Bangor city councilors last week saw a rare snapshot of the hundreds of people who are homeless in the city.
In the first eight months of this year, 450 people stayed at Bangor’s three homeless shelters, according to Tara Hembree, a MaineHousing homeless response system manager. The city’s rental assistance program had 124 people enrolled and city outreach workers connected with 25 people who are homeless in the same timeframe.
This information was among the many pieces of data about the region’s homeless population Bangor city councilors received from MaineHousing officials last week. Councilors asked for an update on Bangor’s homeless population’s needs and demographics.
“We’re hearing so many different numbers at different times, so how do we really know what we have out there?” Councilor Sue Hawes said.
Councilors had to request this information from MaineHousing, as the data isn’t readily available to residents on a public database or in another form.
The data show Bangor officials what’s being done to count, assist and track people who are homeless locally so they can determine what’s helping the region reduce its homeless population — something the city has struggled with for years.
However, homelessness experts warned limitations like staffing shortages and people giving incorrect information when accessing help means the numbers aren’t perfect, and some people are surely being missed.
“If we don’t know what the baseline is, then we don’t know if the solutions we’re trying to implement are working,” Hembree said.
Councilor Dina Yacoubagha said the numbers appeared to be the highest she has seen since joining the council in November 2021.
That could be because efforts to collect homelessness data have increased in recent years, Hembree said.
Other numbers, meanwhile, may stay roughly the same due to a program or shelter’s capacity, Hembree said. For example, just less than 640 people entered Bangor’s three shelters in 2022 and 2023, likely because the shelters were at-capacity during that time.
The first set of numbers councilors received last week came from the Homeless Management Information System, a data tracking system that gathers information on the city’s homeless population. Employees of Bangor’s three homeless shelters, the city’s rental assistance program and outreach workers enter data in the system after they work with someone in need.
The numbers city councilors received don’t show all the rental assistance and outreach work being done within Bangor because the city is not the only organization offering those services, City Manager Debbie Laurie said.
Nearly all of the people enrolled in the city’s housing voucher program or connected with an outreach program this year were previously living “somewhere not meant for habitation,” such as outside, in a vehicle or an abandoned building, or stayed at a homeless shelter, according to Hembree.
Of those who entered a shelter this year, most — 56 percent — were living outside or staying at another shelter previously, Hembree said. Another 18 percent wound up at a shelter after staying with a family member or friend. A few more were released from incarceration, a hospital, psychiatric center or other medical facility.
From January to August 2024, 18 people left the city’s rental assistance program, 21 people exited the outreach program, and 347 people left one of the city’s three shelters.
“In a shelter, a lot of the time people will stay for a day or two and end up re-enrolling, so it can be a revolving door and people aren’t staying for a long period of time,” Hembree said.
The reporting system de-duplicates entries, meaning one person may re-enter a shelter many times, but they will be counted as one person if they give the same name, date of birth and social security number every time they enter, said Kelly Watson, MaineHousing’s director of homeless initiatives.
However, if they give different information, they could be counted as more than one person, according to Watson.
When people left a shelter this year, nearly one-third were going to a place not meant for habitation, Hembree said. Another 26 percent moved into transitional housing or went to stay with a friend or relative. Roughly 16 percent of people moved into permanent rental housing, usually with a housing subsidy.
Sometimes, data on where a person goes isn’t collected because they don’t complete an exit interview, leaving workers wondering whether someone moved into safe housing, Hembree said.
The other data MaineHousing officials presented comes from a system called Coordinated Entry, which includes information people who are homeless volunteer about themselves, such as where they came from, how long they’ve been homeless and what they need.
Within Penobscot and Piscataquis counties, there were 548 people who were actively homeless as of July, according to Coordinated Entry data. Of those, 92 were counted at the encampment behind the Hope House in Bangor, which is commonly referred to as “Tent City” or “Camp Hope.”
However, Hembree said that encampment count can change daily and people who were counted during the day and may not be staying overnight.
One gap in the system, Hembree said, is not having enough outreach workers and volunteers to periodically check in with people who are homeless, which leads to incomplete information on what is or isn’t helping people.
“We may have identified someone and gotten an assessment done, but we don’t have enough bodies out checking in with folks,” Hembree said. “We know we don’t have enough people on the ground to get a handle on where people are at.”