When I was getting ready to move to Maine, I had never heard of a “housing crisis.” When I drove into Portland for work, I saw the crisis for myself. I saw it in the faces of all the men and women who walked into the bar on frigid nights, swearing up and down they could pay for just one drink to stay out of the cold. In the people who wanted a drink so bad just for what it was, that they had to be removed with force. I saw it in all the faces on the sides of streets that grew too familiar the longer I worked in Portland. 

I met Chris as winter turned into spring, but I had seen him long before that. Chris was perennial. Always perched with his books to sell on Commercial Street, in the heart of the Old Port. Cigarette in one hand, book in the other. Always on a milk crate with a sign that reads “Homeless. Hungry. Sober.” I spoke with Chris Wednesday, September 19, about the present conditions in Portland.

“Do you have any trouble finding a place to sleep?”

“I have a good spot, kinda inside [shed.] It’s got electricity, the owner knows I’m there and he’s okay with it. Gave me the Wi-Fi password. nI can watch YouTube… there’s heat. A propane heater.”

“What do you think about the tent cities around town?”

“Sucks. [The city] shouldn’t have shut down the shelter, put a new shelter out of town and put people out of country in there. All the services are in town, no one’s going to want to leave.”

“What is the best thing the city could do for you?”

“Public bathrooms. Starbucks has had closed bathrooms all summer. It affected their business. They couldn’t seat the café. Twenty people at their door every five minutes, turn around, ‘no coffee today. It’s hard to get arrested right now.”

“What do you mean? Do you have any examples?”

“Oh yeah. A few Sundays ago, like 6 a.m., I’m walking over here from my sleeping spot […] That spot with the rooftop bar? And the brunch place underneath? Well, I’m walking by and there’s this car that all the morning staff of this brunch spot are pointing at and chattering about.  The car is all smashed up on all four sides, but I’m looking at the ground and there’s no debris or anything, so the crash happened somewhere else, and they made it all the way over here. I stop by the car and there’s this one guy outside hunched over, over like this [Chris gets  up and imitates someone who is hunched over and possibly nauseous] and the driver is passed out cold with his hands on the wheel. I poke my head in, and I ask the driver, ‘hey are you okay?’ and he throws up his thumbs and goes [Chris throws a thumbs-up and slurs] ‘Cool!’ So, I say, ‘You know the police are coming, right?’ He throws up his thumbs and says [slurred] ‘Cool!’”

“I wanna get out of there before trouble starts, but I bumped into another homeless guy- actually the guy who gave me a dollar just now- and I tell him what happened. He’s all excited and goes to check it out. As I’m walking away, I can see the cop lights but I’m so far off they’re tiny. I bump into him later and ask, ‘hey man, what happened?’ and he says ‘absolutely nothing. No field sobriety test, no drug search, no names… It used to be, they’d at least pour out your beers or something. Now they don’t do anything, and these street drunks just walk around… It’s like they don’t even care anymore. There’s this one guy who just throws stuff in the ocean. All the time and he’s never arrested… Potted plants and stuff that the Dimillo family puts up…”  

“When you say it’s hard to get arrested does that mean the homeless, too? Would you say the homeless are still arrested fairly often?”  

“They definitely make up a large part of the jailed population.”

Chris is well read and resides amongst the red brick of the city. I’m far from the only local to know him by name. He never has less than a dozen books by his side and he has seemingly read all of them before they’re up for sale.The spirit of the Northeast, of Portland, is in its people. Above most people I feel that includes Chris.