What are known as “modular housing units” might be coming to Maine.

A tarp covers a gathering spot on the banks of the Little Androscoggin River in Auburn, where officials are reportedly exploring the purchase of temporary sleeping cabins to accommodate the city’s homeless people this winter. Andree Kehn/Sun Journal

Officials in Auburn are reportedly exploring the purchase of temporary sleeping cabins to accommodate the city’s homeless people this winter.

According to the Sun Journal, Auburn has discussed the proposal to add 24 prefabricated two-person units with officials in neighboring Lewiston and Androscoggin County government. 

The mayor of Auburn rightly called homelessness “a regional issue that needs regional solutions.” 

The specific type of temporary housing that’s being mooted by the officials is 8 by 8 feet and made of aluminum and composite paneling. Each shed-type unit takes between 30 to 60 minutes to assemble – other local governments have disassembled and stored the units once the weather warms up. 

The company manufacturing the units is Washington state-based Pallet, which has a ritzy, carefully worded website and a product that’s in high demand across the U.S. 

A Pallet shelter starts at $6,995. “Villages” of them have been mostly dotted along the West Coast (by this summer, Los Angeles had already spent almost $50 million on these specific shelters), but the company has been enlisted as far afield as Hawaii and as close to Maine as Jamaica Plain in Boston. They’re easily disassembled and stored, and are touted – as if the American housing crisis will dissipate any time soon – for their suitability for a variety of public crises. It’s a private-sector solution to a very public problem.

Are there problems with this approach? There are plenty. Critics accuse the Pallet model of papering over the most entrenched and pernicious aspects of the housing crisis; they say it wrongly removes the focus from reducing homelessness, shifting attention toward merely managing it.

That argument didn’t fall from the sky; part of the reason the crisis reached a head in Auburn (where city zoning doesn’t allow for overnight shelters but for in limited circumstances) was because officials ordered the breaking up of a homeless encampment at a local church last month due to complaints about trash, noise and “neighborhood safety concerns.” 

Hotels in Scarborough and Portland are closing their doors to people who are unhoused for similar reasons. Maine’s homeless population has fewer and fewer places to go – if anywhere to go at all. 

In a better-functioning system, with more dependable routes to being housed, it’s possible to envision people spending short periods of time in this style of temporary shelter while waiting for permanent housing. In Maine, as it stands, it seems more likely that the stay will not be used as a springboard; right now, there’s simply nothing to spring to. 

Despite these misgivings, it’s encouraging to see emergency action being taken in our state. Temporary shelters have obvious redeeming features: heating, insulation, lockability and scope for overnight security, to name a few. Establishing a village of shelters also facilitates the provision of health care and social services. These shelters can help people get through the darkest, most freezing months of the year more safely and securely. In their absence, it’s not clear how they will. 

“It’s getting cold,” Carl Sheline, the mayor of Lewiston, acknowledged on Monday. “As the thermometer starts dropping, there is no question that we need to move quickly to stand up a temporary winter shelter for our region’s unhoused.”

There is no question.