Numerous Bangor community members urged city councilors on Monday not to proceed with a plan to close the city’s largest homeless encampment.
The City Council decided in late November that it would clear the camp, where about 40 to 50 people live in tents near Penobscot Plaza on Washington Street, by Dec. 19.
More than 30 people gathered in front of City Hall ahead of Monday’s council meeting to protest the closure, and more than a dozen people spoke against it during public comment.
The public pressure comes as the city is still set to clear the camp by the end of next week. The City Council did not make any decisions Monday regarding a proposal to create a sanctioned area where people would be allowed to live outside, although councilors said they’d continue their discussion about the camp next week.
“I’m scared that we have nowhere to go after this,” Gabby Drew, who lives in the railroad camp, said to the crowd outside City Hall. Drew said she recently got a housing voucher but won’t have enough time to find an apartment by the time the city makes her leave the camp.
The demonstrators gathered to oppose the city’s plan, “especially without the presence of a developed plan that provides alternative locations for people to congregate, or, better yet, shelter options for the people that are being displaced,” according to Luke Sekera-Flanders, an organizer with Maine’s Party for Socialism and Liberation, which coordinated the protest alongside the Maine Drug Users Union.
More than a dozen people spoke against the City Council’s plan to close the encampment during public comment at its Monday meeting, including two Democratic state representatives from Bangor, Ambureen Rana and Amy Roeder.
Speakers emphasized that encampment residents will struggle to find another place to live because Bangor’s homeless shelters are at capacity and the city is facing an affordable housing crisis.
Jim Moore, a resident who said he’s distributed supplies to residents of multiple homeless camps in the city in recent years, urged councilors not to use “safety as a pretext” to dismantle the camp without giving them another place to go.
Moore said he doesn’t know of anyone who’s been injured because of the site’s proximity to the railroad tracks alongside the Penobscot River. The city cited safety concerns around people living near those tracks when deciding to close it.
City Manager Carollynn Lear also noted in a workshop meeting Monday that the Maine Department of Environmental Protection and the railroad company contacted the city last week to express concerns about the encampment.
Homeless community members and service providers also said closing the railroad camp would make it harder to reach residents with necessary support resources.
“The decision to sweep the encampment will make it harder to reach people who need testing and treatment,” said Ellen Taraschi, a nurse practitioner with Maine Family Planning.
Taraschi linked the plan to clear the camp with the ongoing HIV outbreak in Penobscot County, which recently reached 31 confirmed cases. “The sweep will cause the spread of HIV,” she added.
Drew told city councilors that if she’s forced to move, “I won’t be able to make my appointments. My case worker won’t be able to find me.”
She added that she’s seen firsthand how living in an encampment community can help prevent drug overdoses. “The other day, we heard somebody yell ‘Narcan!’ from three tents down. We all came running,” she said.
Speakers were more divided on the proposal to sanction an encampment where people would be allowed to live if they abide by rules set by the city. Some called it an imperfect but necessary solution in the short term, when people leaving the railroad encampment may have nowhere else to go, while others said it would be ineffective.
Councilors have floated the idea previously and discussed potential locations at their workshop meeting Monday, but they did not take a vote on the matter.
The debate will continue as the deadline nears for residents of the railroad camp to clear out.
City Council Chair Susan Hawes said councilors will continue their discussion of the encampment and a potential long-term plan to combat homelessness at their committee meetings on Monday, Dec. 15, four days before the encampment closure deadline.
