Preble Street

"To provide accessible barrier-free services to empower people experiencing problems with homelessness, housing, hunger, and poverty and to advocate for solutions to those problems," Preble Street is an innovative service provider and advocate for Maine's most disadvantaged residents, responding to urgent needs and emerging problems with a solutions-oriented, collaborative approach. From a nutritious breakfast to crisis intervention, from clean clothes to healthcare, from showers to a permanent home, Preble Street operates 24/365 providing a wide range of services for both youth and adults who are homeless and living in poverty from 13 programs at seven sites in Portland, Lewiston, and Bangor, including Food Security Hub, Health Services, Logan Place, Florence House, Huston Commons, Joe Kreisler Teen Shelter, Elena's Way, Maine Hunger Initiative, Veterans Housing Services, Anti-Trafficking Services, and Homeless Voices for Justice.

Turning hunger and homelessness into opportunity and hope.

Goal One: Increase access to nutritious food for individuals and families across Maine experiencing hunger and poverty through launching the Food Security Hub, a dynamic space to combat food insecurity.

Goal Two: Drive the scaling of Site-Based Housing First statewide to end chronic homelessness in Maine through advocacy, new programs, and provision of technical assistance.

Goal Three: Create a culture of equity in the organization that functions as a central principal in program design, service delivery, and agency operations.

Preble Street has engaged in myriad leadership development initiatives over the last 12-18 months, including: Race Equity Training available to all staff; Ongoing work with a Race Equity Consultant for agency leadership and Race Equity Working Group members; Quarterly training for a cohort of the leadership team with the Executive Director, board members, and community leaders; Quarterly training opportunities available to all staff; Opportunities for various staff to attend and present at conferences; Diversification of staff attending community stakeholder committees and workgroups.

Perhaps the best example of Preble Street's adaptability from the last 12-18 months is our move from a traditional, site-based soup kitchen model of providing food to individuals and families experiencing homelessness and hunger to a distribution-based model in the midst, and then wake, of COVID-19. After inviting public health experts to our programs sites to provide guidance on COVID-related best practices, it became clear that we could no longer gather people all in one space to safely provide them with 3 meals a day, 7 days a week. Within weeks of getting that news, and without missing a single meal, we moved our entire Food Program to a new Feed Security Hub, preparing up to 2,000 meals a day, 7 days per week from that site and distributing them to people where they are in the community: at emergency shelters, at the YMCA, and to unshelterd people in the community through our newly formed Street Outreach Collaborative. Rather than expecting people in need to get to us, we figured out a way to come to them.