Last week, Portland’s Project HOPE hit a key milestone: housing its 100th client, two years into the pilot program that uses navigators to help homeless people get into apartments and stay there.
Leaders in Bangor’s public health department think the same model could help ease the city’s homelessness crisis, which the council has struggled to manage for years as the public becomes frustrated with the visible effects of street homelessness. But funding for the program is in doubt as another local service provider vies for the same money.
The City Council will vote Monday on whether to contribute opioid settlement funding for the health department to adopt the program.
Bangor’s version of Project HOPE, which stands for Housing Opportunities for People in Encampments, would be staffed by a program coordinator and three housing navigators who would be hired through the local homeless shelters Hope House, Shaw House and the Bangor Area Homeless Shelter. MaineHousing would fund 70% of the program, but the city would need to contribute the remaining $126,000.
Navigators would help homeless people find a housing placement, go through the rental process and adjust to living indoors. The program could help address some key issues in Bangor’s homeless services network, including insufficient coordination between groups and support for people who have recently been housed.
“You get somebody who’s chronically homeless into housing and if they don’t have intensive case management, they’re at huge risk of eviction,” Jennifer Gunderman, the city’s public health director, said.
The navigators would have smaller caseloads and more flexibility than traditional case managers, who are limited only to services that are reimbursable by insurance. They’d also offer more consistent relationships, according to Gunderman, since they could work with the same clients from the time they’re on the street until after they enter their housing.
“This actually gives the opportunity to build that trust all the way through the process,” Bruce Hews, the city’s homeless response coordinator, said. Housing navigators might help clients find work, navigate the day-to-day of living in an apartment, take them to the laundromat or medical appointments, and manage issues that come up in their housing placement, he said.
Aaron Geyer, Portland’s social services director, emphasized that the model “is not a cookie cutter program. You’re really going to try to be client-specific and unique in the approach you take with each individual because each case is unique and they’re going to be successful in different ways.”
Bangor’s program would find participants through the shelter partners, who may have strong relationships with specific populations that the city otherwise wouldn’t be able to reach, according to Gunderman. She expects that each navigator would take on a caseload of around 17 people, which is small enough that they could interact with each client at least once a week.
Beyond paying for staff, the program also has discretionary funds built in to help clients pay security deposits and get furniture or food for their apartment.
“Organizations will go to put someone into housing and they’ve got nothing,” making it harder for that person to be successful in keeping their housing, Gunderman said.
The city has grant funding through a different MaineHousing program to help with some of those costs, but the grant only lasts through the end of this year. The public health department also has a housing support navigator on staff, but that position is more focused on stabilizing people who are at risk of eviction, Gunderman explained.
Some of the discretionary funds can also be used as incentives for landlords to rent to people in the program, and Gunderman thinks it would also be helpful for landlords to have navigators as a resource if issues arise with a client.
Hews also noted that navigators wouldn’t be limited to placing people within the city of Bangor and could search for housing elsewhere in the state.
“They can actually look at maybe housing them back in the area that they are from,” he said.
The program is going into its third year in Portland, where officials have been so happy with the results that they’ve dedicated additional funding to hire more staff.
“We’ve seen it as a huge success in Portland,” Geyer said, noting that he’s confident the results can be replicated in communities across the state. His most recent data indicates that in two years, the program has enrolled 170 people. One hundred of those have been placed in housing, and 51 have been placed in shelters.
City councilors on the government operations committee discussed the proposal last week but could not agree on how to move forward. While some seemed supportive of the program, some were hesitant to dedicate the city’s limited remaining opioid settlement funds to it.
The funding request is complicated by a competing request from the Together Place Peer Run Recovery Center, a local nonprofit that recently closed its daytime drop-in center and meals program due to lack of funding and has asked the city to contribute opioid funds to help it reopen.
“These funds, that’s restitution, it’s blood money for people who have paid the ultimate price for using these opioids. And this money is meant for people with lived and living experience,” Joe Hartel, the center’s executive director, said at a committee meeting earlier this month while making the case that his program would be the best use of the funds.
While the housing navigation program would not exclusively take on clients who have substance use disorders, Gunderman noted during that committee meeting that Portland funded its version of the initiative with opioid settlement dollars, and that addressing homelessness is an allowed use within the framework of the settlement agreements.
Councilors discussed the possibility of using money from the city’s unassigned fund balance for Project HOPE instead of opioid funds, but a committee vote to do so failed 2-3, with councilors Leonard and Angela Walker voting yes and Carolyn Fish, Wayne Mallar and Michael Beck voting no.
Next the committee voted on whether to fund the program with opioid dollars, which also failed 2-3. Fish and Beck voted in favor while Walker, Mallar and Leonard voted against.
That means the original proposal to fund the program with opioid dollars will be put to a full council vote on Monday without the recommendation of the committee.
If council does vote to adopt the program, Gunderman believes it could help ease some of the frustrations around homelessness that have bubbled over in recent months.
“What I hear a lot of, say, in city council meetings or on social media, is this idea we have to start holding people accountable. We agree. This program could do that,” she said, because while her team would offer people help and guidance to get off the street, they’ll also expect clients to put in work on their end.
“This is an absolute partnership with the person that we’re working with,” Gunderman said. “Because if people can’t do the things that they need to do, then they’re not ready.”