The Augusta Planning Board has unanimously approved a proposal for a low barrier services center at 12 Spruce St. to provide services for the city's homeless, including a place to shower and get help finding work or housing for homeless people to provide services year-round. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal
AUGUSTA -- For Christine DeRosier, the approval of a plan to open a year-round services center that provides a variety of help for the city's homeless residents is good news.
DeRosier, who lives in her vehicle in Augusta, appeared before the Augusta Planning Board Tuesday as it was considering the United Community Living Center's proposal to open a new daytime low-barrier service center to offer a place where homeless people could take a shower, escape the heat or the cold and store their stuff without fear of it being stolen.
She held back tears as she described how the organizers, involved in ongoing efforts to help homeless people, have helped her with her PTSD and connected her to resources.
"If it wasn't for them I probably wouldn't be here sitting in front of you," DeRosier said. "This is a resource the community needs. Because unlike me, there are people out there who don't even have a vehicle to live in. This is a thing this community needs desperately."
Several homeless people also spoke in favor of the proposal, including several who appeared via video recorded earlier at the Augusta Overnight Emergency Warming Center because if they'd come to the Augusta Planning Board meeting, they would have lost their beds at the warming center, which is generally filled to capacity.
Following about an hour of debate, the planning board's approval was unanimous for the center, which will also provide a place get and send mail, and help people connect with services for physical and mental health, or help with substance use if they wish.
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Board members, other city leaders, advocates, service providers and people who are homeless praised the center as a much-needed way to fill a glaring gap in the community for somewhere people without anywhere else to go to have a safe place to go during the day, and a place they can build trust and make connections with service providers to potentially better their lives.
Betty St. Hilaire, president and founder of the United Community Living Center, said the center will offer much-needed services to homeless people during the day, 365 days a year, seven days a week.
Earlier this year, center officials unsuccessfully sought to open a 40-bed homeless shelter and community center on Green Street just west of city's downtown that the Planning Board rejected after opposition from neighbors and downtown business owners.
The new facility will fill a gap, especially in the cold winter months when homeless people staying at the Augusta Overnight Warming Center have to leave that facility at South Parish Congregational Church at 7 a.m. each day. Some have been going to places like the Lithgow Library, the LINC Center, local businesses, or a substance use recovery center -- spaces not designed to provide shelter to homeless people to get warm during the day.
"The center is designed to be a place where unhoused and fragilely housed can come get help, they can get referrals to services, they can get help filling out applications, get something to eat, help with substance use disorder with getting treatment, they can connect to resources like case management," St. Hilaire said at the board meeting, where the proposal was approved as a conditional use.
"Or they can just come in and get warm," she said. "The work we're designed to do is be that space where they can just come and be or, if they choose, they can take advantage of the services and resources we provide."
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She estimated between 30 and 50 people would likely use the center.
It's about a mile from the Augusta Overnight Emergency Warming Center, and about a half-mile from the city's downtown Water Street area.
Only one person spoke in opposition, a neighbor worried that such a facility would draw potentially violent criminals and drug users to the neighborhood.
"We're going to have people, at different points of the day, leaving the center, wandering around the neighborhood, using drugs, maybe looking for something to steal, breaking into places, so I have a lot of worry about that," Middle Street resident Julie Hopkins said.
"(Organizers) have talked about safety within the center but I think there is definitely some reason to be concerned with what can happen within the east side in a three- or four-block area there. This is an area that, yes, there's the Ballard Center and there are these kinds of social support services there, but there are also a lot of apartment buildings, some single family homes, and I think we really need to keep in mind those of us who do live in this area, our lives are as valuable as somebody who lives in a single-family home in a nice traditional neighborhood."
St. Hilaire said they want the center's neighbors to know organizers are very concerned about their safety. She said there will be a hotline neighbors can call to report any problems in the neighborhood to center officials who would seek to address any problems immediately.
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If people using the center violate its rules or policies, she said, they will not be welcome there and could be banned for a day, a week or more, or forever. Staff will be highly trained, she added, including in de-escalation techniques, mental health, and substance use disorders.
United Community Living Center officials plan to buy the building, and St. Hilaire said the center could open within the next few months, possibly at first on weekends, when she said the need for such a facility is greatest.
The center will occupy about one-fourth of the building. The rest would be leased out, including space already occupied by other entities. That rental income is expected to pay the mortgage on the property, with other funding sources, including fundraising and grants, to pay for programming and staff.
"It's the right time, right location, and to me this is clearly the right collaborative effort, the right group to make this work and I support it," Alison Nichols, longtime board member, said.
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