A piece of land on Maine Avenue near Bangor’s airport will soon become a permanent supportive housing facility for 30 chronically homeless people, the first of its kind in the city.
The city authorized an option agreement last week for the Bangor Housing Development Corporation to purchase the city-owned parcel of land for $120,000.
The building, which BangorHousing Executive Director Mike Myatt expects will open in spring 2027, will be the first permanent housing site with 24/7 support services in Bangor. Advocates anticipate that the project will play a major role in alleviating homelessness in the city and helping its most vulnerable residents stay housed.
“This model has never really been done in Bangor before,” Myatt said. “We’ve built units dedicated for folks who are homeless, but to have the entire building dedicated to that with the on-site services is really something that we’re excited about.”
The new facility will have 30 studio apartments, all about 400 square feet, according to Myatt. It will also feature common spaces and meeting rooms to make it easier for residents to meet with community partners and receive services. The Bangor Daily News first reported on the project in May, but a location had not yet been chosen.
The site is between Maine Avenue and Corporate Drive, near where Bangor’s largest homeless encampment was before the city closed it earlier this year. The city was able to house some of the people who lived there, but many were not moved into permanent housing.
The Bangor Housing Authority will be the property manager, the Bangor Housing Development Corporation will be the owner and developer, and the Portland-based social services organization Preble Street will provide 24/7 on-site services, Myatt said.
Those services could include connecting residents to benefits they qualify for, helping them maintain their units, deescalating conflicts and offering community-building programs.
The project follows the housing-first model, which prioritizes getting homeless people into housing as the first step toward improving their quality of life. Myatt pointed to the success of similar permanent housing projects in Maine, all three of which are in Portland and managed by Preble Street, as examples of the impact the new facility could have in Bangor.
“Getting that roof over your head brings a tremendous amount of stability over time,” he said.
Preble Street will work with local agencies, including the city’s homeless response manager, to find people who are chronically homeless, want to move into the building and would benefit the most from the 24/7 support services, according to Myatt. Once the building opens, the organization will have at least two staff members on site at all times to assist residents.
BangorHousing has housed people dealing with chronic homelessness in the past, but those people sometimes lost their housing because they struggled without 24/7 support, according to Myatt.
“We know how to build stuff. But keeping people housed with a service package was always the missing link,” he said. “When you have a building that’s dedicated 100% to this group of people, with Preble Street being on site 24/7, they will make sure that people stay housed.”
Bangor’s homelessness service providers have struggled to meet demand as more and more people in the area experience chronic and unsheltered homelessness and shelters are forced to turn people away. Some cite a lack of local infrastructure to provide intensive support when people first get into housing as a key gap that often leads them to end up back on the streets.
The new facility could be the first step in strengthening that infrastructure, which Myatt said would have a “ripple effect across the community.”
Beyond the direct impact for the 30 people who will move into permanent homes, “housing someone who’s chronically homeless reduces the cost on society,” Myatt said.
A 2007 study conducted in Portland by state agencies and the Corporation for Supportive Housing found that permanent supportive housing for homeless people cut the cost of services they consume by half.
Bangor’s facility will sit on about 4.8 acres of a larger plot of land that will soon be subdivided, Myatt said. The area is on a bus route and easily accessible to major roads, including Union and Hammond streets.
It’s also near Theresa’s Place, another permanent housing facility that recently welcomed its first residents but does not offer 24/7 services, and the Hope House emergency shelter that Preble Street operates.
“Having more people live there permanently — that’s how neighborhoods start,” Myatt said.
Now that a site has been chosen, the Bangor Housing Development Corporation is starting the engineering and design work that is needed before it can break ground. Myatt said he hopes to start construction in late spring 2026 and open the building in spring 2027.
The developer is working with Gawron Turgeon Dillon Architects in Scarborough and Lajoie Brothers Construction in Augusta to design and build the project. The site plan and survey of the lot will go to the city’s Planning Board this fall, Myatt said.
Bangor is one of five cities in Maine where agencies are receiving state funding to build permanent supportive housing. Those funds will first go towards building costs and eventually be used to operate the facility when it opens, Myatt said.
He added that while this is the first time this sort of housing has been built in the city, it may not be the last.
“Maybe if we’re lucky we can do more,” he said.