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Bangor’s City Council is considering funding a day center where homeless residents could spend time indoors and receive services.
The city is working to put out a request for proposals to find out which local organization could provide the service and how much it would cost before the council commits to funding the center, according to discussions in a City Council committee meeting last week.
The center would provide a dedicated space where homeless people can congregate amid growing frustration with how visible Bangor’s homelessness crisis has become. Following several encampment closures and a ban on storing belongings on city sidewalks, many homeless residents have reported that there are few places they can sit and rest without being asked to move along.
“There is no place for us to go. Everybody is complaining we’re on the sidewalks, we’re here, we’re there, well, if we had a place to go, we wouldn’t be there,” Angela Eastman said at a recent City Council meeting.
The city is asking for a potential day space to provide one meal a day, snacks, phone charging, Wi-Fi, and connections to healthcare and social services, Director of Public Health and Community Services Jennifer Gunderman said on May 18. The center would be open to adults from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and may be open either Monday through Friday or every day.
The city has several warming centers that open during the winter, but there are fewer places where homeless people can get shelter and services during the summer. A city-funded day space would ideally be run by an organization that could also offer a winter warming center, Gunderman said.
The Well, a daytime winter warming center in the city, saw up to 80 people per day this year, Gunderman said. Overnight warming centers hosted up to about 120 people at a time on the coldest nights this year, she’s said.
Gunderman first raised the idea to councilors last month as part of discussions around a group of homeless people who had been gathering in Peirce Park near the public library. Bangor used to have a day space, the Heart Center, but it closed two years ago when the Health Equity Alliance folded.
Gunderman did not respond to a request Thursday to share additional information on the proposal.
A day space could cost around $200,000 for a year, City Manager Carollynn Lear estimated. The day space would be more expensive than the overnight warming centers the city helped fund this winter because they would require paid staff, according to Gunderman.
City staff hope that having a centralized place for people to go would make it easier for service providers and case workers to find their clients. Those workers “spend a lot of time trying to connect with people who are dispersed throughout the city,” Gunderman said.
Beyond serving people who are homeless, the proposed center also would be open to those who have recently found housing.
“We are hearing a lot that people are feeling lonely and isolated and feel like they might have been cut off from some resources and services” after ending a period of homelessness, Gunderman said.
Several councilors seemed open to the idea of the day space in last week’s committee meeting.
“I definitely see this as a tool for managing chaos,” Councilor Michael Beck said, noting that many homeless people have dispersed across the city, especially after the sidewalk ordinance was passed.
Questions still remain about where the city’s homeless community members can go at night as there are limited shelter beds available. Many homeless residents and advocates are pushing for the city to allow an encampment in a designated area.
“They need to give us a spot that we can legally camp,” Jennifer Marshall told the Bangor Daily News last month at Peirce Park, noting that she rarely gets a full night’s sleep because she’s frequently woken up and asked to move along. “We just need a place to go where they won’t move us.”
Some councilors have expressed concerns that offering a day center could attract more homeless people to the city, or said they didn’t want to provide a service that would be available to people who weren’t from Bangor.
“If we’re funding it as a city, I want this for our Bangor unhoused, not people getting dropped off,” Councilor Carolyn Fish said.
Lear noted that having a central resource hub could help more people “move on from being unhoused in Bangor. And maybe we want that for someone whether they’re from Bangor originally or not.”
If the city moves forward with a day center, it may open as early as June 15, Councilor Susan Faloon noted based on a draft of the request for proposals reviewed by councilors. The proposal will return to the council for further discussion after applications from service providers are received.
Correction: A previous version of this story lacked a first reference to Jennifer Gunderman. The story has been updated.