BANGOR, Maine – Bangor residents will have another opportunity Wednesday night to address city councilors as debate intensifies over homelessness, public safety, encampments and the city’s proposed daytime shelter space.
The Bangor City Council will meet at 7 p.m. Wednesday, May 27, in Council Chambers at City Hall, 73 Harlow Street.
https://www.bangormaine.gov/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Agenda/_05272026-801
The meeting comes just days after city officials advanced discussions over creating a daytime shelter space where homeless adults could spend time indoors, access meals and basic services, charge phones, use Wi-Fi and meet with health care providers and caseworkers.
The proposed day center was reviewed during the May 18 Government Operations Committee meeting. Under the city’s draft proposal, the facility could begin operations as early as June 15 and remain open through June 30, 2027. The city has not yet selected a provider or committed funding for the program.
According to the Bangor Daily News, city staff intend to issue a request for proposals to determine which organization could operate the center and what the service would cost. City Manager Carollynn Lear estimated a full-year day center could cost approximately $200,000. The proposal is expected to return to the council after applications are received.
While the day center proposal itself is not scheduled for final action tonight, the council agenda includes two separate measures directly connected to homelessness and supportive housing.
Councilors are scheduled to consider an order authorizing the city manager to endorse a 90-day extension of Bangor Housing Authority’s option to purchase land off Maine Avenue for construction of a permanent supportive housing facility. City documents state that Bangor Housing Authority has received financing from MaineHousing to construct housing for people who were previously unhoused and who require 24-hour support and care because of mental illness and/or addiction.
The proposal was unanimously recommended for passage by the Business and Economic Development Committee on May 18.
Councilors will also take up a first reading of a resolve ratifying staff action to accept and appropriate $685,221 in federal grant funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for the Bangor Rental Assistance Program, formerly known as Shelter Plus Care.
According to city documents, the funding would support rental assistance for qualifying individuals and families experiencing homelessness in Bangor and other Penobscot County communities. The city estimates the program will house approximately 42 households during the operating year running from May 1, 2026, through March 31, 2027.
That measure is scheduled to be referred to the Government Operations Committee for consideration on June 1.
Tonight’s meeting follows weeks of escalating public pressure on city officials over conditions near the Bangor Public Library and Peirce Park, the closure of encampments, the city’s newly adopted sidewalk storage restrictions and the shortage of places where homeless individuals may legally remain during the day or overnight.
The proposed day center would provide an indoor daytime location for people seeking food, cooling and access to services. But the central question facing Bangor remains unresolved: whether the city can move beyond managing the visible effects of homelessness and develop a longer-term plan for housing, public safety and accountability.
The showplace of Bangor where you have a casino a music venue a horse 🐎 track and a convention center and the homeless are all over.We must have shelter for these people and also not have them infest the showplace of Bangor.The reason this has become such a problem is the lack of serious political leadership.The homeless need shelter and the showplace of Bangor needs to stay safe and welcoming,both things can happen.The lack of true leadership is stunning.Bangor has so.much to offer but has been a victim of failed politics.
Moved my family to a nearby town, down river from Bangor, in 1972. Down town Bangor was our shopping, banking, medical and legal resource. At about that time it was determined that the crazy people in the mental institute in Northern Bangor could mostly be given some wonderful new drugs for their problems. They would be given a few dollars, a free bus ride to down town first thing in the morning, and a free bus ride back to the nut house in the evening. No one gave any thought to the effects of combining their drugs with a few cheap drinks in the three or four bars in down town. Down town became unsafe, especially for women and children. The shopping stores closed and the malls out by the airport grew.
Nothing much seems to have changed or improved down town in the last fifty years. Now the do gooder Lefties are proposing that the druggies, politically correctly termed “homeless”, should have hundreds of thousands, or millions, spent to give them a warm place to hang out in the Winter, an airconditioned place to hang out in the Summer and lots of free food. Once the word is out, riff raff from all over new England will slide up to Bangor for the hand outs and the “problem” will grow more costly to the tax payers. There is no free lunch and socialism only works as long at there is other peoples’ money that can be appropriated from them to feed the druggies and their dealers.