A tent encampment on the banks of the Saco River. (Maine Morning Star)
Homelessness in Maine is not necessarily decreasing, contrary to what state and national data indicate. Meanwhile, a new report by the agency that tracks housing and homelessness found that unhoused people are staying homeless for longer, which is a troubling metric.
According to national and state data, homelessness in Maine appears to be decreasing, defying the national trend. In fact, a December 2024 report by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) reported an almost 37% drop in Maine’s homeless population, which was the biggest decrease nationwide.
But that decrease is likely due to a data reporting discrepancy and not an actual decline in the number of unhoused people, according to MaineHousing, an independent state agency that connects public and private funding, helping people find affordable housing options. Homelessness data is based on point-in-time counts, which track the number of homeless people — including those in homeless shelters, transitional housing and those without shelter — on just one day in January every year. Point-in-time counts are an imperfect measure of homelessness, since they don’t account for fluctuations in the number of unhoused people throughout the year.
Counting Maine’s unhoused population
Maine’s point-in-time count for 2024 was 2,695, reflecting a decrease from 3,726 unhoused people in 2023. But last year, unlike prior years, Maine could not report the number of unhoused people seeking temporary shelter in motels, leaving an unknown number of people still living in motels that the state did not report to the federal government.
“That doesn’t necessarily mean that those people weren’t experiencing homelessness anymore,” said Scott Thistle, spokesperson for MaineHousing. “And so it creates that perception that the number is way down when we just lost the ability to count certain populations.”
According to MaineHousing, there were 2,464 people living in motels in 2022 and 1,954 in 2023, which overshadowed the number of people in shelters both years. But in 2024, that number was slightly above 300. Those people may still be living in motels, but they’re no longer counted in the point-in-time totals, Thistle said.
Informal living arrangements, such as motel stays, are typically not classified by HUD as homelessness. But for the past few years, motel stays for unhoused people paid for by pandemic-era emergency relief programs were counted. That led to an increase in the “persons in emergency motels” category reported under point-in-time counts in 2022 and 2023, inflating the overall homelessness count from those years.
Another metric reported by MaineHousing indicates people experiencing homelessness are finding it harder to exit it. Length of stay is an important indicator of the current shelter and housing environment for people experiencing homelessness, according to the MaineHousing report, since it can reflect the difficulty of finding viable permanent housing solutions.
The average length of stay in 2024 increased 38%, up from 8.4 days in 2023 to 11.6 days last year.
“While this still represents a much lower average than during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is a concerning shift that suggests permanent housing solutions for those leaving homelessness were in scarce supply this year,” the report said.
Despite more affordable units, rental prices continue to climb
The reason people experience extended periods of homelessness is almost always because of a lack of affordable housing and insufficient social safety nets, according to national and state-level reports.
According to the report, there are some positive signs regarding the development of affordable housing units funded by MaineHousing. For one, construction is no longer being delayed by pandemic-related supply chain disruptions, which meant that 775 units were built last year, and another 727 will be completed in 2025.
But the cost of building these units is also increasing, according to the report.
“We have the highest level of affordable housing production that we’ve ever had, in large part because of the support we’ve received from Governor Mills and the Legislature,” Thistle said. “But subsidy for affordable housing development is getting scarce. We’re running out of subsidy and keeping that production level up is going to require a commitment from policymakers to maintain the pace that we’re at.”
Rental and housing prices also remain high, the report said, which makes it harder for people to exit homelessness and afford stable housing. More than half of households earning between $35,000-$49,999 were cost burdened in 2023 (which meant they spent more than 30% of their income on housing costs), up from 32.8% just five years earlier.
Almost 30% of renters earning $50,000-$74,999 were also cost burdened in 2023, more than double the 10.8% from five years earlier, according to the MaineHousing report, which used data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.
Return to homelessness decreased in 2024
Fewer people returned to shelters after finding permanent housing in 2024, according to the MaineHousing report.
Return to homelessness is defined as someone enrolling in homeless services, such as a shelter, less than 12 months after departing those services. People who re-enter the system after more than a year are not included in the totals, so it is not a definitive metric that people stay in their permanent housing solutions long-term.
This data might instead indicate a lack of shelter beds, Thistle said.
“They’re not coming away from permanent housing and returning to the shelters, because the shelters are full, so there’s no space for folks,” he said.
Though generally positive, the decline in return to homelessness is bumping up against the lack of affordable housing in a way that is creating further strain on the system.
“People experiencing homelessness are staying in shelters longer, but appear to be more successful in remaining housed when a shelter is able to help them find permanent housing solution,” Thistle said. “But on the other hand, that success could very well lead to a greater scarcity of available permanent housing.”
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