The number of Mainers living without shelter grew this year despite an overall drop in the state’s homeless count, according to data released Thursday from this year’s Point in Time Count. People living in shelters, transitional housing and emergency motels are also considered homeless in the annual count.
Notably, the homeless count rose in Penobscot and Pisquatiquis counties while it shrank in the Portland area, according to the data, highlighting the continuing homelessness crisis in Bangor.
While this latest count continues a yearslong decline toward prepandemic homelessness levels, some of that can be attributed to shrinking transitional and emergency housing options. The rising number of Mainers with no shelter underscores deeper issues with the state’s limited housing supply.
The Point in Time Count is a federally mandated survey of homeless people across the country on a single night. The survey provides a snapshot but is likely a significant undercount, national experts have said. This year’s count was taken on Jan. 26, and the data was released in a report by Maine’s Continuum of Care, which manages the state’s applications for federal homelessness funding, and the Institute for Community Alliances, which was hired to compile the data.
The overall homeless count in Maine this year was 2,126, about 300 fewer people than last year.
“The data shows progress in the annual count, but there’s so much more work to be done,” Dean KIein, executive director of the Maine Continuum of Care, said Thursday.
Despite the overall drop, the number of unsheltered homeless people in Maine grew from 281 to 361 — the highest number recorded in the survey’s history.
That rise is concerning, Klein said, adding, “many people are really still struggling to find safe and stable housing.”
The growing number of unsheltered Mainers is likely due to a combination of longer periods spent in shelters because of insufficient long-term housing options, shrinking transitional housing supply and better data collection, according to the report.
Of the people living without shelter in the count, 29.6% reported having a serious mental illness and 15% reported having a substance abuse disorder.
Chronic homelessness, defined by the federal government as people with disabilities who have been homeless for at least 12 months or four separate times in the last three years, is also on the rise in Maine. The state’s chronically homeless count went from 127 to 141 people, a shift that the report attributed to a shortage of available housing units.
This has been a challenge in Bangor, where a study found that the city is short 700 units of affordable housing. The city’s two adult shelters are frequently at or near capacity.
There were more homeless people this year in the region encompassing Penobscot and Piscataquis counties, according to the report, which breaks down the data into nine geographic areas called hubs. In that region, 362 homeless people were counted this year. That’s up from 312 people last year, although this year’s number is still lower than the 390 people counted in 2023.
About half the people considered homeless in those counties were living in shelters, while the remainder were split between people in transitional housing and those who were unsheltered.
Eighty-nine people were counted as having no shelter in the region. That’s significantly higher than the 57 unsheltered people counted in Cumberland County, despite the latter’s higher population.
It’s unclear exactly why the count showed an uptick in homelessness in Penobscot and Piscataquis counties, although Klein noted that the data collection depends a lot on outreach efforts that have improved in the last year.
Fewer people lived in transitional housing in Maine this year, mostly due to the closure of the Saco Hotel Transitional Housing Project for asylum-seekers.
The number of homeless children in Maine more than halved this year from 488 to 242, although the number of unsheltered children rose slightly from two to 12.
Black, Indigenous and multiracial people remain overrepresented in the state’s homeless population, although the disparity shrank somewhat this year, the report shows.