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The few remaining people at the homeless encampment near Bangor’s Penobscot Plaza packed up and left Monday.
A cleanup crew from CSX, the railroad company that owns part of the site between Washington Street and the Penobscot River, arrived early Monday morning with construction machinery to clean up tents, trash and other remnants of the camp.
Although the camp was home to more than 40 people at one point, it had shrunk significantly after Bangor city councilors approved a Dec. 19 closure deadline in late November. Some encampment residents will likely continue living on the streets after being displaced — a pattern that has repeated over the last few years.
The cleanup crew arrived around 7 a.m., according to Jennifer Marshall, one of the encampment residents who left Monday morning. The camp appeared to be vacated by 9:30 a.m.
There were about five people still present when the crew arrived, according to a CSX transportation police officer. At least two city staffers also were on the scene.
CSX has emphasized the safety risks of people living near the train tracks.
“The safety of our employees and the surrounding community is our top priority,” CSX spokesperson Austin Staton said Thursday.
Shelter options are limited for people leaving the encampment. Even with a housing voucher, it can be difficult to find landlords who are willing to rent to people with a history of homelessness. Hope House, Bangor’s only low-barrier homeless shelter, has been consistently full in recent months.
Marshall and her boyfriend, Alex Emery, headed to The Well warming center Monday, a daytime space on Center Street. Both have vouchers, but their caseworker hasn’t yet found them an apartment, she said.
“I want to be housed and I’ve worked very hard to get housed,” Marshall said. She is one of multiple railroad encampment residents who previously lived at the Valley Avenue encampment.
In their discussions over the past month, Bangor’s city councilors have acknowledged that displacing encampment residents will only result in new encampments forming elsewhere, because the city doesn’t have enough affordable housing and shelter space.
“There’s been a practice of sort of managing a particular location until it has gotten out of control,” City Manager Carollynn Lear previously told the Bangor Daily News, describing encampment closures in the past. After previous camps have been shut down, new ones form and “repeat the same pattern,” she said.
“This is the third time I’ve had to pack up everything I own,” Marshall said. “It’s starting to get old.”
