Plans to convert the Green Street United Methodist Church, above, into a 40-bed homeless shelter and community center were rejected last year by the Augusta Planning Board. Shortly after that, the Augusta Task Force on Homelessness was created. This week, the task force released a draft report urging the city to support the creation of a low-barrier shelter. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal file

AUGUSTA — The Augusta Task Force on Homelessness says city officials need to take a leadership role in advocating for and helping to create a low-barrier, year-round shelter for city residents who are chronically homeless.

The task force, formed eight months ago and charged with coming up with a plan to help better the lives of people who are homeless in the Augusta area, issued its draft recommendations this week.

The recommendations say city officials and staff should provide more active leadership and advocacy for efforts to help homeless people, including advocating for the creation of more housing, both permanent and temporary.

The draft also says there needs to be better coordination between agencies and others working to help homeless people, to speed up and better organize an uncoordinated system that some homeless people have said is confusing, slow and difficult to navigate, especially for those already dealing with trauma in their lives.

The draft recommendations, presented in public hearings Monday and Tuesday at Lithgow Library, specifically recommends the city create a new staff position “to help identify and coordinate area resources, advance task force recommendations, and bring in outside agency support to navigate individuals and families from homelessness to housing.”

Several of the roughly 30 people who attended Tuesday night’s presentation said there are a lot of services in Augusta that can help homeless people, but workers in those services don’t communicate or coordinate with each other well. Others said those groups aren’t allowed to share information, even when they’re serving the same client, due to federal privacy regulations.

“In our experience the process is complicated, it’s fractured, we have a lot of services in Augusta, but we don’t talk to each other, there are all these firewalls that make it hard to help the individual,” said Amanda Kinsey, director of Capitol Clubhouse, a Kennebec Behavioral Health program serving people with severe mental illness. She said some of her clients, about a third of whom are homeless, have died from exposure, or nearly died from exposure, due to not having adequate services.

The task force’s draft report notes homelessness is caused by a lack of housing, so ensuring a sufficient supply of housing for everyone is the fundamental and permanent solution.

It suggests city leaders should take a more active leadership role in advocating for services and housing for the homeless, including by demonstrating “visible support for the development of low-barrier supportive housing for special populations such as those experiencing chronic homelessness.” It asked the city to “adopt a core community belief statement through formal council action, that all people should have a place to stay at night, shelter from adverse weather conditions during the day and access to services that support those experiencing homelessness.”

A recent proposal to create a year-round 40-bed homeless shelter on Green Street was voted down by the Augusta Planning Board after neighbors and downtown business and building owners expressed safety concerns.

The draft report also recommends adopting a coordinated entry system and encouraging all service providers to use it to centralize data about homelessness and coordinate resources and “break down silos between agencies to facilitate transparent data exchange and collective learning.”

However, service providers at Tuesday’s discussion warned that efforts to help homeless people won’t work if people who are homeless don’t also make efforts to take part in services meant to help them. They said it is hard to connect someone to services if they won’t follow through and take accountability and show up to appointments made for them.

But John Carter, a builder who said he hires homeless people, said there has been talk about how to help homeless people for years, but not any real action. He said homeless people traumatized by shoddy treatment, including from bad landlords, may be further traumatized by the threat they could lose their spot in a shelter if they don’t follow the rules. He cited the advice of his grandmother, who used to tell him, “We are what we do, not what we say we do.”

“People are people; they deserve basic human respect,” Carter said.

The task force is expected to review the comments made at both public hearings and bring their revised recommendations to the City Council for consideration.

The group has had several listening sessions, including with local homeless residents, as well as downtown business owners and the general public.

Augusta resident and task force member Nancy Fritz previously served as director of homeless initiatives under former Gov. John Baldacci, directed the Homeless Department at MaineHousing and was a founding member of the Maine Affordable Housing Coalition.

She said task force members were only listening at the public hearings, not discussing proposals: They are seeking input before taking action.

She said she agreed “with what John (Carpenter’s) mother said: We are what we do, not what we say we do. The purpose of this task force is to help the city not just talk about doing, but actually doing. So that’s our goal.”