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Preble Street Looks To Convert Portland Center Into 40-Bed Shelter

Portland’s Preble Street social service agency wants to convert its longtime daytime drop-in center in the city’s Bayside neighborhood into a 24-hour “wellness” shelter with 40 beds.

“That’s our plan, we think it’s very much in keeping with the public health crisis we’re in but also the general consensus in this community,” says Preble Street Executive Director Mark Swann.

Swann says early in the pandemic, hundreds of people were using the center during the day. In an effort to ease overcrowding, the center closed its doors in May and dispersed food services to other parts of the city. But Swann says more than a hundred people are now sleeping outdoors in the Portland area.

“Winter’s coming soon, and the Expo shelter that the city runs, that has an end date that’s looming. And the pandemic isn’t going away,” he says. “We can get into this building because we own it, and get the renovations started quickly.”

Swann says within six weeks of approval by local planners, contractors can create a single, well-ventilated dorm that meets social-distancing requirements. But the proposal would add to the neighborhood’s concentration of homeless services, and opposition is expected from some in the neighborhood as well as from members of the City Council.

A Columbia University graduate, Fred began his journalism career as a print reporter in Vermont, then came to Maine Public in 2001 as its political reporter, as well as serving as a host for a variety of Maine Public Radio and Maine Public Television programs. Fred later went on to become news director for New England Public Radio in Western Massachusetts and worked as a freelancer for National Public Radio and a number of regional public radio stations, including WBUR in Boston and NHPR in New Hampshire.