We must do better for Maine’s homeless population | Opinion

Katie Spencer White is CEO at Mid-Maine Homeless Shelter & Services.

The 2026 annual homeless Point-in-Time count has been released in Maine. The data was collected on a single night in January as dictated by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), but it is a significant undercount of the number of people experiencing homelessness throughout a given year, which is anywhere from 2.5 to 10 times higher than the PIT count.

This undercount significantly influences public perception and policy decisions related to homelessness. The public are told the number of people experiencing homelessness in their community is much smaller than what they observe, and policy makers and funders are significantly underfunding the homeless response system.

Math matters, especially as it relates to unsheltered homelessness — the number of people left outside with nowhere to go at night. The Point-in-Time count says that in 2026, just 361 people were unsheltered in Maine. If we use a low but reasonable multiplier and calculate an actual number just 3.5 times higher than the PIT, we find that there are at least 1,625 people unsheltered in Maine.

Using the PIT report, 16% of unsheltered people were in Cumberland County (including Portland), while 25% were in Penobscot and Piscataquis counties. Kennebec County accounts for just 7%. The reason for these differences needs further research, but there are a few obvious explanations for them.

To start, there are approximately 1,100 shelter beds across Maine, including domestic violence shelters. The system is woefully underfunded to the point that we lose beds every year.

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Nor are they distributed evenly across the state. There are more shelters in Portland than anywhere else in Maine. The city of Portland has the largest shelter in the state in the Homeless Services Center. Milestone Recovery operates a shelter with medical detox, and Preble Street has three shelters in Portland. It’s clearly not enough.

Bangor has three shelters and, here, too, it’s clearly not enough. Kennebec County has two year-round shelters, and two winter warming centers, one in Augusta and one in Waterville. It’s also not enough, especially in the summer when the warming centers close.

As a result, communities struggle to respond, especially when homelessness collides with addiction and mental illness. These conditions share a complex and bidirectional relationship where each condition triggers, compounds and prolongs the other. Combined with a severely constrained rental housing market, the effect of unsheltered homelessness on individuals and communities is profound.

This leaves me with three takeaways:
1. Housing is the only solution to ending homelessness.  
2. Treatment is the solution to addiction and poor mental health.
3. Effective emergency response must do both.

For far too long, national, state and local emergency responses to homelessness have focused primarily on housing. We worked to get people into housing, but that produced lukewarm results that solved individual housing problems, but not mental health or addiction, and not community level problems that gap allows to fester. We must do both.

PIT data demonstrates that when you offer more shelter beds, people get off the street, leading to healthier, safer communities. And when you offer treatment where people are, we can save lives and heal communities.

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Case in point: this past May, MMHSS became a state-licensed Behavioral Health and Substance Use Agency, which allows us to offer onsite behavioral health and addiction
treatment to our clients and guests. In one year, we dramatically increased participation in treatment and helped people move from crisis to wellness.

We followed the data and embraced innovation. The 76% reduction in overdose reversals and far fewer mental health emergencies on our campus proves this model works.

Maine must also get much better at using data to drive change. For far too long we’ve collected data we barely use. We don’t use it to improve the quality of services, target interventions or drive innovation, all of which is critical to improving the lives of vulnerable people and improving the livability of our communities.

Unless we take data seriously, we’ll continue doing the same things with the same tepid results. We must do better — for our communities that struggle to respond, and for Mainers who face another night outside.

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