(gentle music) - [Interviewer] How long have you been living here?

- [Interviewee] Since May.

- [Interviewer] What brought you here?

- Lack of employment, COVID, life.

- [Interviewer] Yeah.

How's this place to live?

Are you okay here?

- No, it's freezing.

And apparently they're kicking us out on December 15th, and I'd just like to know how people can kick the homeless out of being homeless.

Like, where is everybody supposed to go?

We don't live out here by choice.

- [Interviewer] Have you had a job?

- Yeah, I've done a lot of jobs.

I actually was a preschool teacher for a while, and this is not where I thought I would be at 30.

Like, you go to college and you think, "Okay, I'm doing everything right, I'm doing everything everyone said I'm supposed to do."

You go to college, you get a degree, you get a job, you don't expect life to throw you curveballs like that, and then you end up in places like this.

And a lot of people are very judgemental.

People will stand out, you know, with signs trying to get help and stuff, and people will scream at them to get jobs.

And the thing is, like, they're trying.

Again, a lot of people, you know, they don't have the background or the education to get jobs like that.

And like even with me, I've applied to I don't know how many jobs, and I haven't gotten one yet, and I have two degrees.

We all used to help each other out and stuff.

But it's gotten to the point now where everybody's getting desperate.

(gentle music continues) - We're helping as much as we can bring food to the people that are living out in this awful cold.

- It's like the cycle of homelessness, substance use addiction, mental illness.

Once you get in that cycle, you have no identification, you have no birth certificates, you have no telephone number, you have no phone- - No address.

- No food, no address.

It's very, very complicated.

And these people here are human beings just like us.

And if we can just do anything to help, like give a little bit of food or they desperately need water, how do they dig themselves out of where they are?

- What these people are missing and lacking is hope.

(bright music) There's a couple of deaf people up there, and the woman- - Two deaf people.

- crying her eyes out because she was so cold and there was nothing that they could do.

The big reason that I'm here is that my daughter is an addict, and I can't help her.

Why?

Because every time I try to see her, the outcome is not good.

I can help these folks, so that's what I do on Tuesdays.

- These people break my heart.

My son is also has substance use addiction, and I've been trying to help him for many.

I'm sorry.

(gentle music) I've been trying to help him for many years, and he's walked these very streets, homeless and cold.

I'm sorry, I don't wanna do this.

I'm sorry.

Sorry.

- It's okay.

- So no.

So I'm here to try to just give a little help that I can.

That's all.

Because these are people just like you and me.

- I was in an abusive relationship.

I was assaulted by a partner, and my landlord said, because I was assaulted, they didn't feel safe and asked me to leave, leaving us with no place to go.

We went to my mom's house, my daughter lived in the house, I lived in their camper.

We had a portable heater, and it would run 24/7 and would not get up over 40 degrees.

- You know, the YWCA closed, and they ran a shelter for women and for girls.

Maine Adoption Placement Services ran a shelter for pregnant and parenting teens.

That's closed.

Ingraham used to run a shelter.

That's closed.

Youth Alternatives ran a shelter.

That's gone.

Catholic Charities got out of the shelter business in Portland.

Salvation Army got out of the shelter business in Portland.

I mean, these are facts.

These are important organizations.

You know, well-respected organizations that all said, "Shelter work, we can't do that.

It's too expensive.

There's no funding.

The politics are awful.

The neighborhood issues are awful.

The trauma for staff is terrible.

The turnover is extraordinary."

So this doing shelter work, it's kind of the third rail.

(traffic humming) - Years and years ago, I ran away from home, so that's how I've ended up homeless.

13 years old, you know, I ran away from home, and I didn't want to live up underneath my father's rules.

And one of his rules was, you can't obey his rules?

Find you somewhere to go.

So I started living out in the woods in tents and stuff until I got a job, which my grandmother, she come got me, well then she got me a paper route.

Some of my friends who were making four, $500 a day, here I am working $4 a week and only making $100, you know?

So the money looked enticing, it looked real good.

But the downfall of that is I got popped by the cops, and I ended up going to prison for possession, cocaine, delivering sales of it, you know?

I did 24 years, 14 days, seven hours, and 18 minutes.

(staff chattering) Possession of a firearm.

I knew that I didn't deserve 30 years just for possession of a firearm.

I didn't banish, I didn't strike, I didn't discharge, I didn't threaten anybody with it.

It was in a Duffy bag, zipped up in the back of my truck.

So while I was in prison, I read a book by Malcolm X, and I said that if he could do it, I could do it.

And I thank God for my grandma because she used to write me all the time.

She used to tell me, she said, "You could either let that prison system taint you, or you could take it, and you could use it for knowledge and come out a better man."

- I like to be a advocate for the Native American people.

In my prayer time, I asked God.

I said, "Well, what I'm gonna do?"

You know, I was kind of like in a jam about this and that and being homeless.

So he told me in my spirit, he said, "You're going to places where you're gonna try to help people, and somebody needs some help."

I know that they're down and out 'cause I know how it feels.

I want to see the Native people have something in their life worth living for and be proud of what they are.

They don't have to live in any kind of misery or hopelessness.

These people here has been a big help to me.

The staff, the residents, you know?

I get along with them, they get along with me, and so I'm thankful for that.

So it's been very difficult for me.

But, you know, life's gotta go on, and I'm trying to make the best of it.

- Now since I'm homeless, I'm living in the Bangor Homeless Shelter.

I have a case manager, and she the one who called me in the office because she said that I fit the criteria and she would like to see me get an apartment.

- And then after the briefing, then we'll just, we're gonna go over like what's next?

What are we gonna do next?

The next steps to getting you into your apartment, okay?

- Hi, James, how are you?

- Not bad this morning.

- [Caller] It's saying that when we check to see if you're eligible for the program, part of what we look at.

- Most of the resources that we depend on to work to end homelessness are federally sourced.

Biggest among those are through HUD.

And biggest within HUD is our rental subsidies, like Section 8 or tenant-based rental assistance.

- [Caller] Is determined on the household income and household size.

- Homelessness is premised on the idea that we have a lack of affordable housing, rental subsidies more than anything level the playing field, so everyone can afford housing.

Two and a half years ago, we started collecting information about who was touching the hospital, who was touching the jail on a monthly basis.

And so we've been looking at that data, and we found that the same population is up to 29 times more likely to be in the hospital and up to 45 times more likely to be in jail when unhoused than when housed.

- [Caller] Maine Housing helps you pay your rent, the family will pay 30% of their adjusted gross monthly income.

- The contrast is dramatic.

When people get into housing, they stop ricocheting through all of our most expensive emergency systems.

When somebody stays in the hospital for a night, you know that's $1,000.

You know, they touch the emergency room, that's $1,000.

When police, fire, and rescue come and pick somebody up, that's thousands of dollars.

If somebody stays an extended period of time at a hospital, psychiatric facility is $160,000 a year.

All that changes when we have people out of that stress and into a stable home, and people are feeling good about themselves.

They're not tangling up our police and rescue services.

They're no longer obviously at homeless shelters, and they're not outdoors.

They're in apartments, and they don't go to the hospital anymore.

They don't go to the emergency room.

- Oh, the viewing, yeah?

- Yes.

- That's the one that we had available through Community Housing of Maine.

- Yes.

Big tub.

Not no shower.

A bathtub.

(laughs) - Who doesn't like cupcakes?

I like to, you know, to be funny, make people laugh, communicate with people, make them feel important, and listen to them, you know?

Make sure that they're heard.

I think a lot of times people just wanna be heard, right?

Somebody to talk to.

I'm 13 years in recovery, I was in active use probably about six years.

It came to an end when I had no place to live, no family that would help me anymore.

They were basically enabling me at that time, so I was out of options.

From there, I went to a methadone clinic.

I was there two years.

I successfully came off of it.

I went to Beal College, I got my associate's degree in addiction counseling.

And then the pilot program Diversion came into play, and I applied for that position, and I got it.

And I've been doing it for about a year and a half now, and I love it.

Am I the best at it right now?

Absolutely not.

It's growing, I'm learning, and we're just figuring it out as we go.

But I love my job.

I love being able to help individuals where I once was, turning something negative in my life into something positive.

And I think it's really good to, like, have somebody to advocate for these individuals who are experiencing substance use disorder.

There's so much stigma surrounding that.

- Yeah, she's not a bad girl.

She's a pain in the *** sometimes.

But she's a good girl.

- He put a rose on my car for me as a thank you for the help.

Did you say I'm a pain in the ....?

(bulldozer beeping) - The sweeps make no sense at all.

And I say that knowing that these encampments are awful places.

They're not safe, they're public health disasters.

We get that.

But the solution is not to just tear 'em down and bulldoze 'em and assume everything's gonna be okay then.

It puts people in distress and more physical harm if you sweep encampments than if you keep them.

- [Interviewer] Where are people gonna go from here today?

- Into another encampment.

I'm not saying where, because that's, I'm telling you, I'd be telling you where they're going so that these **** can go get them.

No.

- That's someone's stuff that they're taking away.

These are people's homes.

They have to take what they can to carry to go somewhere else.

They have to start all over again.

Finding tents, finding places, you know, to sleep, finding food, finding clothing.

- I remember when we didn't have shelters all over this country or food pantries every 200 feet.

It's a new phenomena.

I have a big fear that we're gonna move next into a acceptance of encampments and we're gonna go so far as to have sanctioned encampments.

But we're also, I think, we're settling when we do that.

Like, okay, this is the best we can do.

- This year was the first time in the Point in Time Count for the whole country that we had a higher number of people who were unsheltered than sheltered.

That's shocking.

That's shocking.

That's something that we've never crossed that line before.

And it is growing.

We're seeing outdoor outside homelessness in Maine like we've never seen it before.

It is miserable being outside.

It is miserable being homeless.

And we are all bettered by making sure that everybody's included in society.

- Especially during the pandemic, we saw an increasing number of individuals who were unsheltered, and there aren't enough resources being deployed in the state to address the need.

10 to 12 outreach workers is not nearly enough.

And the fact that how long it takes from the point you make that first contact to build a rapport, to build a relationship, to build trust, to get the documents in place, to get an understanding of the barriers of the struggles the individual may be facing, and how best to connect them.

There has to be urgency in the work that you do.

- We didn't just arrive at this crisis yesterday.

We have had an issue with affordable housing stock in this state, dating back to the mid-'70s.

But if you're only able to put online less than 1000 units a year and your need is upwards of 20,000, we must take dramatic steps.

But it became very, very, very clear to us as we began the 131st state legislature that not only did we have to address the housing crisis, but we had to prioritize it in all of our work.

(gentle music) - What we're seeing now, single mothers are homeless, fleeing domestic violence.

Single adult men are homeless.

And I've seen pilots, I've seen schoolteachers, opera singers homeless, entire households are homeless.

People who are employed are homeless.

The reality is homelessness is not a condition or a circumstance that anybody is immune to.

- [Staff Member] Yeah, I'm just, it has been so nonstop since I got in here this morning.

I'm trying to think about what I need to catch you up on.

(gentle music) - [Tracey] Shelter staff.

Jane, hi, how are you?

- Good.

- Good to see you.

How are you?

- Good.

- Good.

- Good.

- Awesome.

- I have the voucher, So we're just looking for that apartment.

- [Staff member] That's right, that's right.

- We're looking into the Bangor and Brewer area for apartments, 'cause my senior's job is in Bangor.

- [Staff Member] And that way we'll also have ongoing navigation with Jane for a year after she gets into housing, right?

- So I keep everything my suitcase and backpacks now.

- You're sending the energy that way.

- She's ready to go.

- Yes, I'm ready to go.

- All right.

- Thanks, Jane.

Good to see you.

- Thank you.

- When I was a child, my father starved me.

He was an alcoholic, and Pastor and Mrs.

Schmidt of the 70th Advent church came in, and they would buy me groceries.

They got me a little food cupboard and with a padlock and would buy me groceries once a week.

Diana Schmidt was a teacher.

And Pastor Schmidt, they were just like my own parents.

I have children, Jean Strout and Jamie Wells, and I'm trying to find them.

And my husband, we're trying to find.

It's Ferris George Lewis from Manchester, New Hampshire.

We have not found anybody.

It's due to I had a long-term memory loss and my memory wiped out.

Had no memory and ended up in Canada for 25 years.

And I wanted to come home all these years just to find my family.

I haven't seen my family in 25 years.

If you had your own place for 20 years and all of a sudden not have a place to live and none of your friends and family, and I'm all alone.

I'm in this search of trying to desperately find my family.

(gentle music) - [Cullen] The idea of people who are falling on hard times getting to connect with members of their community and be engaged and develop those kind of relationships that help people to wellness.

You can't go wrong with that.

- Another thing, Cullen, that's really cool is across the street, Freshwater Stone, they're a second-chance employer.

- [Cullen] I love that.

- And will often reach out to us to see if there's anyone who's having a hard time finding work.

- Good.

- And they'll often call.

- That is great.

- Most of the people that are there are trying to get help.

They're trying to find a home.

They're trying to find a job.

We want the community to be strong, you know, and we want to be known as a company that, you know, is good for their employees and good for the area.

You know, you're helping the person, but you're also helping yourself, and you're helping the community.

- Yeah, a couple of our guys from years and years ago are still over there and making good money, and it's really cool.

Anyone's homeless.

Poverty exists prior to our affordable housing crisis.

So the missing link now is housing and affordability.

I was homeless most of my childhood.

I've also been homeless as an adult, and I was living in a homeless shelter when my mother died.

And so if you can imagine being alone in that experience, and then I was in the shelter when my sister died.

And so just outta terror that there's nothing else but the grace of the people that are working with you that can keep you safe and alive.

The isolation of being unhoused.

And you can't really pick yourself up from that situation without help.

That feeling of hopelessness, I can, I really identify.

- People who are going to die in their 50s, or 40s, or 30s because of the stress of long-term homelessness.

If they go past one year in housing and they start to get treatment for all those things that they've ignored for years, we watch people actually stay well for much longer.

And I've seen people who I knew when they were chronically homeless.

One individual who was homeless for 34 years, he looked younger- - Once he was housed?

- in 2014, when he was housed, than he did in 1997, when he was unhoused.

I mean younger, well, healthier.

I'm like, you know, a double take.

Is this really, you know, you look great.

(gentle music) - We worked in Guatemala, and her life is being threatened 'cause she was a police officer there.

And this cartel has gotten out of prison, and they're threatening her life.

So she fled to the United States, got to the border of Texas in September, just a few weeks ago, and they deported her immediately to Mexico.

So she crossed again.

And she's just been in my office with her child.

And I quote an attorney while she was in here, and the attorney said, "There's no hope."

So there's a terror there that, I don't know.

This is a hard one.

Yeah, it's hard.

We live in such an unjust system.

- One week from today, there will be a new shelter in Portland strictly for asylum seekers who are on their own.

- That population of New Mainers currently takes up more than half the space at the city's new homeless shelter on Riverside Drive.

The city is hopeful that more beds overall will help both asylum seekers and unhoused people.

- So yeah, the rationale for having a separate facility is that asylum seekers need different services than other homeless folks that are already here.

And if there's funding available for an asylum seeker facility, then you can go build one.

And if there isn't, then you can't.

- Many from senate president to the governor, bipartisan support, we have invested and committed over $100 million into housing.

The immediate impact sends such strong messages to developers who now have confidence that they can pursue projects because they know that there'll be state funding.

- We're lucky enough to host a number of asylum seekers in our town, and they've been tremendous contributing members of our community, great additions to our school system.

So I think it's terrific.

- We have in Maine, for example, asylum seekers who aren't allowed to work.

I mean, that's just crazy.

We've got this huge workforce shortage.

We've got people who wanna work and often are well trained, and the law doesn't allow them to work.

Senator Collins and I have a bipartisan bill to lower the waiting period for a work permit from 180 days to 30 days.

Again, just to say, look, this doesn't make sense.

So you're forcing people onto public support, taking up beds in homeless shelters when they don't wanna be there and they don't need to be there if they're allowed to go to work and make money and take care of their families and pay rent.

- If they can enter the workforce and get into the housing market, free up a bed for someone else, then we can actually create more capacity in the shelters that we do have in this housing crunch.

- The Homeless Services Center was needed because our shelter downtown was not an adequate shelter.

Because it was just a former three-story apartment building that was converted to a shelter, it didn't have food service kitchen, so folks had to leave to get meals three times a day.

And this design really also took into account COVID.

And so the four-foot-high walls are designed to give a bit of privacy but also space for social distancing.

Other design features of the building include the 3,000-square-foot clinic that GPH runs, that has four exam rooms and two dental chairs.

And that clinic is open to not only guests of the shelter but also the community.

- We've wanted to lower barriers there so more people who are in encampments can feel comfortable there, can feel safe there, will be feel welcome there.

And so when this new shelter opens for asylum seekers, there'll be dozens, dozens, and dozens of beds.

Hopefully more than a hundred beds suddenly freed up.

(gentle music) - We confront NIMBYism on every single project we do.

Someone will show up at the planning board saying it's the worst thing ever.

Homeless shelters obviously face additional scrutiny and additional negative comments because of the perceived nature of what goes on there.

Ultimately, it's a skill to figure it out.

And it's worthwhile to get these projects done because when you've accommodated as much as you can, when you've taken all the good suggestions and made the project as good as you can, it's a fight worth having.

- We had a zoning board of appeals meeting in Rockport this past week, and there's a lot of fear, and it's unfounded.

And their representative essentially evaluated the fact that we were going to be partnering with Maine Behavioral Health on bringing services into this housing project and connected the word behavioral to schizophrenia.

And that this was going to be some kind of mental health facility.

And that landed in the paper.

- I do not believe, maybe people here know differently, but I don't think there's been a clear statement of who will be in this project, what sort of services will be provided, whether or not schizophrenics, for example, are going to be in the project or not.

- There were other comments from some of the neighbors around how they will no longer be able to let their grandchildren play outside anymore and they were going to be locking their houses.

And what's really interesting to me is that that is NIMBYism, that is judgment in advance of really getting to know a human being.

Most of our clients are hardworking or wanna get back to having a job with a little extra education or help.

I think we need to do a lot of education around the reality of hardworking human beings who are making minimum wage.

- People have a right to be concerned about their neighborhood.

I've lived for, I don't know, 40 years on the same street that has a Section 8, has a house with Section 8, let's see, 50 yards away just down the street, catty-cornered from our house.

- And how's that been?

- It's no big deal.

I mean, it's never occurred to me that this was a problem.

- And we owe it to our community to provide a space that's full of dignity and respect for everyone.

That's our ultimate goal is to get folks on a path to self-sufficiency.

Whatever that self-sufficiency looks like.

- The biggest problem we have in housing right now is that there's not enough of it.

And the one law that Congress can't repeal is the law of supply and demand.

If the supply is short and the demand is high, the price is gonna go up.

And that's what's happened.

So fundamentally, we need to also be talking about how to expand the supply.

And that's what this bill is about.

- The nature of affordable housing is it's, in economic terms, it's a market failure.

And what that means in economic terms is the market won't provide it, so there have to be all these programs and incentives to try to provide it, and none of them are nearly big enough.

So it's a societal thing.

And the Affordable Housing Credit Improvement Act is gonna be a boon to those of us who are in the business doing these projects.

But at the same time, it's not, you know, it's not enough to fix the inequity in our society that we're trying to fight.

- If you build units that will house extremely low-income people, the Maine State Housing Authority has these tax credits it can allocate to your project, which you can then sell, which becomes part of the capital of the project.

In other words, it lowers the amount of equity that you have to put in, and therefore makes it a more attractive financial deal.

- Maine has all sorts of revenue right now that they're putting into affordable housing.

The governor, Governor Mills, has been great about directing a ton of resources.

Federal resources have been coming in, and state resources toward affordable housing.

But the development capacity of the state, developers like me, bankers, contractors, architects, loan officers, everybody's redlining.

Everyone's trying to develop as fast as they can, as much as they can, because of all the demand for the housing.

And at a certain point, you can only stuff so much money in the top of the funnel and spit out housing units the other end so fast.

And to the extent that that is not increasing the velocity of housing, all it's doing is inflating the prices and creating a bubble.

- The rents from a low-income person can't possibly pay the cost of building an apartment or a house.

We have to talk about housing costs, the cost of construction, the cost of building a house, and then talk about how do we make housing affordable.

- My answer is sometimes you have to do something that's a little less profitable and maybe a little harder, but it's really better for all of us.

(gentle music) - What does it cost for one person to be on the streets?

Paramedics, police, courts, emergency rooms.

And that added up to 20,000 for Utah, 36,000 per person on the streets per year in Los Angeles.

So Utah went to developers, and they said, "What would it cost us to house them?

Use the Housing First model, no questions asked.

Can you do wraparound service?"

That works, by the way.

And they did it.

They did it.

And for five years, they reduced homelessness by 93%.

They were on track to be the first state in the country where everyone has a pillow to lay their head on.

New leadership came in and said, "We're not gonna coddle them anymore.

They need to be self-sufficient."

Took away the Housing First model, and now Utah is spending millions because people are on the streets.

- The concept of Housing First is that everyone does well with housing and that no one does well without housing.

And it doesn't make sense for anyone to have to be entirely well or, you know, healed of all their issues before we'd start thinking about getting into housing.

When we move people right into housing, what happens is that we subtract all that stress, and we watch people get well right in front of us just from having housing.

Now that doesn't do it alone.

You still need support services.

Absolutely.

But the support services go a lot further when somebody is clear, and stable, and safe, and in the privacy and the dignity of their own home.

(gentle music) - Look at the parking barn for you, but I can definitely get you a whole bunch of stuff.

- Thank you for opening that for her.

- Yeah.

- What size shoe are you?

- Usually between like six and a half and nine and a half.

My ankles, I had them broken at 12, and I didn't get to go to the hospital for it, mainly because we didn't have enough money to pay the bill.

There was a time where I made myself go homeless, like on purpose.

I went out, and I didn't wanna, didn't wanna go home 'cause they didn't really want me there in the first place.

So I was probably like 15, 16 when that happened.

I would have little to no food.

You would go a few days where you're just really hungry until finally you're just not hungry anymore.

And sometimes, sometimes you'd get to a point of desperation where you're about to just cry.

- So your friends were from here.

- [Shawn] I'd have to ask people for help.

Sometimes they'd help, and sometimes they wouldn't.

- Well, I lived in Bangor.

- I've been here for about two months.

It's been okay.

I've been trying my best to find a place, fill out paperwork.

Sometimes all you can do is wait.

So I lost my only male best friend that I've ever had due to an extensive period of being exposed to drugs over his life.

You know, it devastated me, because I never really wanted to be into that scene, and I just didn't realize how big of a problem it was for him.

I mean, I've heard everything's good in moderation, but I don't really think that's the case for everything.

(gentle music) - Okay, I wanna welcome back Gordon Smith, director of Opioid Response.

Very thankful for you being here.

If there's a positive comment I could make, it is that based upon our own data, the percentage of people experiencing homelessness that fatally overdose has not increased as a percentage of our overall overdoses.

The problem is that the number of overdose fatalities has increased substantially.

The federal government has put out that information nationally that they think that fatal overdoses are plateauing because the increases are coming down.

I'm not gonna say that because there're still increases, and people aren't stupid, in my opinion.

They're gonna realize that if we have a 15% increase from 2021, that's 90 people, additional people who died.

Katie.

- There's some very brass-tacks things that we can do to start to arrest the number of people who are going to die.

Everybody's CPR trained.

Every institution or agency has an AED machine.

Every institution has access to Narcan, widely available.

And we should be training not only our staff but also the other people in our community.

- I really do think there are dynamics in place right now with this governor and the speaker and others that we've never had.

And there's an opportunity to do more than I think we've ever been able to do.

- Six months from now, we are going to see changes and support from the legislature in terms of real resources, so we're able to end homelessness.

So I remain very optimistic that we'll get there.

- You know, having personal experience around the challenges of staying in a home, personally knowing how difficult it is sometimes to afford healthcare and go to the doctor, personally knowing and having family members experience food insecurity.

Trying to figure out if you're paying the utility bill, you know, or your rent.

Even with a number of services available and benefits through a safety net system, all of those things can fail to address the cycle of homelessness if you do not connect and first have housing.

There are three Housing First models in Portland, but we've also made room for small scattered sites throughout the state of Maine.

- Mid-Maine Homeless Shelter, Chris speaking.

We had a bed available.

Are you able to come in?

Like a young man this morning came here, utilized our warming center last night, but he had family in Arkansas that was willing to have him come back and stay with them and help him get on his feet.

So we were able to purchase a bus ticket and have him go all the way to Arkansas today.

- Let's see it.

- So with the warming center, folks, when they walk in off the street, we're not asking for their mental health history.

We're really asking, you know, are you safe to be in community?

Come on in.

We have a growing crisis across the state.

It used to be restricted to Portland and Bangor.

We call them long-term stayers, people who are in shelter for longer than 180 days.

Our average length of stay is currently just over 70 days for a lot of folks to get rehoused.

All shelters throughout the state operate on a prioritization systems.

We prioritize veterans, people escaping domestic violence, for example.

We also prioritize youth and families with children.

- You haven't received the Social Security card yet for- - No, I have not.

- Okay.

- I've been waiting.

- If we don't get it by the end of next week, we should call over to Social Security and have them look into it.

- Okay.

- 'Cause you do need to get her hooked up on services, so you don't have any trouble with the medical bills or anything.

- Yeah.

- The Youth Empowerment Supports, it's permanent supportive housing, which means that every one of our tenants, our young people, has a voucher, and the supports come in the form of their caseworker.

- [Cathy] So how's the apartment hunt going?

- Not so good.

- The rent's 1,000.

They want you to make over $3,000 a month.

- Yeah.

- You wouldn't have a voucher probably if you were making over $3,000 a month.

- Yeah, so we'll find places that are cheap, but they don't accept vouchers.

- The market is just- - Terrible.

- It is.

It's really, it's sad right now what's going on.

- We've seen the rate of rehousing folks drop off precipitously.

We used to rehouse 30 households a month.

Now we're lucky if we rehouse two households a month.

- [Interviewer] Why?

- There's just not enough affordable housing.

The housing market was hot, and a lot of those properties were purchased by corporate landlords who just raise the rents.

So we've got this perfect storm of housing has disappeared or become more expensive, and more people are unstable in their housing.

What's great about our program is that they can keep Cathy, our case manager, she can follow them out into the community and continue to case manage and help them stay stable.

Nobody should get left behind, right?

And there are people who have major mental illness and have some really extreme behaviors, and they still deserve housing.

Returning citizens, people who are living incarceration, they've paid their debt to society, but they have no place to go to once they're released from prison.

And people with addiction, it's an illness.

And we know that when you have a roof over your head, you're much more capable of dealing with those issues than if you're unsheltered.

Low barrier is the gold standard.

We have animal guests.

We've had dogs, cats, Guinea pigs.

- These are her emotional support animals.

- You wanna hold one?

- Yes.

- They help with my mental health, with my depression.

I used to self-harm.

And with them, they prevent that.

- Folks need those animals for a whole host of therapeutic reasons.

And if they have a disability and they have a clinician sign off, then we are required to try to accommodate that guest.

Providing low-barrier shelter, our basic philosophy is we have one rule, one core rule for everybody, whether you're an animal or a human guest in our shelter.

And that's we want everybody to be safe in a congregate community.

Rapid rehousing is another program.

It's been running in other parts of the state.

Their experience of homelessness is triggered by some sort of structural issue, right?

The landlord has sold, and the new owner wants vacant possession.

We can work with that household, right?

They've got income, they've got jobs, they have got everything in place, they just haven't been able to find a unit.

And what rapid rehousing does is offer some landlord incentives.

Landlord incentives can include everything from enhanced security deposits, help with getting units up to code.

We know from the data that an experience of homelessness is what is considered an ACE, an adverse childhood experience.

It's a traumatic destabilizing experience.

And the likelihood of a child who's experienced homelessness, repeating that experience as an adult is significantly higher.

So when we can divert a household with children from coming into shelter, we're having a two-generation impact.

ACEs can add up, right?

So an experience of homelessness combined with domestic violence, or a parent with poor health, or a history of incarceration, are much more likely to rely on systems as they get older rather than self-sufficiency.

So it is really critical that we keep kids out of homeless shelters.

(gentle music) - What we're hearing more about, which I'm grateful for, is positive childhood experiences.

And in many cases, it's the lack of positive childhood experiences that are as detrimental, if not more than adverse childhood.

So creating positive opportunities so that youth have positive experiences in their life to draw from, that builds resilience, that builds hope.

The vast majority of youth that come here, I think they come because they feel like it's a welcoming place where they can be themselves, where they know we're gonna be excited to see them.

A lot of the youth, especially the younger ones, aren't necessarily homeless, but they have challenging home lives.

In many cases, they're being raised by a single parent or a single grandmother.

They have families who are experiencing incarceration and, in some cases, addiction.

Youth walk in oftentimes where they are not having a good day, where they're escalated, where they're starting conflicts.

And that's part of the work is to try to create a place where it gets back to all of us kind of being guided by what's respectful, what's kind.

You know, a lot of our youth experience tremendous depression and anxiety and, in some cases, suicidal ideation.

And, you know, it's an increasing amount of sadness and despair.

So having those connections, having a sense of belonging is all part of, part of the experience here at The Landing Place.

You know, if we're treating young people with respect and providing for basic needs, more often than not, we're met with respect back.

So when somebody's not able to live up to that basic level expectation, then we work with that.

You know, we address the behavior.

We don't shut down the individual.

We say, "You have to look at this behavior."

I'm glad you're here at The Landing Place.

And Melissa, I think I talked to Melissa the other day, so did she tell you a little bit about all the stuff that we have here?

- A little bit.

- Okay, cool.

Well, yeah, if you have any questions, just ask, all right?

Do you wanna help us make some food and set up?

- Sure.

- Where'd you put the other box of brownies?

- [Joseph] Oh, over here.

I'll show you.

- I'm either blind or you're just moving them.

- No, no, I might have put it back.

Come on in.

(gentle music continues) - Well, this young man is something.

He's definitely one of our all-star rockstar regulars at the drop-in.

And he, you know, he just has one of these electric personalities that, you know, when he walks in the door, you always know that he's in the room, and he's had his fair share of trouble at school and with peer relationships.

And every now and then I'll bring out the guitars and we'll play some music.

And his first song lyric that he ever came up with, "I Ain't Got No Self-Control."

So this tells you a little bit about, and we wrote a blues song about it.

♪ Working on my self-control ♪ Working on my self-control ♪ And working on it I just go with it, and we just, you know, yell out the lyrics, and every now and then he just, it's like the best thing in the world for him.

I'm so proud of him.

He's on his way.

Why do I do this work?

(gentle music) (Joseph exhales deeply) If we could help young people not only survive their, their teenage years, but to actually have hope for their adult years.

And we can do it as a team and as a community.

I can't think of a better way to live and to spend time.

- All right, Jane.

This is the date that you signed your lease and got your keys from your landlord.

- Yes.

- And that you're on Shelter Plus.

- Right.

- Do you get food stamps?

- Yes.

- And MaineCare?

- Mm-hmm.

- Okay.

And we had that you were in a shelter, correct?

- Yes.

- All right.

So you were literally homeless.

- They said that they had one coming up and it was mine.

- Oh wow.

- And we wasn't getting anywhere.

And I told Andrew, and Andrew took it over, and- - Well, that was awesome.

- Got me right in.

He's straightened it all out.

Yes, it's good to help a caseworker.

- [Sarah] It definitely is.

It's one of the traumas that people experience when they lose their housing.

They have to surrender all of their possessions.

You can get an apartment, but when you move in, you don't have any furniture, you don't have any dishes, you don't have any sheets, you don't have a bed.

So all of those things very often have to be figured out.

- Oh, good to finally have a home.

- It's gonna be cozy, but I think we can make it work.

We got the Christmas tree, now we just need the bed frame and the ironing.

- There we go.

- You want the bed up against this window here?

- I don't know.

Yes.

To go out and get some more sheets tomorrow.

- All right, talk tomorrow about getting the microwave.

- Yes.

- Sounds good.

And you're staying here tonight, right?

- Yes.

- Okay.

- All right.

- I have a lot of work to do.

- Congratulations.

- Thank you.

Where's my hug?

(Andrew laughs) I got the best case worker in the world.

(Andrew laughs) - See ya.

- So Amelia just closed on her house Friday.

- We're excited to finally start planting the seeds and the herbs for my herbal apothecary business that I can actually get back working into and just making our life as calm and peaceful as possible.

And a lot of it was the support of Knox County Homeless Coalition.

I've been employed for the last 10 years, just proves that having multiple college degrees, working full-time, raising a child, not on drugs, and still ended up in this situation that we can't possibly do without our community.

We just got dealt a raw hand.

And even though I work every day of the week, still ended up on the streets.

- Just as we invented homelessness in the 1980s by making a decision to allow our government to cut its resources, its safety net, the fabric of care for people who were really struggling.

And that allowed us to have homelessness.

I can tell you that as we start to normalize stepping over people on the streets and having people clog our sidewalks with makeshift encampments to try to survive out in the cold, especially in colder climates where that doesn't work and it leads to death, we are really taking a step further away from a civilized society.

How long altogether do you think that you were living outdoors?

- Seven to eight years.

It was scary for me.

I always had to look over my shoulder and, you know, make sure no one's following me or taking my stuff.

- At that point, I was so disillusioned with everything that had been happening in my life that I just gave up.

And when I first got to that shelter, it was the scariest day of my life.

And so years of being outside in the winter, sleeping in bus depots in the rainy weather, and so on and so forth, sleeping in Lincoln Park down there many times.

- You know, we're not on the street anymore and we have each other and we got a home.

- I feel so good about being here and being able to have a normal life again.

- To be able to have a roof over your head is a really good thing.

Nobody really likes being out in the rain at night.

And if you're homeless, you only really have what you're wearing and maybe a few extra pairs, so it can be really hard.

Second and final set of the four chairs.

Honestly, I'm really excited.

I can't wait.

Right this way.

Self-doubt really gets to you 'cause when you think everything is bad and you don't feel like you can even trust yourself, you perpetuate your own circumstance.

So it led me to believe that I wasn't good enough, that people wouldn't believe me even if I was telling the truth.

H.O.M.E.

has given me a lot of opportunities for self-growth, being angry at myself and at life for dealing me the hand that I was dealt, and just kind of started trying to work with it.

And I would recognize the times that I did try, and I did recognize that I had these failures, these moments where I needed to do better.

And so I kind of worked on that.

- Part of being the navigator is also advocating for them, you know, letting them know that regardless of whether they have any rental history or any references, letting them know how well they did in the shelter, how good they kept up their rooms and cleaned, and how, you know, responsible they've shown us.

So it's basically just advocating for them and letting them know that we believe that they'd be a good fit for it.

Right now, where he doesn't have a job, Maine State Housing is covering everything.

And then once he gets a job, he will have to report it to us, and we report it to Maine State Housing.

And then what they do is they calculate how much he would make for a year, and then it's 30% of his income, and that would be his part that he would have to pay.

- I've been in contact with one of my old managers, and they told me that the position at McDonald's right now that I had before I came to the homeless shelter is open.

A new job will give you a new opportunity to learn where I'm appreciated, helps with how you feel about yourself.

It's kind of like a helping hand pushing you forward into doing something better.

- Someone that's making it believed in me.

Someone taught me I wasn't stupid, someone didn't judge me.

They understood that the things I was doing in the war zone of poverty were what I needed to be doing to survive and rebuilding my hope and rebuilding my confidence.

- Welcome to Chipotle.

What can I do for you today?

- [Interviewer] How about a carne asada?

- Some people fell on hard times and couldn't pay their rent for one month and they get evicted.

A lot of people will say, "Well, they got no excuse.

They got, you know, why you can't pay your rent?"

If I'm making $12 an hour, I'm working just to pay rent.

- There's not a single county in the United States where a person making the minimum wage can afford to rent a two-bedroom apartment.

Think of that for a minute.

When you have to pay more than 50% of your income for housing, that doesn't leave much for everything else.

- I didn't understand it when people say, "Well, I have to make a choice.

To buy my insulin or to, you know, pay my rent."

But then I start seeing peoples who, you know, were swelling up, their legs and stuff, because they couldn't afford the insulin.

I looked at it like, "Wow, y'all should give, you know, homeless people a chance."

Because the wintertime was so harsh and I was giving people blankets outta the shelter.

I'd go in there and get a blanket and bring it back out there and give it to 'em because I've seen the black toes or the frostbitten fingers, And I'd be like, "Oh my God."

Just to see how desensitized everybody was to, you know, to the homeless.

And, like I said, I was too because I was like, "Well, that's what they choose.

That's what they wanted, you know?"

but that's incorrect.

I did not choose it.

And it happened to me.

And I know I have never went six months without a job in my whole life.

And I'm 33, I mean.

(laughs) - [Interviewer] That's funny, you don't look it.

(James laughs) (interviewer laughs) 63.

Today my birthday, guys, by the way.

- Is it?

- It is?

- Yeah.

- Happy birthday.

- May 10th, May 10th.

- Okay, we'll buy you dinner.

- Yeah, they had big cake in there at Chipotle for me.

I turned 63 today.

But I do.

I feel like I'm 33 years old again, because to have hope and to know that people's out there that really care about yourself, it give you, you know, super strength then.

You know, where you could get up every morning like me, and I'm like, "Oh, uh-uh."

I don't care if my leg hurting me, my toes hurting me, or my back hurt.

Chipotle is my number one, you know, because I know this right here is my livelihood now.

And this right here, we're going to keep me afloat.

- This is not a poor country.

We're spending billions on the symptoms of poverty.

We could invest in kids, we could invest in the adults, and save money.

It's way more expensive to pay for the symptoms of poverty.

- I think the average person needs to get involved and needs to speak up about all this and needs to get, and needs to get informed and not just get angry that there are encampments but get angry that we're in a society that that's okay.

We may not see everything we wanna see in our lifetime, but we've got a responsibility to keep pushing, pushing, pushing.

Hope springs eternal.

- I grew up at a time where neighbors looked after neighbors, and it was not at all odd for me to walk to school, to walk home, and along that route.

And people would look out the window and look for me.

If I ever needed anything along that route, I could stop anywhere.

I believe we gotta get back to that time where we are not afraid of one another.

We have to get back to being true neighbors to one another.

- There's nothing that matches making a difference for your fellow human beings.

Nothing.

No piece of jewelry, no trip, no car.

Let me use what's in my hands, my wisdom, my expertise to see if I can't leave you in a better place.

- Oh, good to finally have a home.

♪ In these times ♪ We must mindful of the gift ♪ In these time ♪ Use our hands and hearts ♪ To lift the fallen spirits in this land ♪ ♪ Growing gardens in the sand ♪ Reaching out a helping hand ♪ In these times