Choice Residents are people whose housing will be replaced by new housing built in part by Choice Initiative funding. These residents work closely with Lewiston Housing staff to establish and achieve goals related to education, job training, health, and more. Lewiston Housing staff will also support these residents through their transition from their current housing to new housing.
There are also services supported through the Choice Initiative that will also help improve the lives of Tree Streets residents in addition to the Choice households. We’ve outlined those goals and services below.
- – Increase job training and career planning so people can earn a living wage.
- – Increase quality childcare options to meet family needs.
- – Improve education opportunities and increase academic performance of local youth.
- – Expand healthcare access for people and families.
Increase job training and career planning so people can earn a living wage.
Choice Initiative’s role
Choice Residents: Choice partners are working with Choice Residents to identify Choice Residents’ barriers to employment (including health, dependent care, transportation) and earning goals. Together, employment barriers are addressed, career and earning goals established, and residents are connected to opportunities.
Tree Streets Neighborhood: Choice funding will expand education and job training for Lewiston’s unemployed and underemployed. Choice Partner Strengthen LA will help address barriers to participating in job training so that residents can cultivate careers in various growth sectors. These growth sector jobs potentially stabilize earnings for residents, which contributes to our community economy.
The growth sectors include construction, healthcare, and childcare. In addition to Strengthen LA, our partners in this work are Hebert Construction, B-Street Community Health Center, Tree Street Youth, Promise Early Education Center, Coastal Enterprises, Inc., and Central Maine Community College.
Why it’s important
While nearly 90% of Lewiston’s Tree Streets labor force is employed, the majority of households have a hard time making ends meet. Seasonal, temporary, and low-wage jobs leave people underemployed, uninsured and unable to earn a living wage.
Job placement programs often have elaborate, repetitive, and time-consuming intake systems. Residents need support navigating these intake systems: how to sign up for and participate in programs, where to look and how to find jobs, and how to apply and manage interviews successfully.
Generational poverty among Tree Street residents limits known career and educational options. Supporting residents as they identify their skills and guiding them toward appropriate training and programs will result in better options for obtaining stable, living wages among residents.
More residents with stable income means there are more residents to contribute to institutions like our library and our schools, and help create better infrastructure.
Supporting people toward stable and livable wages benefits everyone. It also enables more citizens to invest in our city, buy homes, and live more healthy lives.
Increase quality childcare options to meet family needs.
Choice Initiative’s role
Responding to community-led priorities, Choice is broadening and improving childcare options: more early childhood education, more second and third shift childcare, more culturally-informed approaches and more locations to best meet the needs of Lewiston’s families.
Early Education
More of Lewiston’s children will be ready to excel in school with the expansion of the Promise Early Education Center. The 50 space expansion is opening up in Summer 2022, with Choice residents receiving first priority. This Head Start program is proven to improve student achievement.
Childcare
Expanding quality childcare in the Tree Streets by five additional locations (about 40 childcare spaces) via partnership with Coastal Enterprises Childcare Business Lab. More childcare facilities also means additional jobs for childcare workers and support for entrepreneurs interested in starting a childcare business.
Why it’s important
Maine’s highest concentration of children five and under live in the Tree Streets. One of the greatest Tree Street resident-identified needs is quality, affordable childcare with flexible hours for working families.
Investing in children is investing in Lewiston’s future. Quality childcare gets children ready for school, which helps set them – and our schools – up for success. Children who attend Head Start have higher test scores, fewer behavioral problems and lower rates of grade repetition.
Quality childcare is also an investment in Lewiston’s workforce: access to affordable, quality childcare enables parents to maintain employment. This increase in supply helps to meet the demand for childcare, benefiting our entire city.
These investments also provide entrepreneurship opportunities for people interested in starting childcare businesses, and more jobs for people who want to work with children.
By investing in childcare and early childhood education, we invest in a Lewiston whose children are thriving academically and whose families are able to earn a living wage.
Improve education opportunities and increase academic performance of local youth.
Choice Initiative’s role
Choice and partner funding will expand academic and mentoring support for local youth through funding staff positions at:
- – Tree Street Youth to guide, support, and troubleshoot family and youth relationships with the public education system, and to coordinate participation in TSY’s out of school enrichment programs.
- – The Root Cellar to engage and mentor Choice resident children and youth in year-round leadership, high school completion, and career building programs.
Why it’s important
Children and teens in the Tree Streets are best served when their energy and time is directed toward fun social academic programs. The majority of Tree Street youth have parents who work leaving many children with less supervision and more free time.
Every child has promise – and these programs help encourage children and teens who need an extra boost to reach their full potential. Children and teens thrive when they have a team of responsive, caring adults who love and support them. These programs will help grow that team and make sure kids are set up for success at school and beyond.
These programs also help create the conditions where our teachers and schools are more successful because students are engaged and learning outside of the classroom.
This helps our whole community: when our kids do better, our schools do better. When our schools do better, more businesses invest in our community and more people move here and contribute to our community.
Increase job training and career planning so people can earn a living wage.
Choice Initiative’s role
Choice Residents: Choice partners are working with Choice Residents to identify Choice Residents’ barriers to employment (including health, dependent care, transportation) and earning goals. Together, employment barriers are addressed, career and earning goals established, and residents are connected to opportunities.
Tree Streets Neighborhood: Choice funding will expand education and job training for Lewiston’s unemployed and underemployed. Choice Partner Strengthen LA will help address barriers to participating in job training so that residents can cultivate careers in various growth sectors. These growth sector jobs potentially stabilize earnings for residents, which contributes to our community economy.
The growth sectors include construction, healthcare, and childcare. In addition to Strengthen LA, our partners in this work are Hebert Construction, B-Street Community Health Center, Tree Street Youth, Promise Early Education Center, Coastal Enterprises, Inc., and Central Maine Community College.
Why it’s important
While nearly 90% of Lewiston’s Tree Streets labor force is employed, the majority of households have a hard time making ends meet. Seasonal, temporary, and low-wage jobs leave people underemployed, uninsured and unable to earn a living wage.
Job placement programs often have elaborate, repetitive, and time-consuming intake systems. Residents need support navigating these intake systems: how to sign up for and participate in programs, where to look and how to find jobs, and how to apply and manage interviews successfully.
Generational poverty among Tree Street residents limits known career and educational options. Supporting residents as they identify their skills and guiding them toward appropriate training and programs will result in better options for obtaining stable, living wages among residents.
More residents with stable income means there are more residents to contribute to institutions like our library and our schools, and help create better infrastructure.
Supporting people toward stable and livable wages benefits everyone. It also enables more citizens to invest in our city, buy homes, and live more healthy lives.
Increase quality childcare options to meet family needs.
Choice Initiative’s role
Responding to community-led priorities, Choice is broadening and improving childcare options: more early childhood education, more second and third shift childcare, more culturally-informed approaches and more locations to best meet the needs of Lewiston’s families.
Early Education
More of Lewiston’s children will be ready to excel in school with the expansion of the Promise Early Education Center. The 50 space expansion is opening up in Summer 2022, with Choice residents receiving first priority. This Head Start program is proven to improve student achievement.
Childcare
Expanding quality childcare in the Tree Streets by five additional locations (about 40 childcare spaces) via partnership with Coastal Enterprises Childcare Business Lab. More childcare facilities also means additional jobs for childcare workers and support for entrepreneurs interested in starting a childcare business.
Why it’s important
Maine’s highest concentration of children five and under live in the Tree Streets. One of the greatest Tree Street resident-identified needs is quality, affordable childcare with flexible hours for working families.
Investing in children is investing in Lewiston’s future. Quality childcare gets children ready for school, which helps set them – and our schools – up for success. Children who attend Head Start have higher test scores, fewer behavioral problems and lower rates of grade repetition.
Quality childcare is also an investment in Lewiston’s workforce: access to affordable, quality childcare enables parents to maintain employment. This increase in supply helps to meet the demand for childcare, benefiting our entire city.
These investments also provide entrepreneurship opportunities for people interested in starting childcare businesses, and more jobs for people who want to work with children.
By investing in childcare and early childhood education, we invest in a Lewiston whose children are thriving academically and whose families are able to earn a living wage.
Expand healthcare access for people and families.
Choice Initiative’s role
Choice is funding renovations at the B-Street Health Center so Choice Partner Community Clinical Services will consolidate and expand medical, behavioral and dental care services in the remodeled B-Street Health Center. This means all services will be at one location in the Tree Streets neighborhood. The renovation will increase overall space available for mental health and dental care, allowing for providers to serve more people.
A Health Access Navigator, partially funded by Choice, will support all 196 Choice Residents. The Health Access Navigator will play a role in health promotion and education making sure Choice Residents are aware of available medical, behavioral and dental services. The navigator will also help residents apply for MaineCare and sliding fee discounts. The Navigator will also help residents bridge gaps in health coverage. B-Street will offer Choice Residents comprehensive, whole person care in one location by one care team that works in a collaborative, patient-centered, evidence based care model.
Choice partners will also fund additional mental health services and substance use disorder treatment services including:
- Expanding the Project Support You partnership with Lewiston Police Department (LPD) and Tri-County Mental Health Services (TCMHS). This funds behavioral health clinicians’ time to respond with law enforcement to emergency calls about people experiencing homelessness, people who need mental health services, and people at risk of or are experiencing a drug overdose.
- Funding LPD’s OPTIONS program with TCMHS which sends a behavioral health clinician with law enforcement to overdose calls to connect people with substance use disorder treatment and to distribute naloxone.
Why it’s important
Access to integrated medical and behavioral health support, especially for people and families who experience the enormous stress of poverty, is critical to their well-being and to their success at school and in the workplace. The high rates of lead poisoning in the Tree Streets also reinforces the need for access to comprehensive healthcare.
Dental care is notoriously expensive – even for people with dental insurance. Maine ranks the worst in the nation for the number of dentists that accept Medicaid (MaineCare). Many have little to no options for dental health outside of the emergency room. Dental care for children is often overlooked because so much of it is preventative, and it costs a lot of money. Oral health is often not considered part of healthcare. However, dental care is healthcare. Good dental care means less long-term health issues later. Moving B-Street Health Center’s dental clinic to its medical clinic location improves access to oral health care and care coordination between medical and oral health care.
The current location of the dental clinic is inaccessible to many vulnerable community members. Because of the small space, less people can see a dentist despite the incredible demand for dental services. Similarly, B-Street Health Center currently has one mental health office available that is shared by a counselor, a child psychiatrist and an adult psychiatrist. This renovation will mean more behavioral health providers can see more patients to meet the demand for services.
Substance use disorder treatment services are necessary to get our fellow neighbors the help they need to move from active use to recovery. Behavioral health clinicians working with the Lewiston Police Department (who are often called to respond to mental health crises and potential overdoses) are critical to our community’s response to substance use disorder. These clinicians help get people on the path to safety through harm reduction, treatment, recovery, and prevention.