PORTLAND, Maine—For 36-year-old Sheena, every day has been a struggle since she and her husband wound up homeless on the streets of Portland—Maine’s largest city on the Atlantic coastline—five months ago.
The couple had been “kicked out” of a motel after two years, though they “never once got in trouble,” she said.
Suddenly, they had nowhere else to go.
On Dec. 16, 2023, the couple were living in a pitched tent in the city’s largest homeless campsite near the Casco Bay Bridge in Harbor View Memorial Park.
Sheena said she blames the high cost of rent and limited affordable housing for the rapid growth of homeless encampments throughout the city.
She also feels the city gives “first priority” to newly arrived illegal immigrants, which “makes it even worse” for the unsheltered homeless population.
“I am tired,” said Sheena, who did not want her last name used, sniffling from a head cold in the frigid morning air. “I’ve been moving for the last two days, trying to build up my tent. I haven’t really slept much.”
There were more than 70 tents packed into the Harbor View campsite along with piles of bicycles, trash, and debris before the city ordered the encampment shut down on Jan. 2.
The action was twice postponed in December due to bad weather and a council vote to delay the action.
Local media reported there were about 50 protestors who formed a human chain on Jan. 2, trying to block the removal of the Harbor View Park campsite.
The city also planned to shut down the Douglass Street and Dougherty Field encampments despite the city’s limited affordable housing options.
“There’s still a lot of us here who are struggling—especially the veterans,” Sheena told The Epoch Times during a site visit in December.
“I know a couple of [veterans] with honorable discharges that are homeless,” she said.
Many of the newly displaced were bound for the city’s Homeless Services Center (HSC) when 170 shelter beds became available in December.
The facility housed an increasing number of illegal immigrants before they too were moved into a new facility, which freed up space for the Harbor View Park tent residents.
“As of this morning (Jan. 2), we have 57 male beds and 29 female beds available at the HSC,” Jessica Grondin, the city’s director of communications and digital services, told The Epoch Times.
Despite the opening of shelter beds at the HSC, about 100 beds are still available. Portland officials remain “extremely concerned” with the city’s growing homeless population living unsheltered in freezing weather.
“With temperatures continuing to drop and winter weather expected soon, health and safety risks will only continue to increase,” according to a city press release.
“Tent fires, a fatality due to a tent fire, and an unattended outside death have also recently occurred in Portland.”
The city reported 12 deaths at homeless campsites in 2023 while calls for service significantly increased in the Harbor View Park area. There were 303 calls last year and seven overdoses—one fatal.
In 2022, there were 59 calls for service.
“We have been working since May to collectively move individuals from tents to shelter. But at no other time during this period have we had the municipal shelter capacity needed to address the great need in our community like we do today,” said City Manager Danielle West in a public statement.
“In the past, encampment resolutions occurred because obstructions and the public health and safety issues required dispersion. Now, as we head into winter, we have an even greater public health and safety crisis to address, but we also actually have the shelter capacity to accommodate individuals who have no place else to go. Leaving them outdoors is simply unconscionable.”
According to the Maine Housing Authority’s annual point-in-time count, there were 3,455 homeless people in Maine on a single night in January 2022—more than double the number reported in 2021.
The survey included both sheltered and unsheltered individuals—956 who were in transitional housing and 2,476 staying in hotels through federal grant programs.
Portland homeless advocate Preble Street said the city is facing an “unprecedented crisis in unsheltered homelessness with 216 tents housing one or more people as of Aug. 31, 2023.
“Other people sleep on sidewalks, in doorways, or seek safety hidden away in parks and near highways. Some sleep in their cars,” the organization said on its website. “Some are working but are simply unable to afford Portland’s out-of-reach housing costs. Many have serious mental illness, substance use disorders, and unmet medical needs.
“Most of these vulnerable people face numerous barriers to accessing care, leaving these sometimes-life-threatening medical needs untreated. The suffering and trauma our fellow human beings are experiencing right now, here in Maine, is immense.”
The agency linked the problem to an unaffordable housing crisis in Portland, where the average monthly cost for an apartment is $1,718.
“A person would need to work over 92 hours a week at minimum wage to afford this cost. The community is not affordable for countless workers, families, older Mainers with fixed incomes, and people with disabilities.”
“We believe that everyone in our community can agree on one common goal—no one wants this epidemic of tents and human despair. No one.”
In response to the growing homelessness crisis, the city formed the Encampment Crisis Response Team to address the needs of unsheltered homeless individuals through outreach and direct assistance.
Peble Street said the task force’s efforts to relocate people from the Fore River campsite to shelters or housing produced “unsatisfactory outcomes.” Only 18 people have taken up the offer since June 27, 2023.
“Lack of any new resources has severely hampered this effort. Collaboration, by itself, if not enough. For this collaboration to be effective, new resources are a necessity.”
The agency feels the solution is a partnership of health care programs and better options for shelter and housing.
As Portland’s—and Maine’s—unsheltered homelessness problem continues to grow worse, an influx of legal and illegal immigrants is competing for limited housing and resources.
“Maine is the way life should be. That is how we have been for a long time. And now, unfortunately, we’ve had five years of one-sided [Democratic] government control,” observed Maine Rep. Mike Soboleski, a Republican.
“We’re in a housing crunch right now. We have military veterans who are homeless. We have people on the streets who are homeless. We need these places,” Mr. Soboleski told The Epoch Times.
“We’ve brought enough [asylum seekers] now where they’re congesting our cities. When they congest our cities, they drive people out of the cities to the outskirts. Those people that they’re driving in are now finding themselves in homeless situations. We have homeless encampments.
Mr. Soboleski said one homeless campsite he visited near the University of Maine Augusta campus had over 200 homeless people without access to services “because a lot of those services are being taken up for illegals.”
“They’re in tents. They’re in campers. They’re in box vans. Right now, I can’t imagine what it’s like up there,” Mr. Soboleski said.
“Immigration is a big issue for us.”
As Maine’s large municipalities grapple with finite housing and services to accommodate an unsheltered homeless population, the state is gearing up for a massive influx of new illegal immigrants and asylum seekers.
Maine Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, recently signed an executive order to “strengthen Maine’s economy and communities” through creation of an Office of New Americans in 2024.
“Maine is a welcoming and inclusive state that recognizes the value of people of diverse backgrounds to enhance the vibrancy of Maine’s communities, the strength of our workforce, and the growth of our economy,” the governor wrote.
She added that Maine needs more workers to offset imbalances in the labor market due to an aging workforce and a “growing economy.”
“Maine’s 10-Year Economic Strategy has set a goal of attracting 75,000 people to Maine’s talent pool by 2029 and establishing Maine as an attractive state for new arrivals to secure meaningful employment that matches their career aspirations with their skills,” Ms. Mills wrote.
“Maine’s nearly 50,000 foreign-born residents are a vital part of our state’s communities and economy, with $1.2 billion in spending power and contributing $441 million in taxes.”
Ms. Mills, in her executive order, referred to these immigrants and asylum seekers as “New Mainers,” who currently receive state support for emergency, transitional, and permanent housing needs, including legal assistance and health care services.
The order instructs the governor’s Office of Policy, Innovation, and the Future to deliver a plan to establish the mission and goals of the Office of New Americans by Jan. 19.
“The plan must outline the mission and structure of the office, the timing of its establishment, and the scope of its work, with the overarching goal of ensuring that Maine is effectively incorporating immigrants into its workforce and communities to strengthen the economy over the long-term.”
Gov. Mills has yet to return an email from The Epoch Times seeking further comment.
The Maine Wire reported that the governor’s goal is to bring 150 percent more illegal immigrants to Maine “in a quarter of the time it took the first 50,000 to arrive.”
“It’s a vast re-settlement operation to consider for an administration that has struggled mightily to find a humane way to deal with the 5,000–10,000 migrants that have arrived unexpectedly in Maine since 2019.”
One homeless man, 38, living in the former Harbor View Park campsite said the city’s unsheltered homeless problem is bad enough without bringing in more asylum seekers needing jobs and housing.
“Just because this is a sanctuary city doesn’t mean you have to accept every [illegal alien] just because it’s some governor’s priority,” the man told The Epoch Times on condition of anonymity.
The man said being homeless is difficult enough as it is living in a small tent with just a sleeping bag and a blanket on a wooden pallet for a mattress.
“I’m alright. My toes got bad one night—not full frostbite. You bundle up. I’ve got a good sleeping bag,” he said.
“I’ve slept in the worst conditions. I’m fixing it up now. I’m going to reset everything.”
A woman told The Epoch Times she drove 130 miles from Bangor to the Harbor View Park campsite on Dec. 16 to check on her friend, a man who is homeless and blind.
“I don’t know where he is. I think it’s horrendous,” the woman said of the campsite’s unsanitary conditions.
“Portland should have prepared for this. A lot of these people are sick. They’ve got cancer. They’ve got diabetes. They can’t get their meds. It’s ludicrous. They can’t get people into apartments because the rent is too high compared to what the state will give them for rent,” she said.
“Things are just going to get worse. So we’re going to have more people out of work. We’re going to have more businesses closed. We’ve got our labor force. We don’t need any more people.”
