LEWISTON — Since the Store Next Door started operating out of the Governor Longley School four years ago, the relationship between the nonprofit and the school administration has been complicated. It got to a point this past year that the nonprofit decided to find a new location.

It negotiated a lease, including rent, with Lewiston Housing earlier this week for space at 97 Blake St. Move in date is July 1.

“… We’ve worked within (Lewiston Public Schools) to ensure that students experiencing housing instability could access the basic needs, stability and advocacy required for academic success,” Tom Giberti, president of the Store Next Door board, said in a press release Friday. “While we’re changing locations, our commitment to the students remains stronger than ever.”

The new location should help it eventually expand its reach to help students facing housing insecurities beyond just Lewiston and Auburn.

The Store next Door helps students facing housing hardships with clothing, toiletries, personal hygiene supplies, food and school items at no cost to them. It also provides them with a place to take a shower and do laundry, to connect them with counseling and case management, and to connect them to housing resources, among other services.

Kids can become displaced from their homes by fires, evictions, adverse home situations or a number of other scenarios they are sometimes caught up in leading to an insecure housing situation, according to Store Next Door board vice chair Ron Potvin.

The Store Next Door also helps immigrant children settling into the area who might be living in a hotel room.

When it started serving Auburn students directly through the school department’s McKinney Vento liaison this past school year, Potvin thought it was a straightforward and simple process — one he wanted to duplicate with the Lewiston School Department, he said.

But to do that, the board felt it needed to move its operations out of the Longley School, he said. There are what Potvin believes to be unnecessary barriers in getting items to children in need that made the process less straightforward in Lewiston Public Schools compared to Auburn.

The nonprofit is independent of the school department but there were many misconceptions about exactly how much the school supported the nonprofit, bolstered by the fact that its executive director, Jamie Cauoette, also works for the school department. Eventually it got to a point in which the operation hours were very limited.

“With a barrage of budget cuts over the years, we basically went down to one person from six,” he said.

Cauoette will stay on as executive director while also continuing to work in the school department. Her roles in the school department and with the nonprofit are separate, according to Potvin.

Lewiston Public Schools Superintendent Jake Langlais said the space currently occupied by the Store Next Door at Longley will continue to be a student resource center. The school department works with many groups to help connect students facing housing instability to resources and uses funding from its budget and grants to do so.

The school department will continue to work with Store Next Door to help bring resources to students who need it, Langlais said.

With expanded hours and a plan to offer more services, Potvin hopes to reach beyond the nearly 900 students it already serves between Lewiston and Auburn through the new location, he said.

Store Next Door hopes to eventually expand services to the Turner, Poland, Sabattus and Lisbon school districts — using the same method in place at the Auburn School Department, he said. It will continue serving Lewiston students with help from Lewiston School Administration staff.

When the doors open at the new location, which is expected Aug. 1, counseling and tutoring services will also be available there to kids — along with some transitional workforce programs available to the older kids as they get ready to leave high school, according to Potvin.

The new location is an exciting new chapter for the nonprofit, he said. Adding “we’re focusing on being a resource center and a community center.”

The nonprofit is asking the public for help with the move and funding. For more information, visit the donations page on its website, storenextdoor.org, or contact program director Cauoette at 207-376-8001 or Giberti at 207-576-2765.