PORTLAND, Maine — Portland will not be moving forward with adding 50 new shelter beds at its homeless services center on Riverside Street after the city council voted against the measure Monday night.
The move would have added 50 more beds to the 208 already there, allowing the Encampment Crisis Response Team to offer more spaces to unhoused people who want it, before shutting down the encampment.
Immediately after the vote, councilors also decided to postpone any further discussion about the proposal indefinitely.
The goal of the proposal was to keep the 50 beds open until the week of Thanksgiving when a new asylum seeker shelter is expected to open. This shelter is designed to house single asylum seekers, which take up dozens of beds currently at the homeless services center.
At the beginning of September, the City of Portland forced dozens of people living at the Fore River Parkway encampment out, throwing away tents and personal belongings.
Many of those forced out of the encampment by the city joined other large encampments such as the Marginal Way encampment and the Commercial Street encampment.
The city has long stated that just 18 people out of 180 accepted the offer for the shelter. Those experiencing homelessness along with nonprofits working to help unhoused people said the barriers at city-run shelters keep people from saying yes.
Barriers include drug use, pets, going with a partner, curfews, and time to apply.
In its after-incident report, the city said it is working to address a few of these barriers such as extending curfew, increasing storage for personal belongings, and consolidating the application process.
Another complaint was the time window to accepting a shelter bed was too short.
Organizations such as Preble Street said oftentimes when a shelter bed opened up and city staff at the HSC emailed them out to providers, there was no provider available to offer that bed to an unhoused person. They said it's because there aren't enough outreach workers working late enough.
"Many times those emails that come in after hours do not result in an actual bed being offered," Vice President of Social Work at Preble Street Andrew Bove said.
Kristin Dow, Portland's Health and Human Services director, said HSC offers for shelter would go out around six in the evening.
"We understand that many providers may no longer be working after 6 p.m. That is why we continue to encourage those working in the encampments to send us a list of those who would like to access a bed at the shelter, so that our staff can reach out to them directly when a bed becomes available," Dow said in an email.
Dow also said the city will be working to improve communication with its partners. City spokesperson Jessica Grondin said the city will be hiring its own outreach workers, to alleviate some of the pressure off local nonprofit outreach workers.
The Encampment Crisis Response Team aims to focus on the Marginal Way encampment next.