Homeless and asylum-seeker crises are hurting Portland and Maine

By Matthew Gagnon

Portland is in rough shape.

The city has, for some time now, been dealing with a number of different problems, all of them interrelated. There is an ongoing housing crisis, created by slow, bureaucratic and restrictive permitting, the prohibitive cost to build from “inclusionary zoning” regulations, and the worsening housing supply problem due in part to rent control. There is also an increasing sense of lawlessness, as violent crime is noticeably on the rise in the city, as is the rate of drug use and overdoses. These problems, though, seem minor compared to the humanitarian disaster that is growing in the city.

Portland opened a new and long-awaited homeless service center earlier this year, and it was filled to capacity on the very first day it was open. Other options for housing the homeless are also overflowing and well past capacity, leading to a massive growth of homeless encampments throughout the city. One such “tent city” on Marginal Way behind Trader Joe’s grew so large and so dangerous that it was deemed “unsafe” by the city, leading them to evict the homeless and break up the encampment. This did nothing but spread the problem across many areas of the city.

Years ago, it was fashionable for some on the left to look at the rise of many of these problems, including drug use and homelessness, and blame the cold, black-hearted policies of President Ronald Reagan. Yet here we are with Democrats in charge at the White House, here in Maine, and of course in Portland, and these problems are perhaps worse than they’ve ever been. This is despite the fact that all levels of government involved have been spending eye-popping amounts of money, and have spared little expense attempting to combat these problems. 

The current homeless crisis in Portland has been exacerbated by the recent influx of thousands of asylum-seeking individuals into the city, adding to the immediate need for shelter space. The strain on the system became so bad that Portland was forced this April, in an act of desperation, to house 300 asylees in the Portland Expo. The living conditions within the Expo became a point of contention, with occupants actively protesting their treatment.

Now the city is forced to deal with a new crisis of the moment, as lease requirements for the Expo building force the closure of that “shelter.” The city was unable to find housing options for most of the people there, forcing them to come up with a new plan to house roughly 200 of them in area hotels in Freeport and Lewiston.

All of this comes at great financial cost to the taxpayers of Portland, and Maine. The hotel scheme will be paid for through the General Assistance program, costing Portland roughly $500,000 according to city spokesperson Jessica Grondin, while the state is on the hook for about $1.7 million. 

It is hardly a surprise that Portland has eaten up the lion’s share of General Assistance dollars spent in the state over the past several years. Since 2019, the city has been responsible for 72.8 percent of all General Assistance spending in the state. 

Specific to the taxpayer dollars being spent on asylees, it is important to acknowledge that while the approval process is enormously complex, less than half of claims are approved. According to federal statistics, the “grant rate” for the asylum-seeking population in Maine from the Democratic Republic of Congo averages 42 percent and 44 percent for those from Angola. This means a lot of taxpayer dollars will be spent on asylum seekers that will not ultimately be granted asylum. 

But financial cost is not the biggest cost we should consider. There is a larger humanitarian cost to everyone involved, from Portland residents and business owners, to the native homeless population that is being failed, to the foreign migrants that are seeking a better life in this country, and in Maine. The policy failure we are witnessing, driven by a toxic soup of incompetence at every level of government, is bad for each and every person and group involved. They’re all hurt, and no one is served.

And yet the federal government goes right on ignoring the backward rules and broken management of the asylum program. The state government continues to invite and encourage mass migration into the state, without any kind of infrastructure to handle it or a plan to deal with the social and economic problems that may result. The city government keeps on living crisis to crisis, putting out one fire while three more start up. 

Until they become serious about dealing with incentives and rationally dealing with these problems in the long-term, those fires will only get worse.

Gagnon of Yarmouth is the chief executive officer of the Maine Policy Institute, a free market policy think tank based in Portland. A Hampden native, he previously served as a senior strategist for the Republican Governors Association in Washington, D.C.