The Bangor region will welcome 150 refugees from October 2024 to September 2025, roughly 50 more than the area welcomed in the previous fiscal year.
Since 2022, Catholic Charities Maine has brought a growing number of refugees to the Bangor area. The organization helps new arrivals secure permanent housing, find jobs and enroll in English classes, along with other support services.
Refugees are people who leave their country due to persecution or fear of persecution because of their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.
The U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement distributes refugees across states, including Maine, with resettlement programs for them, according to Steve Letourneau, Catholic Charities Maine’s CEO.
However, Catholic Charities can’t control when people come to Maine, as that’s determined by the federal government, Letourneau said. This is why Bangor saw a spike in new arrivals in January and February 2024.
The new residents will arrive in a city already struggling with a lack of affordable and quality housing, which is one of the largest barriers to helping refugees get settled. Additionally, individual people, single parents and couples arriving in Bangor tend to have tighter budgets, making housing even more difficult to secure.
However, most of the 150 people headed for Bangor are part of a family that can share one property, Letourneau told Bangor city councilors during a workshop on Wednesday. Altogether, the 150 people will need 25 to 30 places to live.
Catholic Charities works with local landlords to establish housing for refugees before they arrive so they can be placed in permanent housing as soon as possible, Melissa Bucholz, assistant director of Catholic Charities Maine’s refugee and immigration services program in Bangor, said. There are no financial benefits for landlords who agree to offer units to refugees.
“The more people learn about refugees, the more people want to help them,” Letourneau said. “We’ve had people reach out to us asking, ‘Do you need apartments or homes to rent?’”
Catholic Charities Maine resettled about 100 refugees in Bangor in fiscal year 2024, which runs from October 2023 to September 2024, Bucholz said.
The new arrivals came from 11 different countries from the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and more, Bucholz said. The largest demographic, 36 percent, came from Syria and another 29 percent came from Venezuela. Other countries of origin include Haiti, Nicaragua and Afghanistan.
Most people who arrived, 60 percent, were between the ages of 19 to 64 years old, but a large portion were school-aged children, Bucholz said. Nearly 90 percent of the adults who arrived in Bangor in the last fiscal year are employed.
“There are a lot of myths and misconceptions about refugees because they’re looped in with asylum seekers, but they’re completely different people with different types of opportunities,” Letourneau said. “The day a refugee arrives, they can work if they’re an employable adult.”
Bangor also welcomed more people in fiscal year 2024 than both Lewiston and Augusta in the same timeframe, Bucholz said. Portland received nearly 250 people, the most of Maine’s major cities.
