I was at the Augusta Planning Board from 6 p.m. Tuesday until 12:30 a.m. Wednesday morning, in person and at home. I was there to speak in favor of the proposed new shelter and transitional housing facilities on Green Street. The proposal failed. As I write this, I am still processing the outcome.

The testimony for and against the proposal was personal, emotional, and passionate. But I was struck at the time by how much the proponents and opponents had in common.

Both groups love the city of Augusta. Both are proud of the revival happening on Water Street. Both value the city‘s residential neighborhoods, such as the West End. Both want to promote the quality of life of Augusta. Both want to treat the unhoused with compassion. Both would like to see the unhoused have the opportunity to improve their lives, with jobs, health care, mental health and recovery services.

Now, the Green Street shelter and transitional housing will not happen. Meanwhile, a few weeks from now, on May 15, the Augusta Emergency Overnight Warming Center will close down for the season. Thirty people will be turned out with no place to go. They will assemble in encampments, wander on Water Street, gather in parks, with no one to help them get their lives back together, no one to give them hope. We are about to re-live the problems of last summer.

I might put it this way: The only thing worse than the Green Street shelter is no shelter at all.

The unhoused are not going away. Every city in Maine, every city in America has experienced a growth of homelessness in conjunction with the inflation in rents and spread of fentanyl. Some on Tuesday night seemed to testify that if we didn’t have shelter beds, the unhoused would go away. This is magical thinking. Shelters don’t create homelessness; homelessness creates the need for shelters. Eighty percent of the homeless in the city are from within 25 miles of Augusta. Homeless are not moving from city to city in search of the most comfortable shelter bed.

I have been a business owner and resident in the Augusta community for 40 years. I have participated in team efforts to face and solve seemingly impossible problems before — like the Third Bridge, the Lithgow Library expansion, the new hospital, the new YMCA, and the Cancer Center. Augusta is a small city, but we have accomplished big things by working together.

Now we need a new team effort. We need to find housing and services for 50-100 people a night. We need to keep Water Street and nearby neighborhoods safe. We can do this. It is not impossible.

It starts with good faith conversations including city government, county government and the Kennebec Valley Council of Governments — for this is not just Augusta’s problem. The unhoused, through groups like Hope Brokers, downtown businesses, the police, and social service agencies, too, all need to be involved. And the conversation must be initiated by leadership — the mayor and City Council need to step up.

The governor and the Legislature are aware, but they too need to step their efforts. Fifteen million dollars in this year’s budget year sounds good, but it doesn’t go far in addressing a $100 million problem statewide.

This is nothing abstract about this and no one is immune My stepdaughter Stepanie died last year after losing a long battle with substance abuse.

On Saturday mornings, I volunteer at the breakfast provided to the unhoused by the Unitarian Universalist Church on Winthrop Street. The homeless, 40 to 60 each week, are there because they need a warm place, a good meal and community. They are overwhelming appreciative. In the months after the warming center closed last spring three members who attended our breakfasts died, another died between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and another last Thursday.

The unhoused are identified by their struggle, but the struggle is not who they are. They have warm stories and great hopes just like the rest of us. We owe it to them,

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