Approaching Acadia National Park along Route 1, it might be easy to think people aren’t facing homelessness in the area.
Donna Harmon didn’t know they were before she started operating the Schoodic Food Pantry in Gouldsboro two and a half years ago.
But as the pantry has grown from serving 35 families between Ellsworth and Machias to nearly 500, with new ones signing up almost every week, she has learned of at least 20 people living in tents, cars, campers or abandoned homes, often on land they don’t own in the woods or down side roads out of the public eye.
“A lot of people come to this area to vacation, and they don’t realize that a lot of the people here are struggling,” Harmon said. “It’s still going on, and people are shocked [to learn about it].”
While Hancock County is the home to iconic and expensive vacation destinations such as Stonington and Mount Desert Island, almost half of its residents in 2023 — 42 percent — were below the poverty line, or above it but still unable to make ends meet, according to an analysis of census data by the United Way.
Combined, that’s 10,317 households, an increase of more than 1,600 since 2010. Off of Mount Desert Island, many towns have rates closer to 50 percent. While poverty rates have remained steady, the group that earns income above the poverty line but not enough to afford the basics has been growing.
Interviews with local service providers show how homelessness appears to have increased postpandemic and continues even in areas that appear more affluent, compounded by limited access to services in rural places and state support that doesn’t bridge the gap.
While homelessness in Maine’s urban centers is highly visible and often discussed, it’s harder to see — and in some ways, try to fix — outside of them.
“We get calls every day for people looking for shelter,” said Amy Smith, housing navigator and a former shelter client at HOME Inc. in Orland, near the county’s western edge.
HOME operates all of the shelters in Hancock County, including the region’s only family shelter, which draws people from surrounding counties.
Its annual number of “bed nights,” or individual nights that beds in its shelters were occupied, has increased by more than 3,000 since 2019. In 2024, 249 individuals stayed in the shelter.
Many were barely covering expenses until one unexpected challenge created a “domino effect” that left them homeless, according to HOME staff.
It often started when a car broke down, leaving someone in the family unable to get to work. Other times, one bill or a medical issue pushed them over the edge.
‘It could happen to anybody’
That was the case for Smith, who came to the shelter in 2015 with her three young children and their father after he got sick and late rent payments led to the family’s eviction from their housing in Old Town.
“It could happen to anybody from anywhere,” she said. “It doesn’t matter who you are.”
Smith had always been independent before, and like those she works with at the shelter now, she struggled with shame and hopelessness.
Her daughter Phylicia Curry, now 14, was four years old when the family came to Orland. Phylicia remembers the shelter was full, so staff repurposed a closet for the siblings and their mother, where they watched movies on an old TV. Her dad was in the separate men’s shelter; the kids struggled being apart from him.
The disruption and uncertainty of homelessness is always traumatic for children, who are also often picked on at school when the bus picks them up there, according to staff — though Thylicia said she’s doing well, and feels lucky that it happened when she was so young.
After seven months, Smith found a place with a housing voucher. The family stayed there for four years, then moved to another apartment in Dedham. Smith bought a house in the town two years ago.
It’s a relief, her daughter said, to stop feeling that they might have to leave at any second. At first, being homeless felt unfair; now, she’s glad the family was given a second chance that some don’t get.
The co-op recently started a diversion program which kept 28 families out of homelessness last year. That would have prevented Julie Ream, another staff member who’s now the group’s program coordinator, from becoming homeless in 2014.
After her electricity was shut off and she couldn’t afford to turn it back on, Ream and her young daughter ended up at HOME. Through the program, she was able to apply for a voucher and find housing again. Just as important is the community and support found at the shelter, Smith, Thylicia and Ream all emphasized.
Shelters struggle to meet demand
But, like other shelters across Maine, HOME is struggling to keep up the level of services it offers, according to Rosalini Moore, its executive director.
York County’s only adult shelter closed in May for lack of funds, the Hope House shelter in Bangor nearly closed last year before another group stepped in and Aroostook County’s sole shelter warned it would close this year without a local $150,000 loan and the passage of new state legislation.
Shelters asked lawmakers to raise state reimbursements for their beds this year. Legislators ultimately upped it to $18 per bed per night for 12 months, providing temporary relief but not long-term certainty.
Without a sustained increase, Moore estimated HOME would also face closure within several years. She believes the state’s entire shelter network is teetering financially.
Each bed costs her organization $102 per night to operate. The state has long provided $7 per bed per night. Private fundraising has to cover the rest.
“That’s the challenge,” she said. “We’ve been struggling and pulling out our hair for ages trying to make it work.”
The Orland organization’s traditional donor base is aging and often facing more financial challenges themselves, Moore said. Flexible pandemic relief funding helped for a while, but has ended.
Increasing costs and inflation are adding to the strain of that existing underfunding — and in some cases, driving a rise in homelessness.
Ellsworth, the county’s only city, has been grappling with an increasing homeless population for years. Local officials identified at least six small encampments around town in 2023.
Tracey Hair, HOME’s former executive director, told the BDN at the time that she had never seen so many people living in the woods. Rising housing costs that continue to plague Maine made it harder to find them new places to live, Hair said.
The city’s police chief, Troy Bires, said Wednesday that the department hasn’t seen much of a recent change in homelessness but gets more calls about it in the winter, when warming centers draw crowds.
Most people at the shelters were renters, sometimes evicted because the properties they lived on were sold to new owners who raised the rent, according to HOME staff. Others lived on deteriorating family properties.
Getting them housed again is even more difficult after a freeze on housing vouchers that started last summer due to federal funding gaps, according to Smith.
Unique rural challenges
On top of the growing burdens facing housing insecure people and the groups that help them, there are also challenges unique to more rural areas.
Few jobs or services exist within walking distance of the Orland shelters and adding more public transportation would make a major difference for the rural homeless, Smith said.
Housing vouchers are income-based, but shelter clients often can’t find jobs nearby or are hesitant to try because they don’t know where they’ll end up with a voucher. Others are on disability or Social Security and aren’t able to save up for security deposits, Ream said.
Services are also spread out across Hancock County, unlike in cities such as Bangor. That’s another challenge for the people Harmon encounters at her food pantry in Gouldsboro, some of whom leave town to be closer to those services.
Local service groups praised the relationships they have and their ability to work together.
But applying for more formal help from programs such as general assistance can be so complicated that people give up, Harmon said. They’re already feeling defeated and often struggle to understand the processes.
From her perspective, simplifying the process of getting help would make the biggest difference. For now, the pantry is fundraising and planning an expansion.
“The need is there, the need is growing and we need to recognize that need,” she said. “You’ve just got to provide the help that you can.”
Correction: An earlier version of this report misspelled Phylicia Curry’s first name.