Tenants are still weeks away from moving into a new permanent supportive housing facility in Bangor, one month after the city celebrated the ribbon cutting for the building.
More than 80 people have applied to live in Theresa’s Place, a new apartment building at 22 Cleveland St. in Bangor with 41 one-bedroom and efficiency units. Penquis CAP, a Bangor-based nonprofit social services agency, has worked for years to renovate the building, which was once the Pine Tree Inn.
The new housing is intended to serve people who have struggled with homelessness as well as substance use or other mental health challenges. Penquis is partnering with Community Health and Counseling Services to offer on-site services, such as addiction recovery, 12 hours a day, seven days a week, Jason Bird, Penquis’ housing development director, said.
The “much beleaguered and much delayed” project is now “within a few weeks at most, maybe two” before people can move into the building, Bird told Bangor city councilors on Monday.
The news is the latest incremental delay the project has suffered since construction began last year. Penquis initially believed construction would be finished by the end of 2024, but pushed that expected opening date back to the end of January. When the nonprofit celebrated the ribbon cutting for the building last month, officials believed it would welcome residents in March.
In the meantime, people who could live in the building and benefit from the services available there have waited in homeless shelters, warming centers or outside in the homeless encampment across the street from Theresa’s Place.
Housing Foundation, an Orono organization that provides affordable housing and support services and is serving as the property manager for the apartment building, is now reviewing the 85 housing applications the property received and scheduling interviews with potential tenants, Bird said.
Of those, at least 10 applicants who are awaiting an interview previously lived in the sprawling homeless encampment behind the Hope House Health and Living Center, which sits across the street from Theresa’s Place, Debbie Laurie, Bangor city manager, said.
In the interim, the applicants who were living outside are in “a variety of spaces,” Laurie said. Several were able to get a bed in a shelter, others are staying with family and friends and a few more are staying in a warming center.
“I’m not going to fib, we have a handful of people who none of those options are acceptable and they’re outside somewhere else,” Laurie said.
The building is now waiting for its certificate of occupancy, which Bird expects will come this week.
In addition to apartments, the building has a communal kitchen, common rooms for peer-support groups and space for one-on-one case management meetings.
Penquis used a mix of federal, state and local funding to purchase and renovate the building.
In tandem with this work, city officials and outreach workers have been striving to move the dozens of people who lived in the neighboring encampment into some form of housing or shelter.
City officials initially planned to close the encampment, often known as Camp Hope or Tent City, at the end of last year, but delayed the shutdown by two months to align with when Penquis estimated Theresa’s Place was going to be able to welcome tenants.
The city formally closed the encampment on Feb. 28 and started cleaning the land, but a handful of residents still lived there as of last week.
