The City of Portland will be saddled with providing services at the city’s 179-bed shelter for single asylum-seeking migrants after the immigrant advocacy nonprofit that was originally going to take over services at the shelter was unable to secure sufficient funding.

The construction of the shelter, located at 166 Riverside Industrial Parkway and owned by Developers Collaborative (DC) Blueberry LLC and DC Management LLC, was funded by a $4.59 million grant from the Maine State Housing Authority.

The large capacity shelter was set up to be exclusively for single noncitizen migrants, as a way to free up bed space at the city’s Homeless Services Center when large homeless encampments were scattered throughout the city.

Under Portland’s original contract to build the shelter, the city was to be the primary service provider for the first 18 months of the shelter’s operation — roughly until May 2025 — and would be reimbursed for its services through the mostly state-funded General Assistance (GA) program.

After its first 18 months of operation, the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition (MIRC), a nonprofit representing a network of immigrant advocacy nonprofits in Maine, was going to take over as the shelter’s primary service provider, its agreement with the city indicated.

Under the initial agreement, MIRC was supposed to then provide meals, staffing and other support services at the shelter for the remainder of the three-year contract.

Now, the Portland City Council at their next meeting on Monday, March 17, will be considering an order to remove MIRC as a party to the shelter contract “due to [MIRC’s] inability to secure sufficient funding to continue providing services,” the order memo states.

“Under this amendment, the City of Portland will continue to operate the shelter for the remainder of the three-year term,” it reads.

According to MIRC’s most recent 2023 tax forms, the nonprofit made roughly $3.67 million in total revenue that year, with $1.98 million of that revenue coming from government grants, and ended the year with nearly $1.2 million in net assets.