The city of Portland is encouraging area residents with spare rooms or guest apartments to consider renting to asylum seekers, as an Aug. 16 deadline to close a temporary shelter at the Expo looms.
The city is currently housing 77 asylum seeker families at the Expo — a total of about 250 people.
Most are from Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and other countries in West and Central Africa.
Victoria Morales, with the Quality Housing Coalition, says the goal is to pair some of those families with Portland area residents who have unused space in their homes.
"They may have an extra room, they may have an extra two rooms in their house, they may have a granny flat or an accessory dwelling unit," she said. "And they may not have thought that they really could be a part of the solution to the housing crisis that we're seeking."
Morales said homeowners would be asked to sign a one-year lease. For asylum seekers still waiting for their work permits, rent would be paid through municipal general assistance programs.
The home share campaign is an expansion of an existing program, also run by the Quality Housing Coalition, that pairs low-income tenants, mostly asylum seekers, with landlords willing to rent to them, and provides support and financial guarantees.
Morales said those same backstops would be offered to individual property owners who rent to asylum seekers.
"And so we offer a financial guarantee for any back rent, if rent isn't able to be paid by a subsidy or a system. We offer damages payments if there's any damage to the unit. But really what we're there for is accountability. And to build relationships between that home share provider, [or] that landlord partner, and that tenant," she said.
Morales said potential tenants and homeowners would be vetted before any placement is made, adding that since the campaign went public on Monday, she’s already heard from ten property owners interested in hosting.
Speaking outside city hall on Tuesday, Portland mayor Kate Snyder conveyed a sense of urgency, as the city prepares to close the Expo shelter in less than a month.
"That looming deadline at the Expo has had everybody scrambling to try to figure out additional emergency shelter options and housing options," she said.
Portland's Health and Human Services Director Kristin Dow said this program gives the city an additional tool as it scrambles to find placements for Expo residents in homes or other shelters. She said the city is also moving some people into a motel in Saco currently serving as a transitional housing facility, as rooms there open up.
"We are also backfilling our Saco hotel that we have contracted with the state and our family shelter. So there's a variety of methods, this is one of them," she said.
Portland has also encouraged Gov. Janet Mills to support a proposal to house asylum seekers on the campus of Unity Environmental University, but the fate of that plan remains uncertain as MaineHousing says there’s no readily available funding source.
The city set up a similar home share program in 2019, the last time the Expo building was used as an emergency shelter for asylum seekers. Homeowners were asked to take in asylum seekers on a voluntary basis for three months. That year, the city was able to find housing placements for 41 families.
