When 22-year-old Madalena Makana arrived in Maine last February, she said she was pregnant and alone with nowhere to go.
"It was really cold," she said, in Portuguese, "I was shivering with so much cold."
Makana said she had planned to stay with someone she knew in Portland, but by the time she arrived, there was no room for her.
Instead, she said she slept at a church, and bounced around for months between churches and the homes of other parishioners.
Makana is from Luanda, the capitol city of Angola. She said she fled the country after receiving threats related to her job as a poll worker during elections. First, she flew to Brazil, then to Nicaragua, and then said she travelled by bus to reach the U.S. southern border.
In Maine, she was eventually placed in a hotel as her due date approached.
But that stay was temporary. And once it ended, she said she once again had nowhere to go – this time, with a newborn baby. In June, through an immigration lawyer, Makana got in touch with a Portland-based nonprofit In Her Presence.
Mary Faulkner remembers receiving that call.
"She had an infant baby in a car seat and she didn't have anywhere to live," Faulkner remembered.
By then, around 1,600 asylum seekers had also arrived in Portland since the beginning of the year. Most were from Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Faulkner said that not only pushed shelters to capacity but maxed out informal hosting networks within immigrant communities.
"There's just not enough beds, couches, floor space available for everyone," she said.
Some pregnant asylum seekers were falling through the cracks, with serious health repercussions.
"Late term miscarriages, as well as, you know, deliveries that were not in the hospital," said Melissa Skahan, a vice president at Mercy Hospital in Portland. She said even some immigrant women who did receive prenatal care and who gave birth at the hospital were discharged with their infants to hotel rooms or emergency shelters.
"Congregate living shelter environments," Skahan said, "that is not the best option," for new mothers and infants.
Earlier this year, Mercy Hospital partnered with In Her Presence to try to create a better option. They scrambled to convert the Frances Warde house, a former home for elderly nuns, which had been sitting empty, into transitional housing.
The home opened in June, and soon reached capacity of 15 women and their children, including 11 infants.
Claudette Ndayininahaze, executive director of In Her Presence, said residents can stay for about a year. They receive English classes, parenting education, help navigating the medical system, and other support services.
Ndayininahaze, said she wants the program – which is funded by the state and private philanthropies – to serve as a model that can be replicated.
"To show the state, at the state level, that they can learn from our initiative," she said.
Ndayininahaze said there’s still an unmet need for this kind of supportive transitional housing for mothers and babies. Her organization has had to turn away several immigrant mothers after the house reached capacity.
Madalena Makana, the new mother from Angola, has lived here since June.
"Becoming a mother for the first time, even more so as a single mother," she said, cradling her fussing baby, "has been a really, really hard experience."
But, she said, it's also been really beautiful, and that finding support in this house has been a welcome reprieve after months of homelessness.
