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An addiction center in Millinocket pays local hotels to accommodate eight homeless people and acts as a warm-up center during the day.

The Pir2Peer Recovery Community Center has exhausted its own funds and local charitable resources in the process. It’s the first year that homeless people seeking help are coming through the 2-year center.

The opioid crisis has hit the Katahdin area and the rest of Penobscot County hard as a state set a new record last year for overdose deaths. Penobscot County has consistently billed a disproportionate share of these deaths. There are rarely vacancies in the nearest emergency shelters, sober homes and treatment centers in the Bangor area.

Pir2Peer opened in February 2020 at 1009 Central St. in a former car dealership. It is now asking for donations on its website to continue helping people who need it.

Co-founder Michelle Anderson said the opioid crisis has caused people to be cut off from family and friends and become homeless as a result.

All of the people the center is helping are in the early stages of recovery and have ties to the Katahdin area, Anderson said Tuesday. Several are waiting to move into treatment centers or sober homes in Bangor that don’t have immediate openings, she said.

“A woman has been with us since Christmas Eve,” Anderson said. “A couple came today. I’ve been on the phone with all the resources we have in the area.”

The organization has tapped working capital to pay home residents the reduced rate.

“That could become a problem for us later in the year,” she said.

The center has enough food and warm clothes for the people it helps.

But transportation is another issue for people who don’t have vehicles, she said.

“Penquis offers transportation, but we have to give them three days’ notice,” Anderson said. “By then there might be a bed gone.”

The Millinocket Center was modeled after Brewer’s Bangor Area Recovery Network, or BARN, a volunteer-run community center that offers free support groups, parenting programs and recovery coaching.

The Millinocket Center opened with the support of Gordon Smith, Gov. Janet Mills’ director of opioid control. Smith helped the center secure $5,000 in government funds to cover part of the initial cost of renting the 3,000-square-foot building.