Tedford Housing asks Lincoln County to help fund expanded shelter and services

Andrew Lardy, executive director of Tedford Housing, urged Lincoln County commissioners to consider modest municipal support as his agency expands shelter capacity and regional services.

Lardy described Tedford as the primary emergency-shelter and homelessness-prevention provider for the Southern Midcoast region, serving an estimated catchment of about 200,000 residents across roughly 40 towns. "We're in the middle of building a new facility to expand that," Lardy said, describing the upcoming building as fully ADA accessible with separate wings that will include 24 adult beds, space for 10 families and a total of 64 beds when family and adult beds are combined.

Lardy showed maps and program tallies to illustrate gaps in shelter coverage across the region and said call volumes exceed available beds. He stressed that the agency's core service is case management: "The core thing we do is this thing called case management... someone who knows you, knows your situation... and is gonna help you overcome those obstacles and get on a project trajectory toward stable housing," Lardy said.

On funding, Lardy reviewed the agency's revenue mix and said philanthropy currently represents a large and growing share; municipal and county contributions, he said, have historically been close to zero. "One reasonable target for the way forward is to try to fund a modest share of our expenses... maybe 4% of our costs through municipal and county sources," Lardy said, adding that Lincoln County residents accounted for roughly 6% of the agency's budgetary outlays in recent years according to Tedford's analysis.

Commissioners asked about geographic awareness, local referral connections (including weekly outreach at an Ecumenical Council food pantry in Newcastle), and whether Tedford plans to build additional facilities beyond the Brunswick expansion. Lardy said the agency has no firm plans for additional shelters outside the project under construction but is open to local institutions pursuing community-based solutions; he emphasized staffing and professionalization, noting the agency expects to grow from about 20 staff today toward roughly 40 over six months (about 17 FTE currently to roughly 36 FTE equivalents as operations expand).

Lardy also described warming-center expansions and added daytime amenities to make the resource more welcoming during cold months. He invited commissioners to a mid-November ribbon-cutting and said the expanded facility will begin to take more people off the waitlist but that demand will likely remain high.

No formal county funding decision was taken at the meeting. Commissioners thanked Lardy and signaled they would consider the presentation in future budget and intergovernmental discussions; staff follow-up (clarifying local use counts and potential municipal ask calculations) would be the likely next step.

Provenance: Tedford presentation and related Q&A were recorded in the meeting transcript between SEG 580 and SEG 1361.