Disclaimer: The views I express here are my own and should NOT be construed as speaking for the City of Bangor or the City Council of Bangor.
Normally I like to provide a detailed breakdown of our workshops, but Friday’s discussion regarding the railroad encampment near Washington St. really boiled down to a few essential points.
The Decision
The December 19th closure date has been paused. A majority of Council present agreed that date was not feasible, and a new target date will be discussed and selected later.
The Consensus on Resources
There is a general agreement among Council and staff that we currently lack enough housing or appropriate shelter options to safely and easily close the camp. For example, we learned that six of the current residents have housing vouchers but are stuck waiting because there are simply no apartments available to rent. Others are in the queue for a voucher, and others just need to be connected with to sign paperwork to start the process. The residents at the railroad track encampment are working with the system.
The Core Dilemma
The conversation ultimately came down to balancing two difficult realities:
- The Safety Risk: Our Police and Fire Chiefs presented valid concerns about the dangers of living near active train traffic and the difficulty first responders face when trying to reach people in that location during medical emergencies.
- The Certainty of Harm: However, I argued that we must weigh those potential risks against the certainty of suffering that would be caused by closing the camp in the middle of winter without stable alternatives for the people living there.
Everyone is taking the time to evaluate options—including potentially moving residents to safer City-owned land away from the tracks—to ensure we move forward responsibly.
Here is the revised paragraph incorporating your specific framing.
Why I Supported the Pause
My decision to support pausing the closure came down to a simple reality: closing an encampment without sufficient stable alternatives—whether that is housing or adequate shelter beds—is a losing proposition for everyone involved.
From a humanitarian perspective, displacing people into the winter cold when they have nowhere else to go is unacceptable. We currently have residents at the encampment who are holding housing vouchers. They have done the hard work to qualify for help, but they are stuck waiting because the apartments simply do not exist yet. Scattering these individuals now would sever their connections to case workers and set them back right as they are approaching the finish line.
But this isn’t just a moral issue; it is a fiscal one. Displacing people without resolving their homelessness is vastly more expensive for the taxpayer than stabilizing them. When we scatter people from a known location into the woods or onto private property, we lose the ability to manage the situation effectively. We increase the frequency of emergency calls, police interventions, and cleanup efforts across the entire city. We trade a managed situation for unmanaged chaos, and the taxpayers foot the bill for that instability.
This is a rare instance where the morals and the financials align perfectly. If the heartstrings don’t get you, the purse strings should. By taking the time to find a solution that actually stabilizes people rather than just moving them along, we can do right by our unhoused neighbors and save tax dollars in the process.
Why wouldn’t I take that option?
Safe Outdoor Spaces
You’ve probably heard a lot of talk about a “sanctioned encampment.” The name for what I’ve been proposing is called a “Safe Outdoor Space”. There are a number of successful implementations of it, here’s just a few:
This video gives an excellent overview of what a Safe Outdoor Space looks like:
Any Safe Outdoor Space is only going to be as good as the planning that goes into it. And that planning must include the people who will be living there. Successful models gain buy-in from residents because they foster a sense of ownership. From “me” to “we”. We all help with trash cleanup. We all help with snow removal. We all have a say in the rules that govern us. We all have a say in how our neighborhood functions. They’ve already have community. We’d be offering the tools to help them make it safer and more stable.
How is this cheaper than the cycle of sweeping unsanctioned encampments?
It is easy to assume that simply telling people to “move along” is the free option. It isn’t. In reality, the cycle of sweeping and scattering is the most expensive way to manage homelessness because it is a bill we pay forever without ever fixing the problem.
The Hidden Cost of Chaos: Every time the City conducts a sweep without a destination, we are burning tax dollars on police details, fire department responses, public works crews, and biohazard cleanup teams. Not only that, we’re scrapping the progress that outreach workers and case workers have made with the individuals we’re sweeping. Progress you paid for with your taxes. We aren’t solving the issue; we are simply paying thousands and thousands of dollars to move it a few blocks away. And a month later, we pay that bill again. It is a recurring subscription fee for failure.
Efficiency vs. The Shuffle: From an operational standpoint, the “scatter effect” is a nightmare for efficiency. When we disperse people into the woods or hidden corners of the city, our social workers and case managers have to spend their valuable time searching for their clients rather than helping them fill out housing paperwork. This delays housing placement, keeps people homeless longer, and keeps the cost to the taxpayer high.
Investing in an Exit Strategy: A Safe Outdoor Space changes the math. By stabilizing people in one managed location, we centralize services. Case managers know exactly where to find their clients. Medical teams can provide preventative care on-site, reducing the six-figure emergency room bills that often fall on the public tab.
Most importantly, it works. As I mentioned in our meetings on this topic, the Safe Outdoor Space model in Missoula, Montana saw a 50% positive exit rate to housing. That means half the people in that space stopped being homeless and left the system entirely.
The Bottom Line: We can keep spending tax dollars to chase the problem around the city, or we can invest those same dollars in a system that actually solves it. I choose the solution.
