Portland city employees clear a homeless encampment under a bridge at the Fore River Parkway Trail in September 2023. Ben McCanna/Portland Press Herald, file

When Katie Spencer White and her husband came across an older woman panhandling outside Trader Joe’s in Portland, they gave her some cash in hopes she would use it to get a hotel room and get out of the cold that night.

But the woman said she was going to use the money to pay for her storage unit.

“That was where all her personal belongings were — her baby’s hat that she wore home from the hospital 50 years ago, all of her photographs, the things that mattered to her that she knew she was going to need when she finally got back into housing,” Spencer White said.

“Folks would rather save their mementos than eat that day. That’s how important their belongings are to them.”

Spencer White, president and CEO of the Mid-Maine Homeless Shelter & Services in Waterville, joined other advocates for homeless people to testify at a legislative hearing Monday in support of a bill to ensure the belongings of homeless people are not confiscated or destroyed without notice.

Supporters said that keeping track of personal belongings is one of the most difficult and often overlooked aspects of being homeless, and that many people have lost valuable possessions during encampment sweeps around the state.

Opponents of the bill, including the Maine Department of Transportation and the Maine State Police, said the proposal would be logistically challenging and that storing and tracking personal belongings would be burdensome for municipalities.

Ambureen Rana, D-Bangor, the sponsor of LD 1410, said the bill provides “basic due process” for the homeless.

It would require municipal, county or state agencies or law enforcement to provide at least seven days advance notice before removing a homeless person’s belongings from public property, or destroying the property. It also would require them to hold a hearing prior to the planned removal or destruction.

If a homeless person doesn’t attend the hearing, the bill would also require the municipality or police department to store their property for at least 90 days and provide them with notice about how to retrieve it.

There would be exceptions for things that are reasonably believed to be abandoned, or that pose health and safety risks.

“To lose your stable housing, have to find shelter elsewhere, lose that shelter and all of your belongings is, as I imagine it, one of the most dehumanizing situations one can experience,” Rana said. “This bill is critical to protect the civil rights of unhoused people, and it is a critical step in addressing our state’s unhoused crisis.”

She said homeless people are at greater risk for losing important medications and personal documents, as well as equipment that helps them survive, like tents and sleeping bags, and often don’t have the financial means to replace those items.

The bill is also about providing the same kinds of basic protections for the property of homeless people that those who are housed enjoy, Spencer White said.

“You can do a lot to homeless people because they don’t have lawyers, they don’t have money for court fees and they are often too overwhelmed with staying alive to worry about protecting their constitutional rights,” she said.

An encampment of homeless people adjacent to Mechanics Park in Biddeford in June 2024. Ben McCanna/Portland Press Herald, file

Encampment sweeps have been well-documented around Maine, especially in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, which contributed to elevated levels of homelessness.

In Portland in 2023, some homeless residents said their belongings were discarded or lost during a large sweep at the Fore River Parkway Trail, despite a city policy requiring advance notice and storage of any unclaimed items that could have value.

Anna Trevorrow, a former Portland city councilor, said she became aware of the challenges of tracking people’s personal belongings during encampment sweeps while she served on the council, and said a statewide law could provide clarity on the issue.

“LD 1410 addresses these concerns by establishing transparent procedures that protect the rights of our most vulnerable citizens,” Trevorrow said in written testimony. “It ensures that personal belongings are not discarded without due consideration and that individuals have a clear avenue for recourse if their rights are violated.”

The Maine Department of Transportation, Maine State Police and other representatives of law enforcement testified against the bill.

The requirement for a hearing would pose an administrative and legal burden for state and local government, the department said in written testimony. Such processes should be reserved only for formal state agency decisions, not routine property management or public safety, it said.

The department also said the storage requirement poses a practical challenge. In 2024 alone, the agency said it spent about $100,000 cleaning up debris left by homeless people on state property, mostly in the Portland area.

“The sheer volume of debris would necessitate the construction, rental or leasing of a storage facility, as well as the creation of new staff positions dedicated to managing, inventorying and distributing these materials if claimed in the future,” Meghan Russo, the director of government affairs, wrote in the testimony.