ESART

Portland’s Emergency Shelter Assessment & Response Team

Emergency shelter, which serves as the entry point to the housing continuum and provides access to vital supportive services, is a critical resource for exiting homelessness. A homelessness response system without emergency shelters is analogous to a medical system without emergency rooms. 

ESART’s Mission 

The Emergency Shelter Assessment and Response Team (ESART) unites the community’s homeless response system, including service providers, advocates, and local and state officials, to address the need for adequate emergency shelter capacity in Portland. Through data-driven strategic planning, action, and advocacy, we seek to ensure that everyone in our community has access to safe shelter equipped with resources to exit homelessness.  

Our Data-Driven Focus 

Analyzing access to emergency shelter in Portland is a central focus of ESART. Each month, City of Portland staff compile and present key shelter data points provided by emergency shelters located in Portland. The Hub Coordinator for Hub 2/Cumberland County also presents data on the region’s count of individuals in Coordinated Entry (those on the ‘by name list’), the in-flow and out-flow of those experiencing homelessness, and the count of those experiencing unsheltered homelessness. Both data sets are typically for the month prior to the ESART meeting. (Though ESART currently focuses data collection on larger emergency shelters, we recognize there are also several smaller shelters in the community that play a vital role in the shelter ecosystem. ESART looks to begin collecting data from them, in a way that recognizes their capacity to prepare reporting, so that members can see a more complete picture of shelter resources in Portland.) 

Meeting discussion is devoted to understanding what the data is telling us, and to asking how we should act on this information. Guiding questions include: Is there enough accessible shelter available? What do we see as outliers in the data? Has something changed that has created a positive or negative shift?  What do we do with this data to inform action? (How do we respond?) 

City Shelter Statistics Hub 2 Coordinated Entry Data
January Shelter Stats Hub 2 Data
February Shelter Stats Hub 2 Data
March Shelter Stats Hub 2 Data
April Shelter Stats Hub 2 Data
May Shelter Stats Hub 2 Data
June Shelter Stats Hub 2 Data
July Shelter Stats Hub 2 Data
August Shelter Stats Hub 2 Data
September Shelter Stats Hub 2 Data
October Shelter Stats Hub 2 Data
November Shelter Stats Hub 2 Data
December Shelter Stats Hub 2 Data

Participation

ESART meetings are intended to be action-oriented meetings, enabling groups or individuals with relevant experience and work or advocacy expertise to discuss recent data trends, identify service gaps, and work toward solutions. Per that aim, ESART welcomes diverse perspectives from the following groups: 

  • Service providers – those providing resources (shelter, food, case management, etc.) to individuals or families experiencing homelessness in Greater Portland 

  • Advocacy organizations – those advocating for the needs of individuals or families experiencing homelessness in Greater Portland  

  • People with lived/living experience of homelessness in Greater Portland 

Decisions will be made by voting members, individuals or groups attending 70% of meetings in a 12-month period. All who represent one of the groups listed above are welcome to participate in meetings, and their attendance will be recorded accordingly.

ESART believes that all sectors and voices play an important role in working towards an end to homelessness in our community. There are many venues in which these multiple sectors are able to come together in Portland and Greater Portland, and ESART is happy to share its data, recommendations, and advocacy with those bodies – both proactively and when invited.

Current Membership 

commonspace
City of Portland 
Community Housing of Maine 
Greater Portland Health 
Homeless Voices for Justice 
Milestone Recovery 
Portland Downtown 
Preble Street 
Spurwink 
Through these Doors 
United Way of Southern Maine 

Our Executive Committee 

The ESART Executive Committee includes the tri-chair model that was implemented early in ESART’s history (then known as the Emergency Shelter Assessment Committee).

The longevity and impact of ESART is entrusted to the original tri-chairs: City of Portland, United Way of Southern Maine, and Homeless Voices for Justice. The Executive Committee also includes two to three additional active voting members.  Current Executive Committee Members include:

  • Aaron Geyer – Director of Social Services, City of Portland, Tri-Chair
  • Anne-Marie Brown – Senior Director, Partnerships, United Way of Southern Maine, Tri-Chair
  • Ben Martineau – Homeless Voices for Justice, Tri-Chair
  • Brian Townsend – Executive Director, commonspace
  • Terrance Millier – Advocacy Director, Preble Street

History

United Way Greater Portland (now United Way of Southern Maine) and the City of Portland initiated the Emergency Shelter Assessment Committee (ESAC) in 1987 to act primarily in an advisory capacity.

During that time, ESAC operated as “a collaborative of service providers, consumers, local and state governmental representatives, advocates, and other interested community members working to ensure the safety and well-being of people who are homeless in Portland.” Through planning, coordination, and advocacy, ESAC “promoted a continuum of care and support for individuals experiencing homelessness.”

In 2024, ESAC underwent a reenvisioning process with its members to identify ways a collaborative working group of many partners could best support the homeless services system . These conversations led to the evolution of ESAC into the Emergency Shelter Assessment and Response Team (ESART) as it is today; remaining focused on emergency shelter and its data-driven focus, with renewed effort around the quality and types of data being reviewed, and a very specific call to action with the focus on ‘response.’ ESART aims to analyze data with a focus on the trends it conveys, and the needs and opportunities presented by those trends. Each meeting concludes with a call for what actions will be taken over the course of the next month until the following ESART meeting.