When his agency tallied headcounts of homeless served by local Maine shelters during the first quarter of the year, the director of the Maine State Housing Authority was pleasantly surprised this month, but not ready to declare victory in the war on homelessness.

The MSHA’s David Lakari knew better.

Despite numbers that appeared to show a substantial decline generally in shelter use, down from 4,701 people during the first three months of last year to 4,464 during the same period in 1996, Lakari’s analysis reflected more modest expectations.

“We hope,” he said, “this is an idication that the number of homeless the shelters are seeing will continue to decline, or at least stabilize.”

It may be, but the discouraging news is that the experience is not universal. The overall numbers are heartening, but they need to be examined more closely. What the housing authority may find is that while the gross number of bed nights went down statewide from 54,992 to 52,934 during the period, the pressure for emergency shelter actually went up in urban areas.

Just as it is dangerous for MSHA to extrapolate a trend from its totals, it is risky to generalize from Bangor’s experience. But the city’s figures are instructive. The most populous city in this region didn’t go with flow of data collected by MSHA.

Christopher Olsen, resource developer at Hope House on Indiana Avenue in Bangor, reported that his agency recorded a 14 percent increase in clientele this year from January 1 to the end of June. Olsen says this represents an increase of two people per night for his agency.

The experience has been similar at the Greater Bangor Area Shelter, where director Dennis Marble estimates there has been a steady 10-percent increase in demand for lodging thus far in 1996. Has there been a decline in the state’s homeless population? Marble doesn’t think so. “Personally, I believe it is premature to reach that conclusion, at least from what we’re seeing.”

What Marble saw in June at the busy shelter at the corner of Cedar and Main streets was a demand for 101 bed nights. Last year, the figure was 81.

Closer scrutiny of its data may bring this fuzzy picture into clearer focus for MSHA. Following a 12 percent increase from 1994 to 1995 in shelter nights, the overall numbers are down for the early part of 1996. That’s certainly good news for Maine. However, it may not include a positive a development for its cities.

Urban areas are where the deinstitutionalized mentally ill congregate. There is a slow shift to community-based care under way for this group of citizenry, but it continues to represent the largest contingent at the Bangor shelter — 60 percent to 85 percent of clients on a given night, according to Marble.

Cities are magnets for the poor and homeless because they are where the services are, as are the offices of the state and federal bureaucracies that serve the indigent. Urban areas are the dropping-off points for public transportation. Bangor’s bus terminals often are the end of the line for people with a one-way ticket heading north.

Exacerbating what may be an urban trend for this problem is the shrinking of state and federal resources. When smaller, rural shelters, with fewer community resources and a proportionately lower level of charitable donations feel the pinch, their clients migrate, to the cities.

What wasn’t in the MSHA report is the ominious observation of the veterans of shelter management. There may be disturbing trends for cities underlying the positive statewide statistics. Demand is unusually high this summer and the worst months lie ahead. Maine needs to take a serious look at these figures, determine what they really mean, and prepare for winter.