unhoused – COMMUNIST PARTY OF MAINE

_{^{Photo by Getty}}

_{Reposted from the Maine Beacon}

Late last week, 58 Maine businesses including bars and restaurants, a dental practice, a solar energy company, providers of childcare, counseling, and behavioral home health services, and a car mechanic, sent a letter to Gov. Janet Mills and the members of the legislature’s Joint Select Committee on Housing asking them to prioritize rent relief in the legislature and the budget this year.

The call came as a bill to create a statewide rent relief program similar to the one called for in the business owners’ letter had its work session on Friday in that committee. The bill was tabled but not before several Republican members of the Housing Committee voiced concerns about placing burdens on landlords.

Rep. Cheryl Golek (D-Harpswell) introduced LD 1710, “An Act to Establish the Maine Rental Assistance and Guarantee Program and Amend the Laws Regarding Tenants and the Municipal General Assistance Program,” last year. Housing advocates and many renters backed the bill, while landlords and their allies fiercely opposed it, and the bill was put on hold until this year. Landlords repeated many of the same arguments in Friday’s session.

The signers of the business letter said high rents hurt their ability to “attract and retain workers, put pressure on local governments and tax bases…and hurt customer spending as family budgets are squeezed.”

But business owners’ calls for rent relief also emphasized that it’s the right thing to do: In a statement, signer Phil Coupe, Employee-Owner of ReVision energy, said rent relief “helps maintain housing for families who are living on the edge of barely being able to afford their apartment and homelessness.”

LD 1710 would help Mainers who make around 30% of the annual median income or less (for a family of three, that’s around $28,000 a year) if they do not get Section 8 federal rent assistance. LD 1710 is the only bill before the legislature this session that would provide sustained help for these renters with very low incomes, allowing them to afford new or existing affordable housing that would otherwise be out of reach, and would reduce evictions and homelessness. The majority of individuals who access rental assistance need help for an average of three years or less.

The letter highlights gaps in Maine’s housing policies that rent relief could fill with targeted and fast support. “The investments your administration has made to support building affordable housing and the unhoused are well placed, but we can see that Maine continues to have huge unmet housing needs. According to a Maine Center for Economic Policy analysis, nearly one-in-three Maine workers who rent a home or apartment pays more than one-third of their income toward housing.”

_{Dan Neumann studied journalism at Colorado State University before beginning his career as a community newspaper reporter in Denver. He reported on the Global North’s interventions in Africa, including documentaries on climate change, international asylum policy and U.S. militarization on the continent before returning to his home state of Illinois to teach community journalism on Chicago’s West Side. He now lives in Portland. Dan can be reached at dan@mainebeacon.com.}

_{^{Protesters block a sweep of a large tent encampment on Portland’s waterfront. | Courtesy of Jodi Hayashida}}

_{Reposted from the Maine Beacon}

Dozens of protesters, among them faith leaders and people who have experienced homelessness, formed a human chain to stop police from clearing a large encampment near the Casco Bay Bridge on Tuesday morning.

They said city officials are criminalizing homelessness by enforcing a city-wide camping ban.

“No one wants to be living outside in Portland in the winter,” said Jess Falero, the lead organizer for Stop the Sweeps and a survivor of chronic homelessness in Maine.

“We have an opportunity here to do things differently and address the real harm perpetuated through the cycles of being unhoused and the violent policies we practice against unhoused humans in our country,” they said. “We have an opportunity to lead the way.”

On Tuesday morning, protesters led by Falero parked their cars on the street in a close formation to prevent municipal vehicles from being able to enter the encampment of nearly 70 tents — one-third of them unoccupied, according to City of Portland spokesperson Jessica Grondin. Others stood shoulder to shoulder and held signs reading “displacement = death” and “give them a chance.”

***_{^{Fourteen-year-old Kaden Adams holds a sign at the protest on Tuesday. | Courtesy of Jodi Hayashida}}***

“I’ve been unhoused a few times in my life,” said Kaden Adams, a 14-year-old who joined the attempt to block municipal workers from entering the encampment. “It wasn’t a fun experience, but I was lucky enough to be able to crash on friends’ couches. Other people weren’t as lucky as I was. I personally didn’t go through what the unhoused people in Portland are going through right now, with the sweeps, but I can empathize. That is why I am risking arrest and protesting.”

Protesters said no outreach workers to support the residents were on the scene when police arrived and began dispersing people, despite Portland Mayor Mark Dion’s assurances that they would be.

After being postponed last month, Dion and city officials moved forward with the sweep on Tuesday, just ten days after the Portland City Council passed a resolution condemning the action by a 7-2 vote.

City officials said there are enough beds at the city’s Riverside homeless shelter on the western edge of the city to accommodate those displaced by the sweep.

But advocates said that many unhoused residents are unable to access the shelter for a variety of reasons. That could be because they need disability accommodations, or because of their gender identity, or because they need the assistance of a service animal, or because the shelter’s strict hours prevent them from getting to and from work shifts.

“Portland cannot police and punish its way out of a housing crisis,” said ACLU of Maine legal fellow Heather Zimmerman. “These sweeps are cruel and a waste of taxpayer dollars — and a complete policy failure.”

“After the city and state conducted repeated sweeps over the past several months, hundreds of people remain left outdoors and forced to survive on the streets,” she said. “City officials and police have only forced people to move from one place to another while destroying their property and putting them in harm’s way.”

Kaden Adams’ mother Dawn Neptune Adams said she had visited the encampment many times over the last three months and built a relationships with some of its residents.

“I feel like my son and I can empathize with people who are unhoused here in these encampments because we have a lived experience of being unhoused several times throughout his life,” she said.

Those experiences have made her committed to defending unhoused people.

“Empathy means seeing through the eyes of another person, hearing through the ears of another person and feeling with the heart of another person,” she said.

_{Dan Neumann}_{studied journalism at Colorado State University before beginning his career as a community newspaper reporter in Denver. He reported on the Global North’s interventions in Africa, including documentaries on climate change, international asylum policy and U.S. militarization on the continent before returning to his home state of Illinois to teach community journalism on Chicago’s West Side. He now lives in Portland. Dan can be reached at dan(at)mainebeacon.com.}