Task force hears testimony from city’s homeless teens

On any given night between 25 and 50 young people are homeless in Bangor, according to information given to a panel looking into the problem.

The Task Force on Homeless Youth held three public hearings Thursday, during the morning, afternoon and evening. The City Council established the task force to look into the problem and come up with a plan to help the troubled youngsters.

Its members received an earful. For some of them it was old hat, for others its was troubling news.

“I felt all these adults hated me. They were all against me,” said Jennifer Weeks, 19, who had been in and out foster homes before turning to life on the street, much of the time in Portland.

“Living on the streets was fun at first. I could do whatever I wanted to, do, all the drugs I wanted,” she said during testimony Thursday. “But when winter came, I started not liking the streets.”

At night she slept in a shelter and during the day she would walk the streets. “It was like no one cared,” she said. “Friends would sleep with old men, $40 for whatever.”

Weeks has since turned life around. She entered the Atrium House, a Bangor residential program that works with teen-agers. She earned her graduate equivalency diploma through the Job Corps. She said, “Now I’m just waiting to go back to school. I’m living on my own. I feel like a citizen.”

She is also one of the people serving on the task force. Another member of the task force is Holly Stover who runs the Atrium House.

“I was really encouraged that we got testimony from as many as we did,” Stover said Friday. The community has to be made aware of the problem, she said.

About two dozen homeless people — adolescents and adults — addressed the task force.

“The homeless don’t have a lot of choices,” Stover said. “They have to make do with what’s at hand.” The hope, she said, is to provide options, a youth-only shelter, a place for them to stay during the day, and more.

“Bangor needs to open a shelter for kids. They have one that admits adults and teen-agers,” Weeks said, “but there are different needs for different people.”

The next meeting of the task force is Aug. 22. “We’ll go over a distilled version of the testimony we heard yesterday,” Mary-Anne Chalila, director of the city’s Health and Welfare Department and head of the task force, said Friday. “We’ll see what else is needed as far as further information. And then we’ll decide where to take it.”

The task force intends to present the City Council with a plan for lending a helping hand to those who need it, Stover said.