BANGOR, Maine — Nearly a month after City of Bangor's decision to close the homeless encampment commonly referred to as "Camp Hope," Bangor's Homelessness Response Manager Jena Jones says outreach workers are making progress.
"We have folks who are showing up for their lease signings, who are showing up for apartments viewings, who are filling out the paperwork," Jones said.
With assistance from local organizations like Community Health and Counseling Services, or CHCS, city officials say 12 people living in the encampment have already found housing and a few individuals are in the process of moving out themselves.
CHCS Brian Moynihan says his outreach team is working hard to create and maintain relationships with people living in the encampment and feel like they're slowly knocking down barriers that have prevented individuals from finding housing.
"Whether it's getting folks into stable housing, into substance abuse treatment, or even just a shelter for the time," Moynihan said.
Jones and other city officials say that continued cases of violence and safety hazards created by the encampment, including a fire that recently killed a man inside his tent, are what prompted the city to close the space entirely.
"It is cold outside and the temperatures are only going to continue to drop. We know that real harms are being done to folks in that encampment space," Jones explained.
While Doug Dunbar with nonprofit Penobscot County Cares agrees the encampment poses risks, he says the city isn't giving him and other outreach specialists enough time to properly house the remaining people at the encampment.
"We just don't have the housing to quickly move people into their own apartments," Dunbar added that without the proper amount of time or resources, the closure could do more harm than good. "People become more isolated, they go into places where they can't be seen. They lose the connections with service providers they're working with oftentimes."
And for people living in the encampment like Devin Wilder, he says his biggest concern is what could happen to him and others without shelter.
"For a lot of these people, that's the last thing they need, they need to survive at the bare minimum," Wilder explained.
In an effort to expand affordable housing options, city officials say they are working with Penquis to build 41 housing units inside the former Pine Tree Inn located directly across the street from the encampment. An official with Penquis says the project is slated to finish at the end of December, coinciding with the encampment's closure.