BANGOR, Maine — "I've been here two years previous to this and then I spent a year out in housing, I've been back a couple months now," Steven Sprague said while chucking pieces of wood into a small fire.
Sprague is one of 73 people in Bangor who call the encampment known as Camp Hope located off Cleveland Street and Texas Avenue home.
"It's really a community here, a lot of self-policing here," Sprague said,
While it's a community for some, Bangor City Manager Debbie Laurie said several factors are leading the city to close the camp by the end of 2024.
"We're concerned about the ability to spread communicable diseases, we know that we have safety concerns for individuals in there," Laurie said.
According to Bangor Police Department records, there have been 501 calls regarding the encampment from January through September of 2024. Thirty of those calls have been instances where a serious threat was posed to a person's well-being.
"We had a week in July where our swat team was here twice and out of those two instances, we ended up arresting a total of eight people, we seized drugs, we seized a couple of trailers, we seized weapons," Bangor Public Information Officer Sgt. Jason McAmbley said.
Laurie said the city hopes the closure will incentivize residents to seek assistance from local resources like outreach programs and warming shelters.
"We believe there is the capacity to get all 73 individuals who want to come inside, inside," she said.
But pastor of the Mansion Church Terry Dinkins said he and other warming shelters in the area might not be fully equipped to handle the demand.
"I think we're gonna see a big influx of people coming," Dinkins said. "I do have a limit of people that I can house here overnight to stay warm, so what do we do with those folks?"
Doug Dunbar with Penobscot County Cares, a nonprofit that provides resources to people experiencing homelessness, also raised concerns. Dunbar said there aren't enough case managers or resources to help the camp’s residents transition to stable housing.
"We don't have enough case managers and resources to help those people be successful in their new room or apartment," Dunbar said.
In an effort to expand housing options, local nonprofit Penquis is working to convert a former hotel near Camp Hope into 41 affordable housing units. The project is expected to be completed by the end of December.
"One of the big intents of this project is to provide our city with another resource in helping its chronically unhoused population," Penquis Operations Manager Peter Malia said.
While the new housing could ease the transition for some, Sprague said it's not the end all solution.
"Nobody's happy here, but the best outcome would be to somehow get most of these people housed," Sprague said.