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Bangor organizations and outreach groups have made strides addressing homelessness in 2023, but there are still people without permanent housing.
This year kicked off with a federal disaster relief team coming to Bangor to teach local outreach workers how to rapidly house people who are homeless. That led to the clearing of a sprawling homeless encampment along Valley Avenue, after which workers set their sights on doing the same to the homeless encampment behind the Hope House Health and Living Center, often called Tent City.
Despite these efforts, homelessness is still prominent and visible in Bangor and the city has struggled to find a solution.
Here are some of the plans Bangor organizations have to decrease homelessness in 2024.
A tiny home village
Bangor-based nonprofit Dignity First plans to spend 2024 finalizing the building plans for a community of 120 tiny homes designed to house people grappling with homelessness.
In the first few months of the year, Executive Director Jamie Beck said the nonprofit plans to acquire land and finalize the design for the village. The nonprofit will then need to get approval from the Bangor Planning Board to begin construction.
Beck declined to disclose where the proposed site for the project is.
The project will be built one neighborhood at a time with each one including 20 homes, but Beck said the village likely won’t be ready for residents in 2024.
The “community first” model was first tried by Mobile Loaves and Fishes, an outreach ministry that aids homeless people in Austin, Texas. The group opened a tiny home community in 2015 that now houses 350 people.
“What we’ve done up until this point hasn’t made a significant impact on poverty and homelessness in the area,” Beck said. “The model that we’re replicating is a proven model.”
The village would have an on-site health center to offer medical services, including those specific to mental health and substance use disorder, Beck said. It will also have common areas, like a village store, gardens and greenhouses, and an outdoor fitness center.
Another settlement for homeless people was proposed in Bradford earlier this year, but the idea had few firm details, such as the type of housing that would be available and how many people would live there. The town later passed a moratorium on such developments.
More sober housing and a detox center
At the start of 2024, Fresh Start Sober Living will close on its latest home in Bangor, which will provide seven units for men in recovery from substance use disorder.
The new beds will bring the Bangor-based nonprofit’s housing capacity to 120, which is more than Bangor’s two adult homeless shelters combined, according to Scott Pardy, founder of Fresh Start Sober Living.
Founded in 2018, Fresh Start Sober Living has more than a dozen properties in Bangor and Brewer that provide safe, affordable and permanent housing for people in recovery.
To date, 264 have stayed in Fresh Start Sober Living’s housing, some for only a few hours while others have lived there for years. On average, residents stay in a Fresh Start home for 177 days, which is more than the national average of a 120-day stay in sober housing, according to Pardy.
Also in 2024, the organization will open another location at 100 Center St. in Bangor, which will include apartments on the lower floor and a social detox center upstairs, operated in partnership with SaVidea Health, a provider that offers drug and alcohol counseling and medically assisted treatment.
The social detox portion of the building will give people who need immediate access to support and treatment a safe and affordable place to live while they recover, Pardy said. The site will also expand Bangor’s affordable recovery resource offerings and encourage people to stay connected to Fresh Start.
“This is a big step for keeping people in recovery, even if they relapse,” Pardy said.
Turning a hotel into homeless housing
Penquis CAP, a Bangor social services agency, plans to open a new building that will provide affordable and permanent housing to 41 people grappling with homelessness.
The organization has purchased the building at 22 Cleveland St., which was previously the Pine Tree Inn, and is now working to meet the federal requirements necessary to gain housing vouchers for the site, according to Jason Bird, Penquis’ housing development director.
From there construction is slated to take about four months and Bird hopes the building can open to tenants by the end of March or early April.
The building, which sits directly across the street from Bangor’s primary homeless encampment, will also have on-site addiction recovery and other services for people living there.
Bird believes providing permanent and private housing rather than a cot in a shelter is the best foundation for them to pursue treatment for substance use or mental health disorders.
“People have the best shot at overcoming chronic homelessness with their own private living space with support services nearby,” Bird said. “We know if we were to leave them unsupported, it would only set them up for failure.”
Finding a new owner for Bangor’s homeless shelter
Penobscot Community Health Care, which owns and operates the Hope House Health and Living Center in Bangor, plans to spend much of 2024 in search of a new owner as PCHC can’t afford to keep it afloat.
Hope House is a low-barrier shelter, meaning it doesn’t require background checks, credit checks, income verification, previous program participation, sobriety or proof of identification.
The process of transferring ownership and operations of the Hope House could take up to a year.
The shelter portion of the Hope House is projected to lose more than $600,000 by the end of this year, according to Lori Dwyer, PCHC president and CEO. Next year, the shelter is projected to lose more than $800,000.
If PCHC can’t find a new owner to take over Hope House, the shelter will close in October 2024, Dwyer said. That closure would eliminate the shelter’s 44 dorm room beds and 12 overflow mats from Bangor’s shelter offerings.
PCHC had not yet found a new owner for the shelter as of Dec. 15.
