Portland city officials broke ground Tuesday on a $25 million, 208-bed homeless services center on Riverside Street, adding to the city’s capacity for emergency housing and assistance for the local homeless population.
“This is an exciting day,” Portland Mayor Kate Snyder said.
Snyder said the new service center, which will be built on city-owned property, will replace the city’s current emergency shelter on Oxford Street. Right now, she said, the city leases that space, which only has 154 beds, and coronavirus precautions have forced that capacity down to about 75.
“It’s really not adequate for those folks who need the most assistance,” she said.
The center will partner with local organizations such as Preble Street, Amistad,
The Opportunity Alliance and Greater Portland Health to provide services at the center, including meals, health care, workforce training, housing counseling services, mental health and substance use services. Snyder said having these services in the new center is an improvement over the current Oxford Street shelter.
“Here, we actually bring the services to the people,” she said. “They don’t need to leave where they are sleeping to get the services they need,” she said.
A recent estimate from the Greater Portland Council of Governments (GPCOG) indicated approximately 1,200 people in the greater Portland area have no fixed address, including some 700 people seeking asylum in the U.S. When asked about addressing the larger issue of homelessness in greater Portland, Snyder noted that all communities in Maine, under the state’s General Assistance law, are required to provide emergency shelters for the homeless.
“I think it’s really, really important for every town and city to recognize that this is what Portland’s doing, and every town and city has the same obligation,” she said.
Snyder said the Portland City Council voted to move forward with the project on the Riverside Street site in June 2019, but delays from the pandemic and time needed to secure financing meant waiting until now to break ground. The project is expected to cost as much as $25 million. An initial $6 million of that total is coming from federal American Rescue Plan Act dollars allocated to the city and Cumberland County.
The city will finance the rest of the development cost via a 25-year lease, according to a release describing the project. Kevin Bunker, a principal at Developers Collaborative, which is constructing the facility, acknowledged that while his company is well-versed in building affordable housing, a homeless service center is new territory for him.
“I thought I could make a difference if I jumped in, so I jumped in,” he said.
Officials expect the facility to open in the late spring or early summer of 2023.