A Portland-based organization is aiming to take over Hope House on Feb. 1, 2025, saving the only low-barrier shelter in Bangor that dozens of vulnerable people rely on each night.
Preble Street, which operates three shelters and other housing, food and health care services, is planning to take over operations of the Hope House from Penobscot Community Health Care.
The leaders of both organizations made the announcement before the Bangor City Council on Monday. Though Preble Street had expressed interest in taking over shelter operations, this is the first time either party gave a firm timeline and plan for doing so.
The announcement comes a month before PCHC’s deadline for closing the shelter if a new owner couldn’t be found. The shelter is expecting a $1 million shortfall this year, far worse than the $700,000 deficit it suffered last year, PCHC President and CEO Lori Dwyer previously told the Bangor Daily News.
If PCHC closed the shelter’s doors because another owner couldn’t be found, it would force the dozens of people who stay there each night onto Bangor’s streets. Many of the residents may be ineligible to stay at the city’s other adult homeless shelter due to active substance use or prior eviction and could wind up incarcerated or hospitalized.
Preble Street remains the only organization that offered to take on the shelter, said Mark Swann, Preble Street’s executive director.
“Nobody else is lining up to do this,” Swann said. “We feel the need to keep the small number of shelters in this state open is critical.”
Though PCHC initially said it would close the shelter in October due to insufficient funds, Dwyer said the organization will continue to run it in the months before the transition is finalized early next year.
“I’m very glad to see this partnership is happening,” said Cara Pelletier, City Council chairperson. “It has been heavy on my mind for months, wondering about the fate of the Hope House that performs such an important service in our city.”
The transfer was, in part, made possible by the $7.5 million the Legislature’s Appropriations and Financial Affairs and Housing Committee voted to give to Maine’s five low-barrier shelters over the next three years. This means each shelter — including the Hope House — will receive $500,000 annually.
New state funding was “a game changer” to keep the shelter afloat, Swann said, but the organization still hopes to raise another $100,000 to $200,000 from private sources in the coming years to fund the shelter’s daily operations.
Though PCHC will no longer run the shelter, the organization will oversee the renovation and expansion of the building that’s planned for next year, as it holds the lease for the building, Dwyer said.
The project will expand the building’s footprint and bring the shelter’s 55-bed capacity up to pre-pandemic levels, which could hold at least 66 people with additional space if needed. City councilors previously gave PCHC $2.77 million in pandemic relief money to aid that project.
PCHC plans to have a construction manager hired by the end of this year, Dwyer said, and the project will likely begin next year after Preble Street officially takes over the shelter.
