Developers are planning at least 30 affordable “Housing First” apartments for homeless people at the former site of Portland’s Oxford Street homeless shelter.
Avesta Housing, a Portland-based nonprofit affordable housing provider, has secured an option agreement to purchase the 1/3 acre parcel at 203 Oxford St., which was once Portland’s centrally located homeless shelter before the city closed it earlier this year to open a larger one in the Riverton neighborhood on the outskirts of Portland.
Pending municipal approval, the nonprofit will develop between 30 and 50 affordable apartments at the site with construction beginning in 2025, a spokesperson announced Monday.
The apartments would follow the Housing First model, meaning that the homes are aimed at housing chronically homeless people and will have 24/7 on-site mental health and substance use support services provided by Preble Street, a nonprofit social work agency in Portland.
Avesta and Preble Street already have 85 Housing First units in the city and had a waiting list of 180 people in March. Gov. Janet Mills and the Maine Legislature dedicated $100 million to housing initiatives in a budget passed earlier this year, including a statewide Housing First program.
The need for solutions to Portland’s homelessness crisis is emergent. Two city councilors proposed a short-term fix last week: lifting the city’s camping ban to allow homeless people to legally camp out on public property like city parks through the winter. There are 212 tents pitched throughout the city, with 155 of them on public property, according to city data.
The Housing First model holds that by housing chronically homeless people without conditions like mandatory treatment programs or sobriety, they’re more likely to stay housed and have fewer encounters with law enforcement and emergency services.
“In the almost 20 years we have been running site-based Housing First programs, we have seen time and again chronically homeless individuals with complex needs find safety and a place to call home,” Preble Street Executive Director Mark Swann said in a news release Monday.
Mills, a Democrat, pledged her support to the initiative in her February state of the budget address, and said Monday that this development would help reach her goal of expanding the number of Housing First units in Maine to 500.
“Housing First is a successful and cost-effective way to address the needs of people experiencing chronic homelessness,” Mills said.
It’s early for the project. Funding through MaineHousing, the state housing authority, won’t be accessible until July 2025 when the new Housing First fund goes into effect. Rules have not yet been developed for applicants, Scott Thistle, a spokesperson for MaineHousing, said.
“MaineHousing is pleased Avesta and Preble Street are working on this together as they are both effective organizations with long track records of success, but we want to caution this is at the very initial stages,” Thistle wrote in an email Monday.