Bangor’s new Advisory Committee on Homelessness will hold its first meeting, which is open for the public to attend, at 5:15 p.m. Tuesday in city hall.
The meeting is the result of months of discussions among city councilors who wanted to bring in experts to help the city develop a comprehensive strategy to address homelessness. Elected officials have struggled to make progress on the issue, focusing often on reactive measures instead of long-term planning.
Bangor City Council appointed nine members, including local homelessness service providers and people in the healthcare, housing and business worlds, to the committee in May. They will be tasked with drafting a data-driven and evidence-informed strategic plan to address homelessness in Bangor.
“I’m really happy at how diverse the group is,” Ben Treat, the Bangor public library’s executive director and one of the nine members, said. “People come from a lot of different perspectives and I think having different kinds of proximity to the problem is going to help us and make us stronger in the long term.”
Treat added that he hopes the committee can recommend “pre-packaged actions” the council could implement quickly while also remaining focused on creating a long-term plan. He said he thinks making concrete recommendations early in the committee’s process and building a central place where community members can go for updated data on homelessness in the city could help improve public confidence around the issue.
“There’s been some loss of confidence, I’d say,” Treat said.
The city’s failure to act more decisively on homelessness has garnered growing attention in the last few months, and complaints around the issue frequently dominate public comment sessions at council meetings.
“It has been excruciatingly long making it happen,” Councilor Susan Faloon previously said of the process to start the committee, which was officially created nearly four months ago.
Amy West, another committee member and a nurse practitioner who serves as clinical director of homeless health services at Penobscot Community Health Care, noted that she expects many community members will be closely watching the committee’s work.
“I’m hoping that we’ll be representing the community at large, whether folks are housed or unhoused,” West said. “I think it’s important to have the input of the people that are affected by that, and that’s not just folks that are living outside, it’s also folks that are housed and accessing services downtown and living downtown.”
West said she’ll bring expertise to the committee around how health impacts someone’s ability to maintain stable housing, and that she hopes the group will also consider community members who are vulnerable and at risk of becoming homeless, in addition to those already living on the streets.
Jason Goodrich, another appointee, encouraged residents in a Facebook post Monday to attend meetings and share their ideas with the group. Goodrich said he brings multiple perspectives to the committee as someone who has been homeless himself and as someone who has worked in crisis services, behavioral health, housing and recovery.
“Our responsibility is to listen, learn, examine the data, understand what is working and what is not, and develop thoughtful recommendations that can help Bangor move forward,” he wrote.