PORTLAND, Maine (AP) - Plans for a 24-hour homeless shelter in Maine’s largest city that can serve 40 people are facing opposition from its neighbors.
The Preble Street organization applied Aug. 28 for a permit to convert its resource center in downtown Portland into a shelter, the Portland Press Herald reported.
“For years, shelters crammed in as many people as possible trying their best to keep people out of the cold and out of the elements. We can’t do that anymore,” Mark Swann, executive director of Preble Street, told the newspaper.
The organization’s resource center, which provided food and access to restrooms and shower facilities, has been closed for safety reasons since the coronavirus outbreak hit hard in March.
The city’s planning board must approve the application to outfit the resource center as a shelter. It has said it will require Preble Street to guarantee that there will be no line outside for beds and that it will meet the needs of residents onsite, the newspaper reported.
Sarah Michniewicz, president of the Bayside Neighborhood Association, wants to see the city build a shelter elsewhere in the city and told the newspaper there is no trust remaining between the neighborhood and the organization.
Starting in July, some 2,000 homeless people and advocates camped outside of City Hall in Portland for two weeks, demanding that the city provide access to restrooms, freeze evictions and legalize outdoor camping, among other demands.
Currently, many homeless people in Portland are camping in a park, which police attempt to clear each night when the parks close, the newspaper reported.
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