The citizens of Augusta have a long tradition of coming together to make major public improvements. That’s how we created the University of Maine at Augusta in 1965; the new Kennebec Valley YMCA in 2006; the new MaineGeneral hospital campus in 2013; and the Lithgow Library expansion in 2016.

In all of these cases, when the effort began, supporters were told it was impossible. Don’t think big. The population of Augusta and the surrounding towns is too small, and incomes are too low, to support big projects.  In every case, we outperformed the expectations of the skeptics, and the projects got done.

Now the citizens of Maine’s capital and the wider region face a different kind of challenge. It is not a building. It’s a human need. It is the challenge of meeting the needs of people who are unhoused. This is first of all a challenge of the heart, and only after that a challenge of the pocketbook.

For the past year, I have chaired the Augusta Task Force on Homelessness. Our 13-member group met 16 times, conducted six listening sessions, heard presentations from nine experts and produced a 42-page blueprint for solving the crisis.

Here’s the good news. This is not an unmanageable problem. There are around 100 unhoused people in the area on any given night, of whom 40 are housed by Bread of Life, and 30 to 50 find a bed in the winter at the Augusta Overnight Emergency Warming Shelter at South Parish Church.

The South Parish site is not ideal; it lacks space, privacy, storage room and supportive services. What our community needs is a shelter in the 50-bed range that has adequate room and staffing; is open year-round; and houses supportive services for addiction, housing, employment and mental health.

We need not fear that dealing humanely with our unhoused will make Augusta a magnet for homeless people. The evidence is that poor people in Maine move for the same reasons and in the same patterns as anyone else — to be nearer to families, friends and/or jobs. And think for a moment — if you had the bad fortune to become unhoused, would you move to a far-off city to live among strangers because you happened to hear that the cots in their shelters were nicer?

It will take several years to develop a new shelter. In the meantime, the existing providers of services need to work together more effectively — to coordinate hours of operation, to share case management plans, to fill gaps in services.

As I said above, this challenge is first of all one of the heart. Are we as a community — the city, the county, United Way, neighboring towns, MaineGeneral, our businesses — ready to say that no person should ever have to sleep outdoors in a tent?

If the answer is yes, our task force recommends that the city of Augusta create an ongoing homeless advisory group to succeed the task force.  The advisory group would consist of Augusta area citizens and would, with city staff help, prepare and submit grant applications, identify and resolve service issues and report back to the public on the progress that is being made.

We also recommend a service providers working group, consisting of representatives of agencies that work directly with the unhoused. It would work on the nuts and bolts, day-to-day challenges of increasing the coordination and effectiveness of existing services. Both groups should have a chair reporting directly to the mayor.

This is where the rubber meets the road. Augusta is not a place where people are satisfied with pious platitudes and paper plans. We’ve met big challenges and done big things in our past. Now is time to do something big in the present, to create a life of hope and progress for our unhoused, and to improve the quality of life for our businesses and shoppers downtown.