The Howard Johnson hotel in South Portland will continue to be a temporary home for asylum seekers and other unhoused people for another year.
The City Council Tuesday, 6-1, agreed to let the state provide transitional housing at the Main Street hotel for the 367 people, including 165 children, now living in six hotels throughout the city. The state will also pay Catholic Charities to provide support services at the hotel.
MaineHousing will reimburse South Portland up to $200,000 for its expenses associated with the shelter, with a cap of $65,000 for the city’s general assistance spending. It also will pay a maximum of $135,000 to the city for ambulance calls to Howard Johnson and to hire a health specialist, if necessary.
“This is very similar to what MaineHousing is already doing for the city of Portland, having rented out a hotel in Saco,” City Manager Scott Morelli said at Tuesday’s meeting.
While the arrangement is designed to be funded entirely by MaineHousing, the state’s spending caps still leave South Portland at risk of paying any excess costs. Morelli said he believes the city has done its best to mitigate its risk.
Councilor Richard Matthews voted against the contract with the state, saying he is concerned about the financial risk to the city. He also said he was angry that the state has taken so long to come to the city’s aid, comparing it to a pinch-hitter in the ninth inning of a baseball game. During a vote on hotel shelter operations in April, he said he would “not be part of any extension after June 30” of this year.
“I, too, am a little angry that it took this long for the state to step in,” Councilor Linda Cohen said. “South Portland has just been bleeding, for the past couple of years, taxpayer money.”
Cohen eventually voted in favor of the plan, noting her grandparents’ and father’s experience as immigrants and that her brother lived unhoused in Portland, she said.
“Thank God the city of Portland safety net grabbed him and put him in the Barron Center where he could die comfortably,” Cohen said of her brother. “If it hadn’t been for the city of Portland stepping in with those social services and helping him he would have died out in the woods – and for that, I’m very grateful.”
Councilor Misha Pride said the agreement provides a solution that is imperfect and only temporary but is positive in that it allows people to stay in the community.
“These families are not cattle to be easily moved from municipality to municipality,” Pride said. “Some of these people have got roots here, many of the schoolchildren have friends here.”
“This is all about human rights and how we are really taking care of the people in our community,” said Councilor Deqa Dhalac. “We can say ‘Oh, we want to be a welcoming community,’ but if we do not put that in action, that is nothing, truthfully.”
South Portland hotels began sheltering unhoused people, mostly from Maine, at the onset of the pandemic in 2020, when space at Portland homeless shelters was restricted because of social distancing requirements. In 2021, an influx of asylum-seeking families added to the need for sheltering and services, and more hotels in the city began operating as shelters.
At one point, over 1,000 people were being sheltered in South Portland hotels, according to the city, with 800 in residence as of January of this year.
Over the past three years, a soaring number of 911 calls from the hotel shelters has taxed the city’s emergency services. The City Council placed restrictions on many of the hotels, such as requiring on-site security and other services.
The city also has repeatedly extended the deadlines for the hotels to cease shelter operations to prevent many of those staying there from being left without shelter during the affordable housing crisis. Tuesday’s agreement with the state comes nearly three months after the city set June 30 for five hotels to transfer their remaining shelter residents to Howard Johnson and cease shelter operations.
Morelli said it could be another month to complete the transfer, and it will be up to the council to decide whether to pursue fines and penalties on the hotels for failing to meet this week’s deadline.
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