An apartment building for chronically homeless people was recently approved for a key permit, but the project’s lack of funding is delaying its progress.
Bangor’s planning board on Tuesday approved a development permit for the building, called Yellen Pines, which marks a major step toward building the city’s first permanent supportive housing facility.
It is now expected to open by the end of 2027, according to BangorHousing Executive Director Mike Myatt, whose agency is spearheading the project. He initially hoped it could welcome residents next spring, but said difficulties finding enough funding have caused delays.
The total cost of developing the facility will likely reach about $11.2 million, and the project is around $600,000 to $1 million short of that right now, according to Myatt.
“There’s not a lot of other grant opportunities out there for stuff like this,” Myatt said.
The multimillion-dollar, 30-unit building could play a significant role in getting some of the city’s most vulnerable residents off the street. News of the delay in its opening comes as Bangor residents have become increasingly frustrated by visible homelessness downtown and the city council’s failure for years to devise a long-term strategy to address the issue.
Yellen Pines will offer studio apartments and 24/7 support services in a one-story building on Corporate Drive, near the former site of a large homeless encampment known as Tent City.
In order to bridge the funding gap, Myatt said his team can “slash and burn our construction budget,” which could worsen the quality of the building, or find a way to get more money from MaineHousing, the state housing authority that provided the initial grant for the project.
Myatt is optimistic the two agencies can find a compromise, and said the project’s construction manager, the Augusta-based Lajoie Brothers, is doing a great job finding small ways to cut the budget that add up without sacrificing quality.
The project is more difficult to build than a typical affordable housing project, Myatt said, because it will have private efficiency apartments, rather than multi-bedroom units. Supportive housing also involves a host of extra expenses ranging from wifi to security costs.
“Those are things that are kind of working against us,” Myatt said, but he added that his team is “trying to grind it out and just find ways to make it work.”
Yellen Pines is part of a first-of-its-kind “Home for Good” cohort funded by MaineHousing with the goal of creating permanent apartments with 24/7 support services for chronically homeless Mainers. The other four projects are in Sanford, Portland, Augusta and Auburn, and none have started construction yet, Myatt said.
The site for Bangor’s facility was selected in October and has now nearly completed its environmental review, according to Myatt.
Once completed, the Portland-based social services organization Preble Street will operate around-the-clock services helping residents get connected to resources so they can stay housed. Rents will be partially subsidized by housing vouchers.
This model, which falls under the larger umbrella of “Housing First,” prioritizes getting homeless people into housing and then connecting them to resources like mental illness or substance use treatment. The approach has been standard practice at the federal level for years, but the Trump administration, through executive orders and changes to funding structures within the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, is working to drastically shift programs away from Housing First and toward treatment-based programs with work requirements.
Housing First is the best approach, according to Vanderbilt professor and homelessness expert Beth Shinn, who told the Bangor Daily News that housing costs are the biggest predictor of homeless rates in a city.
“As long as you have a shortage of affordable housing, you’re going to have a homelessness problem,” Shinn said.
Several local homeless residents have told the BDN that they’ve been housed before but ended up on the streets again without anyone to help them adjust to living indoors.
“A lot of times what the city will do when they finally do give out a voucher is, ‘okay, well, here’s your apartment, here’s your keys, good luck.’ And they don’t seem to realize that what got them homeless in the first place is still coming with them,” Matt Sanders said earlier this year. “They need continued support after that to make sure they don’t lose their housing.”
Service providers in the city have also identified support systems for people who have recently become housed as an area where Bangor is lacking.
Myatt said he’s excited about the supportive housing project’s potential to make significant progress on homelessness in Bangor.
“There’s just so much homelessness going on in our city right now, and I know that that is hard to see, and I can’t imagine what it’s like for someone having to live that firsthand,” Myatt said. “And to think that we could have a home, a permanent home, for 30 folks going through that battle every day is just what keeps us going.”
Myatt also expects the project will benefit taxpayers in the city and the county by alleviating some of the burden of paying for emergency services, law enforcement and jail costs associated with homelessness.
Melissa Rhodes, the director of property management for BangorHousing, was recently picked as one of nine people who will serve on Bangor’s new homelessness advisory committee. Myatt said he’s excited about the expertise she can bring to the city’s work creating a long-term plan, and that he hopes the Home for Good program can be part of those discussions.
BangorHousing was also awarded state funding in March as part of a second cohort of permanent supportive housing projects. Each of those projects will get about $4 million subsidized by MaineHousing, spokesperson Scott Thistle told the BDN in March.
Myatt said his team will replicate the same design to build a second 30-unit facility, but they are still in the early planning stages and do not yet have a construction timeline. They are looking for a site and have decided not to concentrate both buildings in the same area. Ideally, the site will be outside of any dense residential areas without being too remote, Myatt said.