Aroostook County’s only homeless service organization says it will have to close in the next few months if it doesn’t receive enough funding to shore up its operating costs.
Homeless Services of Aroostook, which operates a warming center as well as 49 shelter beds, has already cut staff hours and will soon have to take out loans in order to stay afloat, Executive Director Kari Bradstreet said.
“It is a struggle right now to the point that we’re having deep conversations in board meetings of what we’re going to do,” Bradstreet said. “We’re at that point where we’re going to have to take from a line of credit, which is not feasible, and so we’ve liquidated any financial assets that we had for operations.”
Homeless shelters across Maine right now are facing similar challenges since the pandemic-era federal funds that saw them through that crisis are gone. The Mid-Maine Homeless Shelter in Waterville is already taking out loans to sustain its operations. Bangor’s Hope House almost closed last fall due to a funding shortfall, but it was bailed out by a Portland nonprofit.
The Aroostook shelter, which draws from 70 municipalities, is coming to a similar crisis point at a time when the agency is actually seeing declining occupancy because of its success in getting visitors housed, Bradstreet said. In 2024, the shelter placed 79 people in permanent housing.
“In three years, our agency received over $600,000 that was used mainly for operations,” Bradstreet said. “It was great that it was there to help us get through that, but it also disguised the critical need for shelters over this course of three years, because we had that extra sitting there. Once all that exhausted, you’re back to ‘Holy crap.’”
It takes roughly $100 to keep one shelter bed in Maine open per night with the associated administrative and support services, Tedford Housing Director Andrew Lardie told shelter operators and stakeholders at a Thursday meeting at the State House in Augusta. But shelters only get about $7 per bed in subsidies, leaving agencies to make up that disparity.
Shelters rely on money drawn from General Assistance, MaineCare, philanthropy, and funds from federal, state, county and town governments to shore up that gap, Lardie said on Thursday. But those sources have not kept pace with rising operating expenses.
“There is an urgency around responding to this right now,” Molly Feeney, executive director of Homeworthy, a midcoast homeless services organization, said. The downfall of not funding this is the potential block of beds.”
Shelter operators are hanging their hats on a bill making its way through the Legislature right now that would allocate $5 million in operating funds for Maine’s homeless shelters. Even that bailout is just enough to keep shelters from shutting their doors, Lardie said.
“This is a state crisis,” Sen. Rachel Talbot Ross, D-Portland, the bill’s sponsor, said at Thursday’s meeting. “This is about people not having shelter, and so, when we think about the basic needs that we fund with our public money, meeting those basic needs around shelter and food seem to rise to the top.”
A public hearing has yet to be scheduled for the bill, but any reprieve can’t come soon enough for Aroostook’s shelter. Its staff is currently asking the 40 municipalities they serve who don’t contribute to their operations to start supporting them, Bradstreet said.
“If that bill could get approved and passed today, we would not have to touch our line of credit,” she said. “If it waits another month, another week, we will be tapping into our line of credit.”
