Portland, Maine nebulous on how to clear the air of mental health problems.

A mural in the basketball court of the East Bayside Community part of Portland, ME Housing Authority
Today at 10 a.m. an officer sits on his bike to the right of the Portland, Maine Police Midtown Center smiling at the morning son, as the Preble Street homeless walk the streets searching for sex money, deal drugs, and shoot heroine in groups of five or more.
Wednesday, a City Hall public forum to address mental health concerns of Portland, Maine attracted concerned residents. To develop help to an endemic crisis that is becoming more important in federal uncertainty of Medicaid expansion, the natural characteristic empathy of Maine exudes a growing concern for helping the homeless, and reestablishing a safe and exemplary quality of life. Michaela McVetty, owner of Sisters Deli in Portland, ME placed a video of a homeless man using senseless sexually harassing terms against her female staff, on YouTube August 2nd. The video went viral and caused national attention to a problem of lawless disturbances by homeless people with mental health and substance abuse issues. McVetty and Mayor Ethan Strimling organized the forum with City Councilors present but calls for aid from higher legislative authority was their response. McVetty asked, “What are we doing for people suffering from mental illness?” A state-wide referendum on the issue will come before voters November 7th. Governor Paul LePage reported to the AP August 24, that he plans to file a legal challenge to that referendum. A general consensus of each of the present City Councilors and Mayor was that it was going to take some time and depend on higher legislative offices to address issues of Medicaid expansion and broadening health interventions.

For 2017, US News ranked Portland twenty-sixth of Best Places, to live in the United States. The article contrasts Portland’s “ Do it yourself” attitude with concern that “Portland is at a crossroads on how to move forward. New development is often met with opposition, while demand for affordable housing is high. An aging rental and housing stock combined with a tight market on mid-tier units has left middle-income earners struggling to settle in Portland.” One third of Maine’s economy is service-related. Visit the twice a week Portland Farmer’s Market and you will notice how agreeable and good-natured the people of Portland are, and it is obvious from the general organization forming, that compassion is evermore on the rise and a search for answers to address the opioid epidemic and overall drug problem is greater apparent. Maine prides itself in having one of the most progressive health systems in the country.
Mark Swann, Executive Director of the Preble Street organization, Portland’s go to human service provider addressing poverty and homelessness, accounted that of the twenty-seven people who overdosed this year at Preble Street, twenty- five had been refused drug rehabilitation treatment. Most of the people of Preble Street smoking outside, show no apparent interest in getting help and their hand-rolled cigarettes and tobacco sold in red bags in the local convenience stores are tainted with every illegal drug imaginable. Preble Street allows them quite complacently to do so throughout the day and night. The Midtown Portland Police nestled on 26 Portland Street in West Bayside have a consistent policy of closing its doors to the public day and night. There is an extreme need for direct intervention and community organizing from this location. Today at 10 a.m. an officer sits on his bike to the right of the Midtown Community Police Center smiling at the morning sun, as the Preble Street homeless walk the streets searching for sex money, deal drugs, and shoot heroine in groups of five or more.
That side-stream smoke gets in the way of the staff and volunteers of Preble Street itself. A Preble Street employee standing outside can recognize that the smoke haze outside was not marijuana, but Spice. You can’t safely go into Preble Street vicinity without a gas mask. When I posited the suggestion of placing a city ordinance against smoking to combat unhealthy behavior in general, a Preble Street Resource employee referred to as Bev said, “No! That is the least of their problems. If you asked them to stop smoking, it would make things even worse for them”. That is an insane policy, and out of touch with the reality that they are putting worse drugs than tobacco in their rolled cigarettes. The converse of Bev’s idea about allowing homeless people to spend money and loitered time using the drug of nicotine (or plausibly worse) would be like the policy to give heroine users clean syringes, and let them die.

When asked today Mayor Strimling said he “would have to think about” presenting a city ordinance to outlaw public smoking or smoking in general.
From the appearance of Public Portland, ME Police Logs, published by day from the previous week on portlandmaine.gov/DocumentCenter/View/2266 there is not a comprehensive report of the number of incidents. The online-published crime statistics from Portland, Maine are as recent as 2015. Portland, Oregon in contrast has crime statistics published from July 2017. The Portland Police have been consistently unresponsive to my request for recent crime statistics.
Thomas Tallarico, a teacher at Portland high school commented many of the high school students are walking through the “maze of madness” and
“battle zone” of the Oxford Street Shelter organized by Preble Street experimenting with the very same thing they are seeing in that community. As he said, “fortunately, it’s early in the morning and in the afternoon”, because at night it is a reckless law-abandoned dis-community of unwell and unwell-meaning. A gazebo at the center of a front yard where zombie drug-abusers make plans to panhandle the following day and take illegal drugs. Police Officers assigned to Oxford Street Shelter report the worst drug on the streets, causing the zombiness, is “Spice”, which is a synthetic cannabinoid, identified by the National Institute on drug Abuse as having marijuana mimicking effects and an uncontrolled mix of ingredients which run the gamut of causing serious brain damage to kidney failure. Bags of loose tobacco are sold in the neighborhood stores and shared amongst the homeless people. The possibility of spice or other lethal drugs entering the bags are high and disregarded, because tobacco is legal and more so allowed in public spaces than before the legalization of marijuana. One police officer stood across the street from Oxford Street Shelter and smoked a cigarette in the dark than crossed the street and held a conversation with a woman smoking an unidentifiable substance and allowed the smoke stream to enter his breath.
The Oxford Street Shelter is located between Cedar and Chestnut Streets on Oxford Street. There is rampant drug use amongst the homeless from Chestnut-Oxford Street intersection, moving southwest towards the point where Oxford, Alder, and Portland Streets, and a crime spree that meets police’s best attention when an ambulance is on the scene. There is a Midtown Community Police Station that is closed at night, the worst time for the public and frequent drug dealings. Large groups of the homeless deal and use drugs worst of all during this time of night, although syringes scatter throughout the day.
While the crime continues, a deluge of local merchant and corporate sponsor interventions take place, to provide quality nutrition and develop community gardens. A tourist’s first impression of Portland, Maine is a strong orientation towards quality of life by the entire community. Eric Hilton, Owner of Optimal Self Fitness said he’d like to “place the homeless people on farms”. To see the target areas for intervention and the allowance drug abusers were granted in those streets that was misspent on drugs is target for policy change. When people receive welfare money and are not expected to account for how that money was spent, they can apply it responsibly, or in the case of many of the street wanderers of the Preble Street client list, spend it unhealthily. I asked a woman with a few remaining brown teeth how much she was spending on a red bag of tobacco a month and she said probably forty dollars, which was because she could make forty dollars a day panhandling. I asked an employee of the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation across from the Preble Street Resource Center who refused to present i.d. if she could help me obtain employment, and she said it would only be street cleaning.
Clearly the most effective interventions are not formally organized by government. The East Bayside Neighborhood Association held two back-to-back one-and-a-half-hour community task force meetings August twenty second, to discuss crime in their community overseen by The Portland Housing Authority and Portland Community Police. Ellen Bailey, President of East Bayside Neighborhood organization expressed concern about drug- derived neighborhood violence and its impact on children. Suna Shaw, Community Policing Coordinator for East Bayside said, “You are going to have to form the organization. The Police can’t do that for you”. At the second meeting neighbors began forming the organization of a more formal network, taking names and contact information of those concerned neighbors. Managing public drunkenness and drug-dealings, to name a few of the crimes children of the community are subject to observing and participating in. The residents discussed placing lights and cameras in the most problematic areas, such as the basketball court. Officer Les Smith, who attended the meetings stressed calling the police department was most important due to a “crunch” for police officers on the streets to observe everything at once, and that calls would be prioritized. “Everyone has to champion their own cause”. He pointed to the Muslim Community Center of East Bayside as a model of people demonstrating concerned interventions to stop lawlessness.
Officer Smith said, Text-a-Tip goes to Canada, then is dispatched back to police, and there may be a delay, so calling was most important. There was expression of fear of safety by many of the residents and said they would prefer anonymity when they call. Smith said, “Don’t ever be afraid to call”. Smith advised to allow police to be the ones to directly confront the lawlessness.
Regarding the general availability of regular health services, using a homeless shelter address, I could obtain Maine Care insurance on the day I applied and schedule a Primary Care appointment with less than one week with Maine Medical Center.
