Jan. 6—The Rev. Norman Allen wasn’t planning on offering up his church to serve as the city’s warming shelter this year.
First Parish Unitarian Universalist was the site of the only no-barrier emergency warming shelter in Portland last winter, but it was a challenge.
The church didn’t have enough bathrooms. It was difficult to find storage for mattresses. Scheduling open hours around other activities was complicated. Neighbors complained about trash being left near the church.
Allen was glad the church had been able to help but he hoped someone with a more suitable space might step forward this year.
The warming shelter is required to open any time temperatures drop below 15 degrees or 10 inches of snow falls, but the operator can open their doors as often as they can afford to throughout the winter from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.
When nobody stepped forward as Allen hoped, he offered up the church again.
“I know for a fact there wouldn’t be an emergency warming shelter in Portland if this church hadn’t said we’d do it,” he said.
Over the last few years, as the need for social services has grown in Portland — particularly for homeless and immigrant communities — faith leaders have stepped up to fill in the gaps.
In addition to the warming shelter — which the church runs in partnership with Commonspace, a nonprofit providing housing and shelter support — First Parish also provides free weekly dinners, hosts alcoholics anonymous meetings and works with the Wabanaki Alliance to help advocate for sovereignty.
Other churches like St. Vincent De Paul, St. Luke’s, First Baptist Portland and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland operate food pantries, soup kitchens and free clothing drives in the city.
“Every Sunday morning at the beginning of the service we say our mission statement, which is to nurture the spirit, grow in community and help heal the world,” said Allen. “So I can’t say that every Sunday morning and then close our doors and not help the unhoused people when the temperatures drop.”
Allen said that although the work is difficult, providing services to the community is a core part of his faith.
“Knowing that we are providing that service is the most fulfilling work I’ve done in my career because we are actually saving people’s lives,” he said. “That feels really good, but it also feels really bad that we can’t do more.”
Other faith leaders are in the same boat.
HELPING WHEN THEY CAN
The Rev. Bryan Breault at State Street United Church of Christ operates a family shelter from his church.
It started two winters ago when Breault noticed an unprecedented need for warm clothes at the weekly clothing drive his church hosted. More than 120 people showed up one Sunday in January 2022.
“Many of them were new Mainers who had gotten off a bus in shorts and a T-shirt into a Maine winter,” said Breault. And many of them, he soon realized, had no place to stay.
He went home that night unable to sleep, wracking his brain for ways his congregation could help.
“I had been thinking about the fact that our building is heated in the winter (and) could house people. And that’s really what we’re called to do, to try and help people,” said Breault.
Within a month he had a small family shelter up and running out of the church. Other religious leaders in the area created a coalition of volunteers from 16 congregations who were willing to help with operations, the city agreed to take on case management, furniture was donated, extra bathrooms were installed, and the place was up and running.
Now, it functions as an overflow shelter for the city’s family shelter, which is consistently full. Like the city family shelter, the space does not exclusively cater to immigrant families, but they mostly have served immigrant families because the need is so great, according to Breault.
The State Street family shelter has been able to extend its hours with the help of volunteers so that families can stay and rest for at least one day a week instead of having to pack up first thing in the morning. So far this winter, they have hosted four families for a total of 25 people. The shelter is open from November through May.
In addition to the shelter, Breault’s congregation continues to offer free donated clothes to the community and hands out bags with water, food and toothbrushes to the homeless.
Like Allen, he said doing this work is a core tenet of his belief system. He wishes he could do more.
“State Street Church values a sense of community and it values doing the work that was exemplified by Jesus, which involved caring for the poor, visiting the sick and people in prison,” he said. “If we have the ability to help others we should do that.”
The Jewish Community Alliance has been offering social services for years, too, and has filled a key gap in social services by providing diapers for low-income families and refugee support services.
The organization operates a diaper bank serving more than 400 clients each month. New diapers are available to be picked up or delivered to clients’ homes.
The JCA also has a refugee resettlement team staffed with caseworkers who connect refugees with housing, health care, food, cultural orientations and financial planning resources. They served more clients than ever before in 2024.
The team tries to connect with refugees before they arrive to set up stable housing in advance, but when that’s not possible they put up families in short-term rentals while they work on finding more permanent housing.
Sam Cohen, operations director at the JCA, said the work his organization does in the community is the most meaningful part of his job.
“Such a key part of Judaism is to welcome the stranger. We know what it’s like to be strangers as a people in foreign lands, so we try to offer that support to others as much as we can,” said Cohen.
Cohen said a core belief in Judaism is that the world is broken and the Jewish people are on a mission to repair it as best they can.
“That’s why we have those services, it’s such an important part of what being Jewish means,” said Cohen. “Working at this organization, that’s what I take the most pride in, that we do those things.”
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