Paul Leary arrived in Bangor four years ago with two goals — to see his son for his birthday and to take his own life.
“I saw a bumper sticker that said, ‘I plan. God laughs’ and did God laugh at me,” Leary, 50, of Bangor said Friday night at the Hammond Street Congregational Church during a service to remember the homeless who died in the past year and to pray for those who are homeless now.
The Homeless Vigil has been held in Bangor since 2006 on the longest night of the year. Similar services were held Friday night in Portland, Lewiston and around the country.
“The life expectancy of our friends who endure chronic homelessness is 28 years shorter, on average, than that of people who are housed,” said Donna Yellen, acting executive director of the service provider Preble Street in Portland. “The human toll of allowing these vulnerable neighbors to slip through the cracks is devastating, not only to those of us who knew and loved the 36 people [in Portland] we’ve lost so far this year, but to our community as a whole.”
About 50 people, many of whom have experienced homelessness, attended this year’s vigil in Bangor.
Boyd Kronholm, executive director of the Bangor Area Homeless Shelter, said he and his staff were aware of six people who had stayed at the shelter who died in the past year. One of them was Larry Noyes, who died in July at the age of 51 shortly after he and his girlfriend, Carolyn Fish, 54, moved into a Bangor apartment. The couple had lived in a tent in an encampment on the Penobscot River for years.
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Leary, like Noyes and Fish, at first refused help but when he checked into the Bangor shelter, he was required to work with service providers on staff and see a doctor.
“Eventually, I trusted them and followed their advice, after fighting them,” Leary said Friday. “LIttle by slow, I got better. I stopped using drugs. I was still drinking but not as much as I was. On March 27, 2015, I got housed. A few months later, I suddenly grew a conscience and stopped drinking. It’s been three years, five months and a day, but who’s counting?
“This last year has been the toughest, most challenging, most painful in my life,” he continued. “But I didn’t drink. I didn’t use. And, little by slow things got better.”
Today, Leary has a job and volunteers to help the homeless. He also said that he has a good relationship with his son, who four years ago refused to see him.
Leary urged those who now are homeless to reach out to the staff at the shelter and accept help.
The number of people seeking help at the shelter are up more than 10 percent over last year, according to Kronholm. The shelter’s 43 beds are being used every night and between 13 and 20 people spend the night in the shelter’s warming center.
After the service in Portland Friday, 248 people turned up at Portland’s Oxford Street Shelter for the night.
“They sit in chairs all night watching TV and drinking coffee because we have no beds for them,” Kronholm said of the Bangor shelter.
The three biggest reasons for the increase in demand are the lack of affordable housing in Greater Bangor, the opioid crisis and the failure to expand Medicaid in Maine, he said as the service was about to begin.
“Hopefully, the change in administration in Augusta will be a change in the right direction for us,” Kronholm said.