Well, of course it does — the Massachusetts diaspora has metastasized through Portland, and is now invading neighboring towns

Westbrook [Maine] Wants to Turn Private Homes and Churches Into Homeless Shelters for illegal aliens and hobos

The city of Westbrook is considering a new ordinance which would allow private homes, along with churches and community centers, to be used as homeless shelters, as the vast majority of people applying for housing assistance in the city are immigrants.

The proposal follows an earlier admission by the Westbrook official running the city’s welfare program that “90 to 95 percent” of welfare recipients are migrants — or “New Mainers.”

“What we can afford in this ordinance are shelters in single family homes which are deemed to be emergency shelter families,” said Jennie Franceschi, Westbrook Director of Planning and Code Enforcement “A church that has a room that they utilize for the purposes of baked bean suppers or educational or social needs could then take that room and make it into a shelter if the needs of the community necessitated it.”

The ordinance would not force private homeowners or churches to house homeless people, but would allow them to become official homeless shelters if they choose.

During a May 7 Planning Board meeting, multiple members of the public appeared to speak in favor of the new ordinance, arguing that it will help the city to deal better with the skyrocketing rate of homelessness in Cumberland County, of which Westbrook is a part.

One concerned Westbrook resident, Martin Malia, however, sent an email to be read during the public hearing, criticizing the new measure for the potential tax burden it could impose on property owners in the city.

“I do not believe the entire homeless shelter proposal is beneficial to the property taxpayers and residents of the city of Westbrook. Last year, the property taxpayers were burdened with an 8.8 [percent] tax increase,” Malia said, adding that the current proposal would hike property taxes by 11.4 percent.

Malia expressed concern that the new ordinance would attract more homeless immigrants to the city, who could then apply for taxpayer-funded General Assistance, which would add to the taxpayer funding going to the new shelters in private homes and churches.

… Despite failing to address the tax burden imposed by the new shelters, the Planning Board voted unanimously to send the new ordinance, as well as an ordinance creating a licensing process for homeless shelters, to the city council for consideration.

At an April 9 Westbrook City Council meeting, which began with a “land acknowledgment” apologizing for colonialism, Harison Deah, the director of general assistance, admitted that the vast majority of people applying for general assistance in the town are “new Mainers” meaning immigrants.

He went on to say that, in many cases, his office has to teach the immigrants living in apartments with the help of taxpayer-funded general assistance how to do basic things to avoid angering tenants and neighbors, such as how to use a thermostat. [And toilets, and keeping chickens out of the house —ED]

The general assistance program poses a significant tax burden on Westbrook residents, with statewide taxpayer money used to pay for 70 percent of the assistance, and local residents paying 30 percent directly through property tax.

With the extremely high percentage of immigrants applying for general assistance, it is likely that many families housed in the newly proposed homeless shelters inside homes and churches, would be in the country illegally.

“How is this all not an immigration resettlement program being funded by taxpayers under the guise of fighting homelessness,” said Malia, in comments provided to The Maine Wire.

It’s not difficult to feel sorry for the long-term residents of towns like Westbrook, because they are very much not voting for this stuff; unfortunately, they are quickly being subsumed under a wave of “New Mainers” — not the illegals NYC’s Mayor Adams calls wetbacks, but progressive liberals who’ve been priced out of adjoining Portland and have moved to Westbrook to duplicate what they created five miles away. This is happening everywhere in Maine south of the Tofu Line — coastal Maine from Bar Harbor south to Kittery — and elections are beginning to skew heavily Democratic. The oldsters and natives are forced out without so much as a land acknowledgement, and liberals replace them, bringing with them their social sensibilities and pocketbooks to pay for them, for a while. I don’t know what the final outcome of all this will be (though I can guess) but I can guarantee one thing: the leftists who are bringing in the world’s unwashed to share in their beneficence will not enjoy living next to church bingo hall’s homeless shelter with its residents’ third world habits, culture and lifestyle.

Tee hee.