Bangor plans to close its largest homeless encampment at the end of the year.
Debbie Laurie, Bangor’s city manager, announced in a memo to city councilors that outreach workers aim to connect everyone living in the encampment behind the Hope House Health and Living Center with housing and other resources before closing it on Dec. 31.
While outreach workers haven’t lined up permanent housing for the more than 70 people in the encampment yet, Laurie said the city decided to close the site due to “an alarming increase in illegal activity, particularly related to allegations of violence among encampment residents.”
The details of the city’s plans and what factors contributed to this decision are included in a four-page document posted to the city’s website. City Council is scheduled to discuss the plans in a workshop on Wednesday night.
It’s not clear what would happen if people living in the encampment refuse to leave or how the city would prevent people from returning there. Laurie wasn’t immediately available for comment on Tuesday.
The encampment, colloquially called Tent City or Camp Hope, ballooned during the pandemic when social distancing and occupancy restrictions limited how many people could stay in local homeless shelters. Some people opted to live outside and gathered in a wooded area between Texas Avenue and Cleveland Street to live in tents, campers, cars and other rudimentary shelters.
Since then, Tent City has become the most acute representation of the region’s struggle to solve homelessness, which overlaps with other statewide challenges, including the opioid epidemic and housing crisis.
City outreach workers aim to move the 73 residents of the encampment into some kind of housing while keeping them connected to other resources by the end of the year, Laurie wrote to councilors. The ideal scenario is to move encampment residents into permanent supportive housing, but Laurie acknowledged that some may need to temporarily stay in a local shelter or warming center.
“The opening of warming shelters across the city will present a new opportunity to incentivize people who are currently living in the encampment to seek accommodation indoors,” Laurie said.
The earliest of Bangor’s warming centers opens on Nov. 1 and the last one closes on April 15. Some operate in the day, giving people a warm, safe place to escape the harsh winter weather, and others open at night.
Additionally, construction to transform the former Pine Tree Inn next to the encampment into 41 units of permanent housing for people who are homeless is on track to be finished by the end of the year, according to Jason Bird, Penquis’ Housing Development Director. Penquis, a Bangor-based nonprofit social services agency, will offer tenants on-site services, such as addiction recovery.
While that facility, called Theresa’s Place, won’t be able to house everyone from the encampment, it could welcome people who have been living in local shelters, which frees up beds for people forced to exit Tent City.
The closure announcement comes more than a year after a team of more than 40 workers from 10-plus local and state agencies closed and cleared another smaller encampment on Valley Avenue after moving everyone there into permanent or temporary housing. That work was guided by a team from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that specializes in rapidly housing people.
However, 30 percent of people from the Valley Avenue encampment who were housed returned to living outside six months later.
After the Valley Avenue encampment closed in April 2023, the city turned its attention to repeating the process at the encampment behind the Hope House. That work, however, has long been stymied by a lack of resources, such as the housing vouchers needed to move people into permanent housing, Laurie told the Bangor Daily News earlier this year.
Despite the delay, Laurie said outreach workers have continued to connect with people in the encampment to build trust, help them access other necessities and coordinate housing when it becomes available.
Of the 73 encampment residents the city is aware of, 22 regularly engage with outreach services, meaning they attend appointments to complete housing applications, rental viewings, court proceedings, treatments and other checks-ins multiple times each week. Another 31 people engage with these services sometimes, while the remaining 20 people don’t engage with resources offered.
Laurie’s memo didn’t say what will happen to the people living in the encampment who don’t engage with outreach workers.
The city decided to set the Dec. 31 closure date after an increase in illegal activity escalated concerns about the health and safety of those in and around the encampment, Laurie said. The encampment neighbors a University of Maine at Augusta campus, a daycare facility and health care offices.
From Jan. 1 to Sept. 30, Bangor police have received 501 calls from or involving the encampment. Of those, 30 calls were related to serious threats to someone’s wellbeing, including sex offender activity, weapons, overdoses and assaults, Laurie said.
Despite the hundreds of calls, Laurie said continued unwillingness from encampment residents to speak with police to “report and deter violent crime has ensured much of the violence against encampment residents and their belongings continues to go unreported.”
Additionally, some in the encampment inject drugs and used needle litter in the encampment exposes all residents and providers entering the area to bloodborne diseases, Laurie said. This is especially risky now, as new cases of HIV and hepatitis C have climbed in Penobscot County among people who inject drugs.
Throughout the coming months, Laurie said the city will use the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness’s 19 Strategies for Communities to Address Encampments Humanely and Effectively as a guide. The document emphasizes the importance of ensuring people who are homeless have access to necessities like food, water and health care.
“We recognize the closure will be disruptive to the lives of those living in the encampment and we intend to offer clear communication and expectations to residents and partners as we move forward,” Laurie said.
