The Brick Church won’t open its warming center after not receiving funding from MaineHousing this year, according to the church’s pastor.
The church at 126 Union St. provided a warm place for between 60 and 70 homeless people every night last winter, said pastor Leon Licata.
Another institution, The Bangor Area Homeless Shelter, decided in August to discontinue its warming center and instead add five shelter beds. Between that change and the loss of funding for the Brick Church, the Mansion Church will be the only overnight warming center in Bangor this winter.
Organizations in Penobscot County this year received about half the total funding for warming centers that it has seen in previous years.
Last year, MaineHousing awarded the Brick Church $40,540 to fund its warming center.
“We are kind of panic-stricken, because we got 65 people that won’t have any place to go in the winter,” Licata said. “They’re going to be out there and left to their own devices, but we can’t open — we have no funding.”
“It’s a huge shock,” he added.
The Brick Church’s funding request for the upcoming year was denied because it was submitted after the deadline, according to MaineHousing spokesperson Scott Thistle.
Licata said that he first submitted an application in August, but resubmitted an updated version of the application a few hours after the deadline passed on Sept. 12.
“But to not give us any funding even on the original grant [application] that we had submitted three weeks prior, I didn’t feel it was right,” he said.
Beyond giving people a warm place to go at night, the church also connected people to services like medical care and case management, according to Licata.
The Brick Church will still try to provide free dinners and open the overnight warming center on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Licata said, but he’s unsure if that will be feasible since donations are the church’s only remaining funding stream.
MaineHousing announced Tuesday that it would fund 12 overnight warming centers this year, including the Mansion Church and Bangor Area Homeless Shelter, with $2.3 million in grants — a slight increase of statewide funding compared to last year.
The Mansion Church will receive $60,000, the same amount it got last year, to fund 25 beds, while the shelter was awarded $7,000 to fund five beds. Last year, warming centers in Penobscot County got $130,540 from MaineHousing in total.
