More than a year after Bangor closed one of its two major homeless encampments, a small team of outreach workers is struggling to repeat the feat in the city’s remaining one.
A lack of housing vouchers has stymied efforts to find permanent homes for the estimated 45 people living in Bangor’s largest encampment, located behind the Hope House Health and Living Center, according to City Manager Debbie Laurie.
Most people in the encampment, known as Tent City or Camp Hope, live in tents scattered throughout the wooded area, but a few live in campers, vehicles or RVs. The field is littered with trash and debris from broken tents, abandoned clothing and even a toppled basketball hoop, which lies next to an overflowing dumpster.
There are also city signs stating an area is closed to the public and camping is prohibited, but it’s difficult to tell whether the signs refer to portions of the area or the entire encampment.
Some people, like Danielle Swett, 34, have lived in the encampment for years while others arrived only a few months ago. What led people to the encampment are just as diverse as how hopeful they are that they’ll find permanent homes again. Some have communicated with outreach workers for months while others, like 73-year-old Richard Levesque, have denied help altogether.
Levesque said he turned down outreach workers’ offers in the past because he plans to move to Alabama next month where he has loved ones. He has spent two months living in a tent on the edge of the encampment after a fire in his apartment destroyed his possessions.
“I don’t think I ever want to go camping again,” Levesque said.
The encampment is perhaps the most acute representation of the region’s homeless population, which has ballooned since the COVID-19 pandemic. The ongoing issue of homelessness also overlaps with other statewide challenges, including the opioid epidemic and housing crisis.
Bangor set its sights on housing everyone in Tent City and closing the encampment after more than 40 workers from 10-plus local and state agencies did the same to encampment off Valley Avenue last April. A team from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that specializes in rapidly housing people guided the process.
Laurie said the city’s goal is “to get individuals who are currently unhoused into the appropriate housing, whatever that may look like,” but there is currently no deadline for closing Tent City altogether.
Laurie did not know how many people from the encampment have been moved out of the encampment as of Wednesday.
The limited availability of vouchers that the city relied on when working with people in the Valley Avenue encampment is the largest barrier to moving people out, Laurie said.
Last year, many along Valley Avenue were housed using a federally funded program that gives rental subsidies and supportive services for people with disabilities. That program, however, stopped accepting applications about a year ago after it became oversubscribed.
“Last April, we could get every housing voucher we wanted,” Laurie said. “The struggle right now is the lack of housing vouchers available.”
Outreach workers then pivoted to a state-funded program that provides rental subsidies for transitional housing to people with a mental illness, such as substance use disorder. But in February, the city was told people exiting a psychiatric or correctional facility would be prioritized for that help over people who were homeless “due to subscription levels,” Laurie said. As a result, people who are homeless in Bangor were placed on a waitlist.
“We continue to do the applications, and we are getting the applications in and they are getting on waitlists, but a waitlist isn’t housing assistance,” Laurie said.
Even when someone gets a voucher, Laurie said it can be difficult to find a home that fits their needs with a landlord that accepts vouchers. Some landlords are hesitant to rent to people if they have a history of eviction, drug use or a criminal record. Sometimes, a person rejects the homes an outreach worker finds.
Aside from tightened resources, the team of more than 40 outreach workers from Valley Avenue shrank to a core group of just three or four people who are tasked with assisting a larger population.
Laurie said the team visits the encampment “virtually every day” to build trust and work through various challenges and needs people have, but some encampment residents refuted that claim.
Swett, who has been living in the encampment for two years with her dog, said she used to see an outreach worker she has been working with every day, but those visits have slowed to about twice per week. She said her outreach worker found an apartment in Millinocket that she thinks she’ll accept.
Ashley Wells, 29, has lived out of a small vehicle in Tent City with her husband and their dog for two months and has never been approached by an outreach worker offering help.
Wells is now trying to get an ID by herself, “but it’s difficult when you don’t have an address,” she said.
The family became homeless six months ago after Wells lost her job as a customer service representative and their landlord increased their rent from $800 to $1,200, she said. The family couldn’t afford the increase, got evicted and couldn’t find another apartment they could afford.
Though the work within Tent City “doesn’t have the same momentum” as what happened in the Valley Avenue site, Laurie said “we still have good people doing good work every day” and some progress is being made.
