Despite a sign on the door to Maine’s lone field office for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development stating the office is “permanently closed,” a Trump administration official insists the office is open for business.
The conflicting messages highlight the uncertainty that is playing out across the country as the Trump administration moves quickly to carry out its agenda, leaving local organizations confused about how to carry out their work.
HUD is required by federal law to have an office in every state to ensure that applications for mortgage insurance are processed. The field office in Maine also helps housing organizations navigate the complex federal agency, said Cullen Ryan, the executive director of Community Housing of Maine. Since the departure of the Maine office’s director in February, Ryan and other Maine organizations that provide affordable housing and help people who are homeless have been left unsure where to turn.
“We’re working now suddenly in an atmosphere of chaos where nobody knows exactly what’s going to happen; everything is unprecedented,” Ryan said. “We deal with crises all the time, and now all the systems that we interface with, to do our work, are in sudden crisis as well.”
The confusion started, Ryan said, with the departure of Jennifer Boardman, who was the state HUD director in charge of the field office in Bangor until the end of February. Boardman had been in the role less than a year and was still in her probationary period when she went on administrative leave Feb. 28, according to an automated response from Boardman’s HUD email address. The message said she “will not be returning to the office.”
After that, Bloomberg reported how HUD was planning to close dozens of field offices across the United States, though HUD said it was only “exploring consolidation” and that no plans had been finalized.
On Wednesday, a Bangor Daily News reporter went to the HUD office, which is inside the Margaret Chase Smith Federal Building in Bangor. A sign taped to the office’s door said it was “permanently closed.” Multiple phone calls to the office went unanswered.
Adding to the confusion, a HUD spokesperson said the Maine office is not in fact closed, and an acting field office director has been appointed while the agency looks to fill the role.
“Whatever sign is up is not official communication and should not be interpreted as an official closure,” Kasey Lovett, a HUD spokesperson, said. “The sign will also be removed shortly as it was not official guidance and again, the office is not closed — we are working on it.”
Sean Thomas, who is listed as the acting Maine HUD office director, did not respond to an email from the Bangor Daily News.
The uncertainty over the Maine office’s future comes on the heels of HUD informing the union that represents thousands of HUD workers that it intends to comply with President Trump’s Executive Order, “Implementing The President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ Workforce Optimization Initiative,” and reduce its workforce.
The union, the American Federation of Government Employees, told its members in an alert on Feb. 26 that DOGE was reportedly trying to cut 4,000 positions by May.
But for organizations like Ryan’s, which provides affordable housing and help to people who are homeless, the loss of Maine’s HUD office, even temporarily, will make their work more difficult, Ryan said.
“When you lack a federal employee who is local and knowledgeable about how things work locally, you lack the ability to work through the issues that you need to because HUD is a complicated organization,” he said. “Your local representative is the person who can help you thread the needle.”
Reporter Sawyer Loftus may be reached at sloftus@bangordailynews.com.
Have you been evicted from public housing in Maine, or do you know someone who has been?
The Bangor Daily News has teamed up with the nonprofit newsroom ProPublica to provide a first-of-its-kind look at evictions in Maine. We want to know how evictions — especially those from public housing authorities — affect people, communities and the state.