Coalition proposed to assist homeless Shelter director in Bangor skeptical

BANGOR – Determined to stem the increasing number of homeless people in Maine, the Governor’s Office has come up with a plan in which shelter representatives would work with state and nonprofit agencies to address the problem.

“There hasn’t been a process like this where they have actually buckled down and looked at issues together – there’s never been such a concerted effort,” said Michael DeVos, chairman of the Senior Staff Committee to Reduce Homelessness, which issued the proposal Monday in a 49-page report.

But the director of the Bangor Area Homeless Shelter said Tuesday he was less than optimistic that the plan would work.

“The bad news is that this is one more report. It feels conceptual and academic rather than real-worldly,” Dennis Marble said.

On the plus side, the report is “well-written and logical and it talks about interagency cooperation, which is the key,” he said.

The Senior Staff Committee to Reduce Homelessness worked with the Governor’s Sub-cabinet on Homelessness to come up with the new proposal. The subcabinet consists of the Maine State Housing Authority, the Department of Human Services, the Department of Behavioral and Developmental Services and the Department of Corrections.

Despite an influx of federal funds and well-planned state initiatives, more Mainers are homeless than ever before, and preliminary data from 2001 indicate the number will rise again this year, the report states.

While shelters have doubled their capacity since 1993, they regularly must turn people away because of a lack of beds.

In 1993, homeless people spent 127,031 nights in Maine shelter beds. By 2000, the number had grown to 214,248, an increase of 69 percent. On any given night, there are between 1,500 and 1,700 Mainers using the state’s 42 shelters.

The solution is not to build more shelters, but to attack the problem at its root, according to Tony Sprague, a spokesman for the governor.

“We want to cure homelessness, not cope [with it],” Sprague said Monday.

In large part, people are homeless because they have trouble obtaining services including affordable housing, case management and benefits assistance.

The new report found that 45 percent of those in shelters are mentally ill and 60 percent have substance abuse problems.

The plan lays out the nature of the problem and describes how people will work together to identify the solutions. A design to reduce homelessness must be drawn up within one year.

Recommendations call for the Senior Staff Committee to confer with an advisory council that will include shelter employees, nonprofit agencies, the Maine Homeless Coalition and other advocates for the homeless.

They will identify ways to deal with issues such as how to increase the number of case managers at shelters, how to make transportation more readily available to homeless people, and how to link people who have chronic mental illness with Medicaid, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families and other benefits.

The report recommends that the subcabinet and the shelters regularly report their progress in reducing homelessness.

Other proposals include using existing resources more efficiently and garnering more federal help.

On that front, some good things already have resulted because of the report, DeVos said. Maine was one of eight states selected to meet with the federal government to discuss improving the link between federal resources and the homeless population. A team will meet with the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services next spring, he said.

But Marble said he is disappointed that the report doesn’t deal more with issues surrounding the chronically mentally ill homeless and commitment laws.

“I think there’s a significant number of homeless people who have demonstrated by any fair measure that they’re incapable of making a good and proper life decision. Those folks need to be temporarily restricted in a therapeutic environment,” said Marble.

“But if we talk about putting more resources into more housing for the mentally ill, we run the risk of those people burning their bridges,” said Marble, pointing out that he sees around 100 to 150 people who fall into this category.

The shelter director also wonders how the new document differs from a report drawn up 13 years ago by a legislative task force on homelessness.

“It’s a newer version of an old process,” said Marble, who is disappointed that the report doesn’t call for additional state support or clarify what the role of shelters should be.

He also worries about the lack of continuity, pointing out that a new governor will be elected next year.

“Where are we going to be a year from now if people are gone? This doesn’t lend itself to long-term authority,” Marble said.

But DeVos didn’t see that as a problem. “If we have a good process and actions that are laid out and that make sense, any administration would support following through with reducing homelessness,” he said.