Photo: Pixabay
By Zendelle Bouchard
At the Sept. 2 City Council meeting, City officials emphasized that the majority of problems the city faces with a group of chronically homeless individuals is due to their substance abuse and mental health problems, not their unhoused status.
In her report, Mayor Becky Brink read her response to a letter from a resident frustrated with the City’s response to encampments at Heritage Lane and other areas around town. She touted the work of the Homeless Task Force and housing navigators in bringing the number of unhoused individuals in Sanford/Springvale from over 200 to under 50, and the 19 strategies the city has put in place to address encampments effectively and humanely. “The group that remains are not homeless…. Most of the group are very addicted to drugs and are unable to make the decision to accept the help offered.”
She added that cleanup of encampments has been stymied by citizens using the areas as dumping grounds for household trash and appliances in an effort to avoid purchasing town trash bags or paying transfer station fees.
Brink pointed out the Council’s November 2024 decision to return the needle exchange program to a 1:1 has led to significantly cleaner parks and other public areas. “We have nowhere near the amount of needles we used to have,” she declared.
In his report, City Manager Steve Buck detailed the Sanford Police Department’s stats for the 88-day period from June 1 to Aug. 28, during which there were 688 homelessness-related calls for service, which broke down as follows:
- 359 calls for homeless individuals
- 204 for trespassing
- 47 for needles or other drug paraphernalia
- 78 for drug incidents such as openly using drugs in public
He noted that stats for drug overdoses cannot be tracked easily as they are coded under various medical conditions and not always identified as overdoses.
Buck emphasized that the leading cause of these calls is not homelessness, but untreated substance use disorder and mental health issues. He called homelessness “a symptom” related to substance abuse and said it was not a lack of housing, but the inability of these individuals to be housed due to their untreated addiction which needs to be addressed.
Buck said the recidivism rate for these chronically addicted individuals is due to the state mandate which prevents the enforcement for certain crimes if the offender identifies as unhoused. “It’s the substance abuse disorder and mental health preventing them from being housed,” he said. Police Chief Eric Small agreed. “Until people are forced to take services, it will be difficult to break that cycle,” he said, adding that officers have “enforcement fatigue” when they arrest the same 50 people over and over, only to see them back on the streets.
Officer David Randt of the SPD’s Mental Health Unit, who was part of the department’s bike patrol this summer, spoke about his efforts to be a presence and deter problems in the downtown area through one-on-one contacts with business owners and the chronically unhoused. He said even though the contact inevitably led to legal action against offenders, all parties understood the process better as it was escalated by steps. He said being on bicycles downtown was a definite help in responding more quickly to calls.
In detailing some of the challenges the SPD faces in dealing with drug-related calls, Randt explained that he can stop someone who is shooting up to identify them or issue a trespass notice, but he cannot seize a vial just because someone is injecting a substance, and the district attorney will not prosecute without knowing what is in the vial.
The post City Officials: Substance Abuse is the Problem, Not Homelessness appeared first on Sanford Springvale News.
