PORTLAND, Maine — The city of Portland's proposed sweep of one of its largest homeless encampments comes with pushback from its leaders and local organizations working to bring people experiencing homelessness into shelter.
On Tuesday, City Councilors Victoria Pelletier, April Fournier, and Anna Trevorrow issued a joint statement requesting the city move the Fore River Parkway encampment sweep date, originally set for Sept. 6, to Oct. 6.
"This feels like an unfinished conversation with many unknowns and moving forward with the September 6 encampment sweep is going to create greater chaos, harm, and cost our city and will again retraumatize our unhoused neighbors who deserve a safer place to live," the statement said.
Also on Tuesday, Preble Street, a nonprofit organization, asked the city to postpone the encampment sweep.
"A lot of great work has happened and we are looking to continue that work instead of starting all over," Andrew Bove, vice president of social work for Preble Street, said.
City spokesperson Jess Grondin said the deadline to close the encampment is firm.
"We are in a tricky situation of having to balance both sides of the equation," Grondin said.
Grondin said while the city wishes it could have brought more people into shelter, there are also complaints from residents saying the situation needs to be addressed.
"To mix up the message now would not be good for the work we are doing," Grondin said.
Since the city's Encampment Crisis Response Team was formed, Grondin said 170 bed spaces were open to residents at the Fore River encampment. She said 18 people have been brought into some form of shelter since then.
According to publicly available city data, the month of August saw the most new tents show up in the city out of any other month so far this year.
"I think it just came down to the education in terms of what they could provide in terms of the shelter beds," Grondin said.
Bove said people rejecting shelter should not be the deciding factor before shutting an encampment down.
"If you offer someone a shelter bed and they turn it down that shouldn't be the end of the conversation, that should be the beginning of the conversation," Bove said.
Bove said the ECRT spent the first few weeks formulating the best ways to bring people to shelter and only started seeing results in recent weeks.
Once the Fore River encampment is closed, it will join the growing list of "emphasis areas" designated by the city.
Currently, under municipal law, the city only allows camping in public once homeless shelters are full. If an area is designated an "emphasis area," that means no one can camp there even if the shelters are full.
The city will designate an area as an emphasis area normally after sweeping an encampment.
"It's really because we've done a lot of outreach there and we spent a lot of resources in terms of cleaning and restoring," Grondin said.
For the people staying at Fore River, such as Matthew Beausoleil and Skyler Roy, the encampment sweep leaves them with few options to seek shelter.
The two are in a relationship and have stayed at Fore River since November of 2022.
"I came from where I had anything I wanted and then now I have to get stuff for myself ... it's hard and stressful and having no income on top of that," Roy said. "They aren't offering us anything and telling us to pack up and leave, it's stupid."
Roy said he and Beausoleil will be gone before city crews show up to clear the encampment on Wednesday.
"I don't really know what to say, I don't believe anything the city says anymore," Beausoleil said. "It's just wrong, it's not right. I'm really over it."
The couple said they would seek a campsite near Thompson's Point, adding it would be a further walk to resources.