Maine
How Maine groups are working with landlords to quickly get residents housed
One promising approach to addressing homelessness in Maine, advocates say, is “rapid rehousing,” which uses several strategies, including housing navigators and financial incentives to landlords, to get people into apartments quickly.
As part of our occasional series exploring solutions to homelessness, Maine Public’s Robbie Feinberg spoke with Mid-Maine Homeless Shelter CEO Katie Spencer-White about how her team has managed to get about 30 households into new housing since last March using the approach.
White said it can be nearly impossible for a resident of Waterville to find an apartment on their own.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
Spencer-White: Today post-pandemic, our vacancy rate here locally in Waterville, where we operate, we’ve gone from probably 5% or 6%, pre-pandemic, which is a healthy vacancy rate, to sub-5%. We’re probably in the region of 2%, at this point. Which means we need to actively engage with landlords. They need to want to partner with us in order for us to find the units. We’re not going to just find them by going onto Craigslist, or seeing what listing has come out on a Facebook page, right? We really have to partner intensively with landlords and make sure that the new tenants that we’re offering to them make good business sense.
Feinberg: What tools do you have, what can you say to a landlord or what can you offer to a landlord to say, ‘Hey, rent to this person’?
We can make it make good business sense, right? So all of our tenants are going to — each of those units is going to require a Maine State Housing inspection to make sure the unit is in good condition. Sometimes that takes a little while, up to three weeks. So we find a unit, we don’t want the landlord to go without receiving any kind of payment for that unit. Oftentimes, they need that revenue coming in for themselves, because they’re running businesses. So we can put some money down to hold that unit. We can also help with minor repairs. So if it’s just a matter of a little bit of remediation, we need to put in a handrail or something like that to get it passed inspection, we can also support those efforts. So that landlords aren’t having to pay out of pocket to rent to somebody who’s going to have to go through a MaineHousing inspection, for example.
But there’s also the concerns around the relationship. And I think that’s probably one of the biggest fears, and the most important work that we do, is helping navigate that landlord-tenant relationship. We’re in it for the long haul. We might be funded to work with a tenant for six months. But if two years into that tenancy, the landlord calls up and says, ‘Hey, you know, there’s a little bit of miscommunication going on, I’m not able to talk to the tenant, I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t want to have to evict them,’ they can call us and we can step in and see if we can smooth out that relationship, find out what’s going wrong and help get it on an even keel again.
Are there examples you can think of, of how that that has worked? Where you all have been able to step in? And maybe that has kept someone housed?
I mean, we have tons of examples. Something as basic as, I remember one household was a mom, and she had two teenage sons. And the two teenage sons were going out and playing basketball late at night. And that was causing a nuisance, right? But once we were able to step in and say, ‘Hey, we’re going to need to correct this particular behavior, put some boundaries around it — it’s totally fine to play basketball, we want kids outside being healthy, but it needs to be within these parameters.’ The mom didn’t realize that it was causing an issue, once we got it figured out.
And that tenancy was moving towards an eviction, right, because it was just becoming an ongoing issue. But once we were able to communicate it and say, ‘Let’s put some boundaries on that, keep it healthy for everybody,’ it smooths everything over. And that relationship that was almost fundamentally broken, was rehabilitated, and that tenant is still housed, in an apartment, and within a community that they really like.
So when you think about what you would want to do moving forward, how much of that involves expanding a program like this, versus other solutions?
If I was queen for a day, and could direct the Legislature to fund anything, it would be to fund vouchers. We know that affordability and lack of income is really the the key barrier to a lot of folks staying in housing. Seventy percent of evictions are for nonpayment of rent. And if we can fix that program, we’ve solved that problem. We’ve solved 70% of the issues.
But I don’t think we’re going to fund vouchers universally. Certainly not the state level, not the federal level, not yet. So that being said, this is the world that we live in. We need to have these kinds of programs, so that when people find themselves in a crisis because somebody’s moved out of the household, they’ve lost income because of an illness, because they’re going on to a fixed income, we need to have programs in place that can meet them where they are and quickly get them where they need to be which is in permanent, affordable housing.
A Maine lawmaker is preparing to push for legislation that would ban almost all of the controversial automatic license plate readers popping up around the state.
Rep. David Boyer, R-Poland, said he submitted a bill title to ban both municipalities and police departments from using the readers with an exception for cameras used for toll collection. This is the first step in the legislative process. Details may be added to the bill later, and it won’t be considered at least until the Legislature reconvenes in January.
Automatic license plate readers are proliferating in Maine and across the country. Some municipalities here are using cameras by the companies Flock and Verkada. The cameras are meant to alert police departments if a vehicle connected to an active investigation passes by. Footage is sometimes shared with police across the country, raising privacy concerns.
Boyer said local officials in his district covering have the “good taste” to have avoided using license plate readers so far, but he added that his constituents are likely to encounter them in neighboring Auburn. That city, which is the main service center near Boyer’s district, recently approved funding to install Flock cameras at intersections and in neighborhoods.
He said the proposal was inspired by reader malfunctions in other states. Some people have found themselves under investigation after camera errors. But Boyer, a libertarian-leaning lawmaker, also said he was “just trying to slow down the impending surveillance state.”
It’s difficult to pinpoint how many automatic plate readers are running in Maine. DeFlock, an open-source network on which users report sightings of Flock and other cameras, lists 50 stretching from York to Bangor. The real number may be much higher. Earlier this year, Hancock County said it would install 13 Motorola license plate readers across six locations, but so far, none appear on DeFlock’s map.
Civil libertarians on both sides of the political aisle have voiced anxiety over the proliferation of AI-powered surveillance tools in Maine. The state’s chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union recently called Flock “a significant threat to our constitutional rights to privacy.” In April, the conservative Maine Wire also published an article critical of them.
When Hancock County began installing its cameras, some expressed fear they could be used for immigration enforcement despite policies that prevent data sharing with immigration officials. Similar concerns have come up in South Portland, where police recently stopped sharing footage with Flock’s national database accessible to departments across the country.
It’s not clear how the bill might affect other surveillance programs that are not specifically aimed at license plates. Bangor and surrounding towns recently faced significant backlash over their use of Placer AI, a program that uses phone data to monitor foot traffic. In some parts of the state, police are also using AI-powered cameras to generate police reports.
WASHINGTON, D.C. (WABI) – Maine veterans returned home Sunday after a weekend in Washington, D.C.
Giving local veterans and their loved ones a visit to the capital of the nation they dedicated their lives to is the aim of Honor Flight Maine.
Marking their second trip of the year, the nonprofit provided about 70 Pine Tree State veterans a free trip to Washington to visit the memorials and monuments dedicated to their service.
For many, this was this first time seeing the capital in person.
“Unreal,” “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” and “tear-dropping” were among the sentiments shared by veterans about the Honor Flight. Others remarked on the memories revived by visiting the ceremonial spaces.
“I have some friends that’s over there, so it really was nice,” said Edward Lee, a Vietnam veteran from Bangor.
Lee was able to find one friend’s name engraved on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Using graphite and a piece of paper, he made a rubbing of the name to take home.
Rose Marie Curtis, a Navy nurse who served in Vietnam, said seeing the three nurses depicted at the Vietnam Women’s Memorial sent her back in time.
“For so many years, you don’t think about something. You’re doing this and doing that and having children, whatever. But this really brings you back,” Curtis described.
Not only does the trip give veterans the opportunity to see these sites, it allows a chance to connect; with perhaps a past or present self, and with fellow veterans.
“It’s what makes Honor Flight Maine special because you’re with your own kind,” explained Charlie Paul, a Vietnam War veteran who has been involved with Honor Flight Maine for a decade. “We’re a segment of society, they remember us on Memorial Day. They remember us on Veteran’s Day. They remember us on Armed Forces Day. But then they forget about us. And so for us as an organization to take them down here and see their memorials, it just lets them know they’re that special.”
For Lincoln veteran Richard Rollins, the visit gave him “closure,” considering, “…when I got out of the service, I mean, to be honest, even in ’79, I was never thanked.”
Among former servicemembers of all ages, father-son veterans James and Michael Sherman said the trip opened up conversation, sharing stories they had never told each other about their service.
“It means the world that people care, and we shouldn’t wait a moment to tell the people that are important to us what they mean to us,” Michael Sherman remarked.
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KENNEBUNK, Maine (WGME) — A car caught on fire on the Maine turnpike Saturday.
It happened in Kennebunk in the southbound lanes of the turnpike.
A car caught on fire on the Maine turnpike Saturday. (Courtesy of Kennebunk Fire Rescue)
You can see a large cloud of black smoke coming from the scene.
Nobody was hurt.
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Firefighters were able to extinguish the flames.
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