NOTE: This week, Midcoast Humane is introducing a guest writer, Laurel Auth, a social work intern at Midcoast Humane. Laurel is a graduate student at the University of New England, spending half a year with us. We asked her to share her experiences interacting with those who need Midcoast Humane’s services and how our services intersect with other social services. My article next week will be a companion piece to this. – Jess Townsend, executive director

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Take a scroll through one of the popular apartment-hunting websites and you may find a number of good, local options. In fact, you may even wonder why people claim there’s a housing crisis. Dig a little deeper and you will discover the first obvious obstacle: price. For example, according to Zillow, the average monthly rent of an apartment in Brunswick is $2,200. If you work full time on Maine’s minimum wage, you bring home about $29,300 a year. After taxes, that’s about $2,441 per month. So, the average monthly rent in Brunswick costs more than half your income. That’s a problem. Now, what if you have a dog? You’ve just lost about half the previous listings, and if that dog is on a restricted breed or weight list created by the property managers and not the law, you may have little or nothing from which to choose.

As the social work intern at Midcoast Humane who has observed numerous animal surrenders over the last six months, I have become sadly aware that the number one reason people surrender their animals is simply a lack of housing. Research has shown that people experiencing homelessness often feel more attached to their pets than those who are housed because their animals are their only consistent source of unconditional love, support and companionship as they experience the traumatic world of being unhoused (“My Dog Is My Home,” 2017). The human-animal bond is important. Yet, very few Maine warming shelters, overnight shelters or even domestic violence shelters can support people with their pets, often leaving pet owners out on the street. For them, it’s better than abandoning their best friend.

According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, “24% of renting households in Maine, or 37,977 people, are considered to be ‘extremely low income’ and for every 100 low-income rental households, only 45 apartments are available. In 2024, there were approximately 2,695 people experiencing homelessness in Maine” (Maine State Housing Authority, 2024). A large majority of those people live within Cumberland County, where Midcoast Humane’s Brunswick shelter sits.

In 2023, Sen. Ben Chipman of Cumberland County proposed a solution: LD 1193, “An Act to Allow Residents of Low-income Housing to Keep Pets,” a bill that called for any public housing receiving funding from the State of Maine Housing Authority (meaning: low-income housing, rentals accepting Section 8, state housing authorities, etc.) to allow common household pets without added pet rent. The bill allowed for a reasonable and refundable pet deposit to account for any damage that may have been caused by the pet. The bill still failed.

I strongly suggest that Maine policymakers, landlords, social workers and shelter officials consider the importance of the human-animal bond and the heartbreaking decision we are forcing people to make. Please consider decreasing the number of dogs and cats entering the shelter by introducing new laws and programs that allow people to keep their pets. Abolish strict breed restrictions that neglect to account for the variability in personality and temperament of individual animals, even within stigmatized breed types. It is pro-human to be pro-pet. Some of the saddest, most gut-wrenching moments I have witnessed at Midcoast Humane involve a loving person forced to surrender a pet who is so clearly their whole world. By supporting Maine renters and pet owners, we support our shelters and decrease the surrenders of pets who already have loving owners.