty five years. It was much safer and nicer in the 70s and eighties. I now go out of my way to stay out of Portland.
The mayor and city council ARE the problem. No one goes to Portland anymore. Pretty sketchy.
I remember the beautiful renovation of the Commercial Street neighborhoods.
Fabulous shopping, dining and clubbing by the working waterfront. A wonderful, affordable and perfectly safe mini vacation for the mountain folks to ‘get down south’ for shopping and supplies needed on the homestead. There was often a gentleman with 10 or 12 perfectly mannered black dogs off leash
walking around. A safe place to send your college students.
Now look at it. You gave them an inch and they are taking hundreds of miles. Not sustainable. How do we recover from this stupidity? Take the keys away from the kiddos.
What has been ruined for Maine by the corruption, fraud and abuse of Janet and her minions can be corrected by
Robert Charles and the MAGA warriors
to make Maine grand again.
This author is getting old, his articles are predictable like Fox News lol. No one care about your past experience, its isn’t relevant. You people are delusional, side effects of our greedy American society and to think some of you people call yourself’s Christians while worshipping money. People have rights and you can’t just kick them out of public spaces, because seeing the raw reality of life in America is too much to handle.
Asking the Portland city council to solve a problem that the council created is like asking the Mafia to fight crime !
The main question here is WHY are the voters willing to keep Maine in this sad state of chaos and collapse? Look at the voting patterns of our federal representatives. WHAT has Maine become?
Institutionalizing the mentally ill; deporting all illegal aliens/bogus asylum seekers and executing drug traffickers will end the homelessness crisis !
Hey Ben, last I heard, BIW is hiring, don’t blame others for the laziness of the homeless.
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Did they not vote for it !? Gees, wtf did they think would happen, duh!