Homeless shelter branching out Bangor facility using $200,000 grant to make third floor into 6 apartments

BANGOR – Beyond the peeling blue paint, boarded-up windows and pigeon droppings on his long-vacant third floor, Bangor Area Homeless Shelter Director Dennis Marble sees an answer.

Faced with an increasing number of his shelter’s guests waiting – sometimes for months – for an opening in the city’s tight affordable housing market, Marble decided this spring to take matters in his own hands.

Now armed with $200,000 from the Maine State Housing Authority and an architect’s rendering of his new Cedarview apartments, the no-nonsense shelter director has most of the ingredients for six efficiencies for the chronically homeless.

“We saw an opportunity to capitalize on who we are,” Marble said Wednesday, the kickoff for the Cedar Street shelter’s $30,000 fund-raising campaign, the highlight of which is a Saturday “Hike for Homelessness” up Mt. Katahdin.

“We’re trying to set up a quiet, modest, secure and trusting kind of place for folks we’ve known for a while,” he said.

Marble’s plans come as welcome news to Bangor housing officials, who often struggle to find homeless people apartments they can afford in a city with rising rents and few vacancies, especially in already scarce efficiency apartments.

“Sometimes we’ll have to move someone into a one-bedroom with a living room and dining room and what not, and all they have is a backpack, a mattress and maybe a lamp,” said T.J. Martzial, the city’s housing program manager.

With few belongings and little money, Marble’s clientele – mainly drifters with varying degrees of mental illness – are natural fits for the small apartments that could be completed as soon as next summer.

That’s none too soon say city officials, citing the U.S. Census Bureau’s troubling 4.2 percent rental vacancy rate, which rivals that of the even tighter Portland market.

Housing experts generally prefer a vacancy rate between 5 percent and 7 percent, a number believed to strike a healthy balance between supply and demand.

Walking along the dark third-floor hallway, Marble said he was both excited and “a little nervous” about the new endeavor.

“In a shelter, if somebody does something you don’t like, you can sit them down and have a little talk,” said Marble, who often talks about his hopes of putting his shelter out of business. “When you’re a landlord, it’s not that easy.”

Marble said he would rely, in part, on a committee comprising city and state housing and mental health officials to screen applicants. Those appropriate for the apartments likely will be single, chronically homeless and employed or receiving some form of public assistance.

Marble estimated that the apartments would rent for about $350 a month, a price that would include three meals a day and all utilities.

News of Marble’s plans comes a few weeks after the director of a youth homeless shelter released his proposal to renovate the historic Waterworks complex into 35 efficiency apartments for low-income tenants.

Shaw House Inc., is said to be weeks away from securing more than $3 million in tax credits from the MSHA to help fund the $5 million project.

Martzial estimated that should both efforts prove successful, they would address about half of the demand for low-income housing in the city.

“It will definitely put a good dent in it,” said Martzial. “The need is desperate.”