I appreciate Mayor Mark Dion’s Dec. 12 Portland Press Herald op-ed (“When it comes to sheltering homeless people, Portland can’t go it alone“) and the challenges facing Portland dealing with ongoing homelessness and the related drug and mental health crisis that we all observe, especially when we walk downtown.

Portland’s police, fire and social service employees are performing heroic, compassionate, life-saving work on a daily basis. Perhaps the Press Herald should focus on what I consider one of the real failures — the lack of similar compassionate responses in surrounding communities and the inequitable burden placed on Portland and its residents to be the primary funders through local property taxes for what is the largest social service center that serves the entire state.

Assistant City Manager Dena Libner recently provided me very telling data — from February 2024 through February 2025 — that shows the last permanent residence of Portland’s Homeless Service Center guests: 284, or 29%, were from Portland, 481, or 49%, were from other places in Maine and 203, or 29%, were from out of state. While it may be cost-effective to have necessary social services provided in one community like Portland, clearly those costs should be fairly distributed and not fall largely on Portland taxpayers.

The editorial board of this newspaper should focus its attention on encouraging the governor and our state legislators to fairly fund Portland for the social services the city provides the state. Similarly, Cumberland County government needs to step up and have other local municipalities do more to pay their fair share of the Greater Portland community social service costs.

Ken Farber
Portland