Warming shelters take in hundreds as temperatures drop in southern Maine

Billy Norton, 38, center right, waits to enter Seeds of Hope Neighborhood Center in Biddeford as it opens Monday night. Norton has been staying at the warming center nightly since early December and said it has been noticeably busier the past three weeks. Twice he has been turned away because the shelter was at capacity. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

Most nights that the emergency overnight warming shelter at the First Parish Church in Portland is open, 45 or 50 people show up.

But on the coldest and stormiest days – the ones when it’s especially dangerous to be outdoors – the number swells, reaching or surpassing the 75-person capacity. One night, 85 people came. No one was turned away.

“There was no place for them to go,” said Ben Skillings, executive director of Greater Portland Peer Services, which runs the warming shelter.

As winter stretches on and funding dwindles, the church may no longer to be an option for homeless people in search of a warm place. It opens only when the daily average temperature is below 20 or a storm drops more than 10 inches of snow. The cost to run it has so far been covered by a $112,000 grant from MaineHousing, but Skillings said he only has enough funding left for five or six more nights – and there’s a lot of winter left to go.

Skillings said their doors would likely open again on Tuesday. Sunday night’s snowfall was not enough to trigger its opening. Temperatures were expected to drop into the teens early Tuesday and remain cold this week.

The situation is not as dire at other overnight warming centers in southern Maine, but the need for more space and money is a common theme.

In October, MaineHousing awarded $1.4 million to 10 organizations across the state to open overnight warming shelters during the coldest part of the year. The funding was part of last year’s state budget package. The shelter’s capacity ranges from 75 people in Portland to 15 in Presque Isle. Most can take 20 to 25.

In Sanford, an expanded warming center opened in December and has been nearly full since. In Lewiston, there’s a space for young adults, but nothing like it for people 25 and older. And in Biddeford, the only warming center has been at capacity all winter.

Billy Norton, 38, who has been staying at the Seeds of Hope Neighborhood Center in Biddeford nightly since early December, said it has been noticeably busier the past three weeks. Twice he has been turned away because the shelter was at capacity.

“It’s home,” Norton said while waiting in line to get in the shelter Monday night. “Without them we’d be out here.”

The warming centers, equipped with comfortable chairs but no beds, aren’t meant to replace traditional residential shelters, but fill a critical gap in resources, said Mary Connolly, executive director of The Gathering Place in Brunswick, which opened an overnight warming center in mid-December.

“It’s really important to have these warming centers in Maine, where the weather can be unpredictable and can be life-threatening,” Connolly said. “Maine winters are very difficult for people who are experiencing homelessness.”

‘NO ONE SHOULD BE OUTSIDE’

The Gathering Place received $96,000 from MaineHousing to open from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. every day through April. It’s the only option of its kind in the Midcoast and has a capacity of 25 to 30, depending on staffing. So far, an average of 15 to 20 people come in at some point during the night – usually to warm up, charge phones and get supplies – and seven to 11 people stay the whole night, Connolly said.

She said the nonprofit first opened a warming center after the 2019 death of Russell Williams, a frequent client who was found dead in a sleeping bag after spending a cold night outside near the train tracks. Until this year, the center was open on an as-needed basis and was only used by about 10 people.

The Gathering Place hasn’t reached capacity yet, but if it does, there are plans to use other community spaces to get people out of the cold, Connolly said.

In Sanford, York County Shelter Programs opened a new warming center last month in the former Lafayette School. The number of homeless people in the city has grown rapidly in recent years, surpassing 150 in November.

“We’d seen the number of folks unhoused and in encampments grow wildly over the last year. We knew it was our responsibility to do something to keep folks safe over the winter. No one should be outside in this weather,” said Megan Gean-Gendron, executive director of York County Shelter Programs, which also has a 37-bed emergency shelter in Alfred and a 16-bed family shelter in central York County.

The center, which is open 24 hours a day, can serve up to 44 people at a time. When it first opened, it took a little while to build up trust with people living in homeless encampments, she said. But as people realized it was a safe place to go to rest, get warm, have hot meals and connect with help finding housing, more people began to show up, Gean-Gendron said.

To avoid turning anyone away, staff try to get people into shelter beds in Alfred as soon as they become available to free up space at the warming center, she said.

“Our concern is their safety over the winter and looking at what their next steps are,” she said. “We felt it was our responsibility to ensure that people do not die outside over another Maine winter.”

A BIG NEED

New Beginnings in Lewiston has operated an emergency youth shelter for more than 40 years, but this year it expanded its program to include an emergency warming shelter for people 18 to 24. There are no similar warming shelters for adults in Lewiston.

The center, which can accommodate 24 people, was given nearly $244,000 from MaineHousing to open for 17 weeks from December to March.

New Beginnings Executive Director Chris Bicknell said the need for a shelter was evident. Before applying for the grant, shelter staff knew of eight or nine young adults who were camping or staying outside, but suspected there were many more in unsafe situations who could benefit from a safe space.

Most nights, 11 to 13 people come to the warming center, set up in a gymnasium on College Street. Each person gets a camp chair to sleep in, a tote for their belongings and two meals.

Bicknell said the center has worked well so far, but more needs to be done to keep adults older than 24 safe during winter.

“There is a big need for overnight shelter for folks in this community,” he said.

Skillings, who runs the warming shelter in Portland, said there don’t seem to be any other options when it reaches capacity. First Parish was the only church on the peninsula willing to open its doors and space is limited.

“We have a small basement room, two bathrooms and we are supposed to keep 70 to 80 of the most vulnerable people in the city,” he said. “This facility is nowhere near what we would want. It is definitely not meeting the need.”

It’s not clear what the city will do if Skillings is unable to keep the warming shelter open. Portland’s Homeless Services Center, which currently has a capacity of 258 people, had 36 open beds as of Monday morning – 24 for men and 12 for women.

A city spokesperson did not answer questions Monday afternoon about possible next steps.

In addition to more supported housing, Skillings said the city needs a day center that can be turned into an emergency shelter as needed. But he knows that’s a difficult and expensive proposition.

“There’s a thousand hurdles to get there, but the fact that people are dying outside all the time should get people thinking differently,” he said.

Staff Photographer Ben McCanna contributed to this report from Biddeford.