Homeless 18 yr old girl -- any ideas?

Just got off the phone with an 18 year old girl who is homeless.  She called Worthington St. Shelter for Women, where she has stayed before, but was told there were no beds available.  Now, this is interesting, because the official policy of Friends of the Homeless, who administers both the men's and the women's shelter, is to never turn anyone away.  So I called Worthington St., and sure enough, it's true she was denied because the shelter is full.  The very nice woman I spoke with, when I mentioned that I thought there was a no turn-away policy, said that that policy needs to change.


"We're seeing the same kind of numbers," she said, "that we usually see in the winter."  We commiserated with each other a bit.  I chose to wait to insist they shelter this girl until I tried some other options.


I have a call into the homeless coordinator at the Springfield School Department, because the girl is still in high school.  I also have a call into Sr. Sanga, who runs Annie's House, although she never has an opening.  Last time I talked to her, she told me that the women just weren't turning over, because they couldn't fuind housing they could afford.


I called my girl back to tell her what I was trying, and to ask her a little more about how she became homeless.


"I've been in a foster home since I was 14, and when I was 18, I was stubborn and signed myself out of DCF custody," she said.  "Then I stayed at the Worthington Shelter for six weeks.  Then I went to stay with a friend in Worcester, but it wasn't safe-- the people in his house do drugs and I don't, it was pretty crazy there."


I suggested she try to sign herself back into DCF-- not easy, but not impossible.


Anyone have other ideas?


With what we know is happening to homeless families, all I can do is echo my girl and say, It's pretty crazy out there.


UPDATE: REALLY, REALLY BAD NEWS!  Friends of the Homeless has a NEW policy-- if you've been staying at one of their shelters and leave for what is considered to be a "housed" situation, you are not eligible for shelter for a year!   My girl is technically in that situation, but I spoke to the director, Bill Miller, who is going to call her and who might be willing to make an exception.


But more bad news: Bill says that those in the overnight shelter are going to have to come up with a housing plan, and if the "guests" are considered to be "noncompliant"(a pretty subjective term),  they will have to leave.  He says there are no time limits on shelter-- yet.


You would think the provider world would be more aware of what happens when you put people in a corner and give them no way out.

Economic Dust Bowl: will we ever recover?

Denoris and Waleska help with the kids

Two of the families we've been advocating with this week have shelter for a while.  They were placed by DHCD and have thirty days to prove they're really "eligible" for shelter. So a call to Gerry McCafferty this week got the ball rolling; HAP helped out; and we got great advice from Mass Law Reform Institute and Western Mass. Legal Services.

Of course it was chaos in the office for three days.  Two young women from the summer jobs program at MCDI really helped out keeping the children amused-- the kids were often tired, hungry and stressed, so it was not an easy job.  Simone, our summer intern from McDuffy, helped out, also.

One problem in getting these families placed was that they both come from out of town.  Turns out that they both also have substantial ties to Springfield-- the dad in one family had been in Springfield for four months, looking for work; meanwhile his family was evicted from their apartment in Buffalo..

Now, as long as I've been doing this work, I've been aware of the urban legends about Massachusetts as a magnet for poor families: signs saying "Come to Massachusetts!" posted in NYC bus terminals and Puerto Rican welfare offices.  No one has ever seen the signs, of course, they've only heard of somebody who heard of somebody who has.

But there's a grain of truth in these stories, although Massachusetts is no more a target than any other state with large urban : poverty breaks the ties a poor family has to its community of origin.  I saw this first right here in Springfield.  Used to be that a family could be pretty close to destitute, renting not owning, and yet stay in the same neighborhood for years, building and maintaining ties with neighbors and local schools and businesses.  The loss of these networks comes at great cost to families that have little in the way of material resources.

We are seeing a migration  similar to the Great Dust Bowl, only now it is not soil that has blown away and farms  taken by the bank, but houses, apartments, jobs, stores, teachers, hospitals, social services-- you name it.  This morning's Boston Globe reports on potentially fatal cuts in day care programs for homeless families.  Mass Home Care says 2,400 low-income elderly will lose services that help them stay in their own home. Just as the widow's mite was so much a larger share of her wealth than what the rich man offered,  so these cuts and others like them are a huge share of what make survival possible.

I really don't know where all this is going-- the economy, the community, the individual lives of the poor.  I do know that  every time we have a "recovery," fewer of us get to recover.

Photo: Liz Bewsee

Tornado of homelessness

Hampden County is on a tornado watch....all I want is a soaking rainstorm and a break from the heat.  OK, that's passed, and now we have a rainbow-- a little like the temporary rainbow for some homeless families today.

Seems like as soon as I wrote that I haven't had much direct contact with homeless people recently, I made a liar out of myself.

Last week we at Arise for Social Justice heard from three different single homeless people about health conditions at Worthington St. shelter.  Dust from the shelter renovations, fans taken out of the shelter space and moved to the basement for the workers (does it have to be a choice?), bedbugs, scabies, and today, a suspected case of MRSA.  I've been trying to cut the shelter some slack, because the Friends of the Homeless corporation is finally getting near to finishing the new construction and renovations that former Mayor Ryan said would be finished two years ago (economic downturn, and all that.)  But this is getting way out of hand. We're trying to figure out what we should do.

Last night I saw a quick TV news story about two families threatening to camp out on the steps of the Liberty St. welfare office because they were homeless and being denied shelter by the Dept of Housing and Community Development homeless unit housed in the building.  Now, this is not a new story; Arise has worked with families in this situation for many years.  Has there been an improvement?  Well, DHCD is in charge of homelessness services instead of the Dept. of Transitional Assistance, but the staffperson is the same.  And I have to believe that the same unwritten rule continues to apply: deny as many as possible to keep the statistics as low as possible.  After all, you can't be counted as homeless if you aren't in a shelter or motel.

This morning I was taking the bicycling Students for a Just and Stable future  over to meet the youth-run Gardening the Community folks (they deserve their own post). I hadn't even had a chance to ask Arise organizer Liz if she'd heard about these two families when a woman from an agency I shall not name stopped at Arise and began to tell Liz there were now three or four other families, also denied shelter, who had joined the first two families.  The woman took our business card and a few flyers back down to  Liberty St.  and most of us left for the garden.  Half an hour later, Liz stopped at the garden, snatched up Dave and Louis, two of our members, and headed down to Welfare.

For the next several hours, Liz advocated, Dave consoled, Louis translated.  The DCHD staffperson came out of her office to tell the families that if they didn't leave right now, she was calling the police and then DCF to come and take their children.  Liz spoke to Western Mass legal Services three times and Gerry McCafferty at the Office for Housing to let her know what was happening.

"I'm calling because you said you would not let any family sleep out on the street," Liz said.

"Let me make some calls," Gerry said.

Liz came back at the office to make more calls, and  I answered the phone when Marsha Crutchfield from HAP called.  She asked how I was and I launched into telling her about the homeless families.  But it turned out she was actually calling to say that HAP would put families up for the night at a motel, and the agency was sending a van to welfare to pick them up!  Liz went back down to welfare to let the families know the good news.  At the end of a long day she went home, only to get a call from the father of one of the families-- the motel wanted a $20 deposit on each room and HAP wouldn't pay.  So she went back down to Welfare and paid the deposit.

At least one poor family was lost in the shuffle.  Yesterday some of our members made contact with a woman who needed help. She come up to the office this morning-- a Puerto Rican woman who may have been only in her fifties was raising her three grandchildren and had become homeless.  She'd already been to Welfare once and been told she wasn't eligible for assistance.I asked if they'd let her fill out an application for Emergency Assistance and she said no.  I told her to go back down to the office and insist she be allowed to apply.  Apparently she did, was denied again, and left in tears before anybody noticed.  I hope she's OK; I hope she comes back.

Six years ago, and for nearly two years, Arise had rented two, three bedroom apartments for families in exactly this predicament.  We ran it until we couldn't afford it anymore, until it broke us, really-- we wound up having to give up our office and operated out of people's houses for a year.  But hey-- we're not service providers, we're organizers.  Other agencies get the big bucks to provide shelter  and it's our job to make sure they do it.

We hear there's a big meeting tomorrow with DCHD, HAP and the City of Springfield.  We had better be invited.  Enough of this baloney.  Enough of the indifference, the threats and the cruelty that had children quaking in fear and parents in despair.  Enough.


Graphic: Banksey, from Chris Dever's photostream at Flickr.

13 Below & no safety net for Springfield's homeless

In Boston, MA, homeless shelters are staying open 24 hours instead of the usual overnight hours until the worst of the cold spell passes.

In Buffalo, NY, the city has opened two warming shelters to handle the overflow of those seeking to get in out of the cold.

In Connecticut, Gov. Rell has ordered the National Guard to open the armories to the homeless.

But in Springfield, MA, the director of the city's largest shelter won't promise no one will be kicked out of the shelter for bad behavior, and won't promise that those who have already been banned will be allowed back in during below zero weather.

"We go on a case by case basis," says Bill Miller, director of the Friends of the Homeless Shelter, one of two shelters for men in the city and the only shelter for women.

One of any shelter's responsibilities to its residents is to keep them safe, and many (but not all) bannings at the Friends of the Homeless Shelter come about because of violent behavior. Fear of violence can keep other homeless people away, so obviously the common good must be preserved. Yet violence in a setting where there is no privacy is almost unavoidable. On Monday, one man told an advocate from the poor people's rights organization Arise for Social Justice that he was sleeping in his cot when someone punched him in the face. Another man told of being asked for a dollar by four other homeless men, and when he said he didn't have a dollar, they attacked him.

Punching a man in the face, however, is not a capital offense, and anyone sent out into the cold is at risk of dying. Men can try to get into the Taylor St. Shelter, which has a limited number of beds and only operates from Monday through Friday. Women who are banned, whether because of theft, violence or possession of drugs, are completely out of luck.

So what's the solution? That's what advocates and some service providers have been asking at the city-sponsored "Homes Within Reach" meetings, which for the past two years have been working on a "Housing First" model to get people out of the shelters and into housing.

Prior to 2004, homelessness was not even on the city's radar screen, but when homeless people organized a tent city with the help of Arise, Springfield officials started to pay attention. The tent city lasted six months, closing only when the Warming Place shelter, operated by Open Pantry Community Services, was able to re-open. But in 2007, facing state cutbacks and with a marked lack of support from the city, OPCS once again was forced to close the Warming Place-- this time, permanently. Nearly ninety people were left scrambling for space in the other shelters. Many just seemed to disappear; some left town; others started camping in hidden places.

One of the city's strategies-- and for a while, it worked-- was to limit the number of homeless in Springfield by limiting the number of shelter beds, and to move the "chronically homeless" into housing. But progress in Springfield-- and indeed, across the country-- is slowing to a crawl as more people become homeless while state and federal resources are being cut.

Recent Homes Within Reach meetings have attempted to organize resources to assist homeless people out on the street, including helping the Springfield Police Department come up with a set of procedures for when it is appropriate to forcibly place a homeless person into protective custody.

But so far, the city and the Friends of the Homeless Shelter have been unable to figure out what to do to preserve the wellbeing of those who have been banned.

The following email from Kevin Noonan, director of the Open Pantry Community Services to the Homes Within Reach committee members, gives an inside look at the politics of homelessness and points out the limitations of the city's approach-- limitations that may cost someone his life.

Four years ago Larry Dunham died on the steps of Springfield's Symphony Hall. After Mr. Dunham died, the then mayor of the city of Springfield, whose office window overlooked the Symphony Hall steps, told us all in january 2004, this was indeed a tragedy and adequate shelter space would be developed as soon as possible!

Since then we have witnessed the number of shelter beds, available in the city, deliberately reduced and we have repeatedly heard this touted as a celebrated accomplishment. There have even been glossy brochures boasting wonderful successes which include a depiction of people who are homeless, who managed to peacefully shelter and care for themselves on our postage stamp of a parking lot in an encampment known as Sanctuary City (which demonstrated more racial harmony than the city as a whole) as an example of one of the low points of "where we have been" and "how much better we can do than that".

A snapshot / a point in time count in 2008, which calculated 39% fewer people than a previous point in time count one year before it (visible on the streets), became an urban myth, repeated in the local and national media and again in the glossy promotional brochure, that street homelessness in Springfield, MA has been reduced by 39% thanks to a new housing first strategy. Yet over two years into a housing first strategy, which was used to justify the reduction of shelter beds, approximately 70 housing first vouchers which were issued to Springfield by HUD remain unused and people who are without homes still languish on the waiting list and in many cases, on the streets of Springfield.

Since the closure of the Warming Place in June 2007, over a dozen people who once resided there, are now dead, though clearly not all of them died from hypothermia or hyperthermia. While we wholeheartedly agree with a "housing first" strategy and we have personally participated in the development of permanent affordable housing over the last twenty years, it is a strategy that cannot sink its anchor into the bodies of people who once trusted us to hold onto the safety net below them.

At the last solstice, we got together to mourn those who died in 2008. the length of the list and the ages of the people who had died was deeply disturbing.

After more than two decades of obfuscation, amid repeated assertions that no one is turned away, there is still no public acknowledgment or accountability regarding people who are banned from the only government funded shelter for individuals in Springfield, and it is difficult to accurately ascertain why they are banned or for how long.

The city, as a conduit for federal government funds to the agency which operates the only government funded shelter for individuals within its boundaries is probably best suited to set up a system for monitoring who is banned, why and for how long etc. this could be done with signed releases of information and without compromising confidentiality. City officials might even be in a position to take proactive steps to guarantee the safety of individuals they know in advance are banned, or they might be able to broker the re-entry to the shelter of some of these individuals, or perhaps even function as a point of appeal.

Instead, the repeated e-mail messages or calls over the last two years, sent by me or by Open Door Director Theresa O'connor, and Loaves & Fishes director, outlining specific problems or complaints alleged by guests have been met with a startling silence which only seems to continue to put lives at risk and leave all parties feeling very frustrated.

The procedures outlined in the earlier e-mail from Ms. McCafferty (director of Homeless and Special Needs Housing) are indeed confusing. We are now instructed to first contact the shelter to see if a person is indeed banned before we move onto the next step: i.e. determining if they were appropriately discharged from the last place they resided. As I understand it, only then should we contact Rev. Greg Dyson, and preferably via e-mail. He then may be able to help provide a room in a motel (for one night - maybe more?) or may be able to help us work out some other solution? all this while not revealing to people who are homeless that this remedy is even a possibility!

Last night at about 6:30 p.m. I was called by Marion Hohn of Western Mass Legal Services, who had encountered a woman sitting in one of the doorways of a downtown restaurant. despite a warm restaurant teeming with patrons chatting, sipping drinks and enjoying themselves this woman (K) sat just outside one of the doors, slowly freezing. She was intoxicated, wearing a light jacket and an oversize pair of overalls with broken clips. She was unable to keep her overalls up without exposing her bare hands to the bitter cold and when she couldn't bear the stinging cold on her hands and chose to warm them next to her body her pants would fall to her knees, revealing she not only lacked thermal underwear, but that she had none at all. Thanks to the Red Cross' People's Center, she was at least wearing a hat. Although she described the hat as ugly it may well have helped to save her life.

K was alternately agitated and despondent. Her body temperature, in my opinion, was beginning to descend into a state of hypothermia. We convinced her to walk with us down to the Crown Chicken pizza shop to try to help her warm up and to give her something to eat and drink. K would not agree to let us contact an ambulance and she claimed she was afraid to go to the Friends of the Homeless shelter (although she said she had not been banned from the facility) because she feared for her safety from other residents.

I absolutely appreciate Rev. Dyson's willingness to help out with resources and I suspect, more often than not, those resources come from his own pocket and they are given selflessly, from the heart, with love and compassion. I also appreciate the resources that have regularly been made available by Rev. Jack Desroches and his associates, most likely also from their own pockets, and ditto from Rev. Jim Munroe and members of his congregation, or from the folks who go out on the streets each week to search for people who are homeless, and many other folks, including members of the mobile outreach team or the police department, other agencies and our own staff who are committed to saving lives. I deeply admire and respect each of them for their willingness to do whatever it takes.

That said, I absolutely believe it is not a viable city policy to simply acknowledge the good will and support of these committed and loving individuals and tell us to seek them out whenever we encounter people on the streets, after we have called a shelter to determine if they "really are banned" and after we have determined if they were "appropriately discharged from the last place they stayed" and presumably we should not contact Rev. Dyson -- or any of these other kind people, if there has been, in someones estimation, an inappropriate discharge?

It was way too cold to do all that yesterday evening (and then send an e-mail and hope for a reply) while standing on the street with a woman in crisis. In these temperatures we also can not engage in what I believe was termed by Ms. McCafferty in our last meeting as "push back" or wait to hear what Rev. Dyson referred to in his last e-mail as being sent "back to the drawing board" if someone thinks the last place to accommodate this individual engaged in "inappropriate discharge planning". Btw: is banning someone and sending them out into the bitter winter cold of New England considered an "appropriate discharge"?

One of the reasons for not making public the list of people who are banned is presumably confidentiality, or that the list, according to Mr. Miller, is "an internal document". If this is the case, why then are we now told that on an ad hoc basis, when we encounter someone half naked and freezing to death on the streets of Springfield, we can dial into the shelter (if we have a cell phone with us) and expect to be granted an update on a person's confidential status on the shelter's "internal document" also known as the "banned list". It was stated in our last meeting that there is at least one name (perhaps more I can't recall) on that list for an individual(s) who is permanently banned.

If any of the clergy or people in our community can help or are available, of course we will attempt to contact them to see what can be done. We have done this in the past and will continue to do so. yet their kindness and goodwill should not and cannot be the official response on the part of the city of Springfield. certainly not four years after finding Larry Dunham's frozen corpse at the portal of music and culture for the city of homes and definitely not thirty five+ years after the onset of this epidemic in Springfield which has witnessed people languishing on the streets year after year.

We should be ashamed of our collective failure to not have a more responsive policy. Icannot possibly believe that taking advantage of the love and compassion of these well meaning and hardworking clergy and others is the only appropriate city wide response in 2009! We acknowledge the right of the only government funded shelter for individuals who are homeless to exclude people on occasion for various behavioral reasons but what we cannot and will not accept is that the appropriate consequence of that exclusion is: "see if you can survive on the streets tonight" or "tomorrow night" or "until we say so" or "for a longer period of time if you choose to argue with us about the matter" as some have alleged.

There absolutely needs to be a clear and unambiguous policy and preferably an easily accessible place for people (who are at risk of dying on the streets) to seek refuge if further fatalities are to be avoided. Although we and others did our best to secure a safe place for K to stay last night who knows where she will be tonight, which of us will encounter her and what her body temperature will be when meet her. We really don't need additional names for the memorial list.

Peace, Kevin

PS - For those who wish to attend: there will be a memorial service for Bill Conners, on Friday afternoon at 1:00 p.m. at Christ Church Cathedral, 35 Chestnut St. Bill, who was a very nice man, collapsed and died of a massive heart attack in December.

Set up at the Control Board

Angry and disgusted. Furious and cynical. Bitter and determined. Not surprised and yet somehow still blown away at the machinations of city government.

I went to the Springfield Finance Control Board meeting this morning to show support for the Open Pantry in its current struggle to feed the poor people of this city, along with Behzad, Ellen, Liz and Doug with Arise.. The Open Pantry was there to ask for some short-term financial help from the city I saw Bill Miller, Director of Friends of the Homeless, Paul Bailey, Director of Springfield Partners for Community Action and Gerry McCafferty, deputy director of Springfield's Homeless and Special Needs Housing across the room.

Chairman Chris Gabrieli phoned in to say he was stuck on the turnpike in a rainstorm, so the meeting, which was supposed to start at 10:30, didn't get going until after 11 am. By then I was close to having to leave for another meeting, so OP Director Kevin Noonan gave his spot to me and he took my spot later on. Finally the public speak-out began.

Most of the people who eat at Loaves and Fishes and get food from the Food Pantry are not homeless, I said in part of my three minutes, just too poor to avoid hunger on their own-- nothing very profound, just the truth-- and that we as a society are judged by how we provide for those who have the least. Then Liz and I had to leave, though I wanted to stay.

As I was pulling out on the parking garage onto Columbus Ave. to the first red light., Bill Miller pulled up beside me in his car.

"Did Chris Gabrieli ever show up?" he said. So I knew he had left even before the speak-out.

"Yeah, he got there," I said. "Says he'll have to start staying overnight in Springfield." Then the light changed.

My sister gave me a look.

"Somehow, in spite of everything, I've managed to keep a civil relationship with Bill Miller," I said.

The rest of this story I've reconstructed from people who stayed at the Control Board meeting,

Kevin presented to the Control Board (in the speak-out, even though he'd asked to be on the agenda) about who the Open Pantry serves and what kind of help the agency needs to keep going.

Then James Morton called on Gerry McCafferty, who said that if the Open Pantry was no longer able to serve, that other agencies would step up and provide the services. She said that Friends of the Homeless serves 300 people on Sunday (?) and would be able to handle the Soup Kitchen. She said that Springfield Partners for Community Action would be able to take over the Food Pantry. (SPCA currently rents space to the Open Pantry for the Pantry) and Paul Bailey confirmed that. then she said that of course, if FOH and SPCA were to do so, they would need to get money. Gabrieli agreed and said the city would have to put out a Request for Proposals.

So let me get this straight: They won't give the money to the Open Pantry but they will give the money to FOH and SPCA to provide the same service.

If this doesn't completely indicate the malice of the city toward the Open Pantry, I don't know what does. And agencies, which once upon a time stood in solidarity with each other, stab each other in the back.

Of course the city would be more than thrilled to have the Soup Kitchen out of Christ Church Cathedral and as hidden away as possible. (Carol Costa, who lives at the Classical Condos right across the street from the Cathedral, was also there, chatting away with Gerry McCafferty.)

FOH's eating space is quite small and its kitchen underequipped. Will people eat in shifts? Will a queue stretch down the stairs and into the parking lot? Will the people who eat there have enough time to chat with each other, or be rushed right along? How many people won't be able to get there at all, given that FOH is less central? And, let's face it, will families with children be comfortable going to a setting dominated by homeless adult males?

I see James Morton quoted on Channel 3 tonight saying the city can't give the money to the Open Pantry, because of an "Anti-AID" amendment that supposedly prohibits the city from giving money to non-profit agencies. How will the city then get the money to whichever agencies apply to the Request for Proposals? Is there not even one non-profit which has received city money in the past? I doubt it.

I won't write more now. There's a lot to think about.

Fewer homeless counted this year than last year in Springfield

Mayor Sarno and Gerry McCafferty, deputy director of the Office for Housing, had some good news to announce to the press yesterday: there are 37 fewer single people homeless this year than last year.

The Housing First model, which prioritizes housing and services for the city's most entrenched homeless people, seems to be paying off. The strategy is to house those 10% of the homeless who use the most resources, leaving more resources for the other 90%.

There's a lot I think is missing from the Housing First model-- like new housing!-- but what is very different in Springfield now compared to three years ago is that the city has a plan. Homeless people and allies have moved the city from ignoring homelessness to managing it. Too bad homeless people can't be a part of that "management," but how often does that get to happen? Maybe only in tent cities....

George Graham from the Republican called me yesterday for any thoughts I had about this news, but I didn't have a lot to say. My organization, Arise for Social Justice, hasn't been organizing with homeless people since the end of May, when we had to close our headquarters and the Warming Place shelter was forced to close. Arise has never been a smoke and mirrors organization; as old saw as it sounds, our authority comes from the people and we won't have much to say until we're doing the work again. That won't be much longer, I hope. Next week we're painting over the "Coming Soon" above Arise for Social Justice.

Earlier this week I ran into a woman, Ethel, who's known Arise since we were in our first home, 718 State St., twenty years ago. Now we're back on State! I start to tell her about it, and she says, "I know, I go by it every day on the bus. When can I stop in?"
"Soon, very soon," I say.

Happy Birthday, Mitch Snyder

Belated, actually-- his birthday was a couple of weeks ago. God, I miss him. Mitch, a hardcore homeless and housing activist, is one of my heroes.

He came to Arise in 1988 and convinced us to turn out as many people as we could for a Washington, D.C. demonstration taking place the next year in support of the National Affordable Housing Act. This was a challenge for a poor people's organization, but, with other allies in Western Mass, we did it. I still have a picture of our group at the march, holding a Western Mass banner high and proudly, It's hung in my various offices for eighteen years.


"On July l4, 1988, attention and support for the "National Affordable Housing Act" was generated through actions in over seventy cities across the U.S.A. Most involved building take overs and other acts of civil disobedience.n October of 1989 the movement that Snyder helped create brought over 140,000 people to Washington to demand increased federal support for affordable housing.

Less than a year after that march on Washington Snyder was dead. He committed suicide in July of 1990." First Church Shelter, Cambridge.

This site talks about the accomplishments of Mitch's hunger fasts and acts of non-violent civil disobedience. I think Jim Stewart must have written it-- we had a chance to work together many years ago.

Mitch has been much on my mind these days, especially since Gerry McCafferty, the city's coordinator of homeless and special needs housing, mentioned Mitch in her opinion piece on homelessness in the Republican the Sunday before last. It turns out that Gerry was at that D.C. demonstration with Mitch, too. What she described as her most enduring memory of the day was being in a civil disobedience action and being yelled at by Rep. Barney Frank, D-MA, one of the sponsors of the housing legislation, who told Mitch and her group was undermining support for the bill.

Gerry told this story as part of explaining why she was now seemingly on the other side-- working within the system.

My most enduring memory of the day was the sea of people, most poor, many homeless, feeling a sense of our power, feeling hope and belief in the possibility of change.

And, after all, the legislation did pass. I'll bet Barney Frank even voted for it.

I love the way people like Gerry have such selective memories about the role of poor people in social change, and about the use of direct action, civil and otherwise, as a catalyst for that change.

Was homelessness even on the city of Springfield, Massachusetts' radar before Larry Dunham froze to death? Was there a plan before homeless people organized a tent city in the spring that lasted six months? I know there was not.

Recently I went back and reread the entire Homes within Reach document, the city's plan to end chronic homelessness within ten years. The plan does well making use of scarce resources to accomplish as much as possible. However, one resource left totally untapped is homeless and at-risk.people themselves.

I was supposed to be on that task force, along with Christina, one of the leaders of Sanctuary City. We were each at a couple of meetings, but then somehow never got notices....I'd call Russ Denver's office, then chair of the task force and still head of the Springfield Chamber of Commerce, and ask when the next meetings were taking place...but we never heard...and then we heard there was a draft plan and it could be revised....but you know what it's like, once the solution is framed, all that's allowed after that is fine-tuning. (Nothing like splitting into subcommittees to limit the real number of decision-makers.

At the heart of all of this, of course, is class prejudice and self-interest, manifesting as the need to control those deemed lesser than you who are also perceived as a threat to your well-being.

Why else would human service workers talk about "servicing" people?
Why else would the Department of Transitional Assistance call a family in need "an assistance unit?"
Why else would the desires of homeless people be discounted so that those who "know better"can make the decisions?

The city is happy, now; the powers that be have had their way, the Warming Place shelter has been forced to close and the plan to end homelessness is underway. I hope the best of it succeeds, but the "managing" and "handling" of homeless people makes me sick.

Tonight when I was looking up a few facts about Mitch, I stumbled on a blog called Apesmas' Lament-- and a post just written on July19!--about the writer's memories of Mitch Snyder. It's a great piece and deserves reading. He talks about the Port of Seattle's refusal to sell to King County 162 apartments that could be made available to desperately poor people, choosing instead to demolish them. He ends by asking, "I wonder what Mitch would do?"

That's one of the questions I ask myself. Now, when many poor people start asking that question.....

Homeless man loses bid for injunction to keep shelter open

Well-- a straight-sounding headline-- but I hardly feel objective about what happened in Housing Court today.

Ali Mohammed, a guest at the Warming Place shelter for the last few months, did his best to speak up for homeless people and explain to Judge Fein why it was important to them that the Warming Place stay open.

He was there to request an injunction prohibiting the city from closing the Warming Place. Sue Venne, another Warming Place guest, was added last minute as a plaintiff, but really every one of the twenty homeless people in the courtroom was a plaintiff.

I didn't expect him to prevail. The Open Pantry, which runs the Warming Place, lost a similar attempt last Thursday. This time, however, the shelter was a defendant along with the city, and I'm sure Kevin Noonan, OP director, had a few odd feelings in the city's company.

Everybody was there-- Gerry McCafferty, head of the Homeless and Special Needs Housing, two attorneys for the city, the head of the building department, Bill Miller, director of the Friends of the Homeless, one of the two shelters remaining in the city, the president of F.O.H.'s board of Directors, Bob Carroll-- some others I don't remember-- all on one side-- the city's.

On the other side were twenty Warming Place residents, Warming Place staff and a few advocates.

Ali told a simple story, with three main points: the Friends of the Homeless shelter was unsafe and would be overcrowded, some people had been banned from the Friends previously and had nowhere to go, and the Warming Place residents and staff were like a family and needed more time to transition to the other shelters.

Four other WP guests testified, all telling similar stories. One man got a bit emotional when talking about his friend who had recently been found dead on a park bench.

Coincidentally, the Friends' shelter's basement had flooded the night before in a heavy rain, and their shelter's guests had had to be moved upstairs. Leaks at the shelter are old news and a problem that's never been successfully resolved, although I'm sure the shelter is working on it.

That flood was not enough, however, to convince the judge. She asked the people who testified how long it had been since they'd stayed at the Friends' shelter, and felt no one had recent enough experience to judge the shelter now.

The city defended itself, saying all the right things, all very credible.

The judge excused herself for deliberation.

Then came that moment when people started to believe, as improbable as it was, that the truth might speake louder than the evidence and that justice would prevail.

But that was not to be.

Sometime just before the judge came back to deliver her decision, I looked around and saw that the security guards in the courtroom had increased from two to five. I was not the only one who noticed, either. I thought it was an insult to the homeless people who were present, who had come to court clean and well-dressed and who had behaved with complete appropriateness.

Judge Fein came back and denied the injunction. I saw shoulders fall throughout the room. The judge suggested that the Warming Place folks meet with Gerry McCafferty to find out about availability of housing subsidies, and offered her courtroom for the remainder of the afternoon. The Bailiff said "All rise" and we all rose. The judge left the bench and it was over.

Gerry called out that people could come and talk to her, but as far as I could tell, no one did. It was the wrong moment. People needed the dignity of their defeat.

The homeless people who spoke up today were very brave. Many of them know they will wind up having to stay at the very shelter they criticized. I could see some people's thoughts turning to where they were going to stay that night.

I continue to be saddened by how people with power silence the voices of the homeless and devalue and dismiss homeless people's loyalty to each other. Yeah, sometimes they'll stab each other in the back but they're more likely to be watching each other's back, as best as they can. And that's what I felt today.

I want to close this by remembering that no matter how sad I am, no matter how bad I feel, tonight I get to be at home, typing these words.

City now in complete control of sheltering homeless

On Friday, Housing Court Judge Dina Fein gave the go-ahead for the City of Springfield to evict the Warming Place shelter from its home at the old York St. jail. Seems like Monday night or Tuesday might be the last night for the shelter.

You can read why she reached her decision and what it means at MassLive. I didn't think the Open Pantry, which runs the Warming Place, had much chance of stopping the eviction, and it was clear that Judge Fein didn't know enough about the politics of homelessness in this city to read between the affidavits. In any case, she based her decision on whether "irreparable harm" would take place if the shelter closed.

The city now pretty much controls, albeit indirectly, who shelters homeless people in Springfield.

The Springfield Rescue Mission, which has proudly stood behind its principle of not taking government money, was able to reopen (for 36 sober, well-behaved men) when donations were made by the business community at the behest of the city.

The Friends of the Homeless, with much of its board appointed by the city, and which used to include the current head of the city's Homeless and Special Needs Housing Gerry McCafferty, has added 54 beds in its basement and is prepared to add more in its soup kitchen.

Now that The Friends of the Homeless has won the sheltering contract that used to go to the Warming Place, the city assured Judge Fein that Director Billl Miller would no longer direct his staff to refuse referrals from outside Springfield (that would be a contract violation). The message was that homeless people staying at the Warming Place had better hurry up and relocate, before the "out-of-town" homeless get their beds.

So the city says we now have exactly enough new shelter beds to shelter everyone after the Warming Place is evicted. The numbers look good but but what this means is that the city wants NO VACANCIES at any Springfield shelter.

If the city and the business community had its way, not a single homeless or poor person would ever be seen downtown. Not only has Open Pantry's Warming Place been forced out, its Loaves and Fishes Soup Kitchen and Food Pantry, housed at two downtown churches, are also under pressure to move.

I'm going down to the Warming Place tomorrow night to talk to shelter guests. I do want to let them know that to the degree Arise can help, we will-- can't get people apartments, or give people money, but we will stand with people. I want their transition to other shelters to be as trouble-free as possible. At the same time, they have the right to be treated with dignity, to organize to have a voice, and to be included in the new shelter communities.

What will happen from this point on is not entirely predictable.

Shelter's request for injunction to be heard tomorrow

I will be in Springfield Housing Court tomorrow at 9 am. to support Open Pantry Community Services' effort to halt its shelter's eviction from the old York St. jail by the City of Springfield. If weather permits, we will walk from the Warming Place shelter at 8 am. If you're in the area and want to join us, please do.

I can't say I feel hopeful at tomorrow's outcome but the struggle is a worthy one and I'm proud that the Open Pantry is willing to go as far as it can on behalf of homeless people.

Our local public radio station, WFCR, covered the shelter issue in today's news, interviewing first Kevin Noonan, Open Pantry's executive director, and then Gerry McCafferty, director of the city's Homeless and Special Needs Housing department.

Gerry, responding to a criticism of beds at a different shelter by one of Warming Place's residents, said, " For us to be arguing about what that shelter is like seems to be missing the point. I think there's bigger issues we could be talking about, like affordable housing and not whether these beds are as nice as those beds."

Well, I am more than ready to talk about housing, and I think a lot of people in this city feel the same way.

Last September, the city's "Homes within Reach" plan included supplying 250 new housing units, BUT no construction of new housing.

Can Gerry or the city's new Director of Housing and Neighborhood Services tell me how many new units of affordable housing have been created in the last twenty years? I would venture the answer is close to zero.

And how many units of affordable housing have been lost in the same period?

This year is the 20th anniversary of the Stewart B.McKinney Homeless Assistance Act, which funds many of the city's initiatives.

"The McKinney Act has done some good for some people but it has not significantly reduced homelessness across the country. How could it? A $1.4 billion a year homelessness budget cannot compensate for a $52 billion a year reduction in affordable housing," says Paul Boden in "Homeless pitted against homeless" in Tuesday's San Francisco Chronicle.

For the first time in decades, federal funding for the construction, preservation and rehabilitation of affordable housing might be in the works. The National Affordable Housing Trust Fund Act of 2007, H.R. 2895, was recently endorsed by the New York Times. The National Low-Income Housing Coalition, a major force behind the bill, has a list of bill sponsors and they're looking for more. I notice that Congressman Richard Neal's name is not on it, nor the name of any other Massachusetts congressman. Has anyone in our city government asked Neal to sign on? I certainly intend to do so.

Tonight CNN reported that 20% of Mexico's population lives in poverty and yet millionaires abound! Well, in Springfield more than 25% of our residents live below the poverty line, and I'd venture that 40% of us struggle to meet all our expenses each month. With the percentage of their income that we 40% pay for rental housing, any catastrophe-- lost job, broken car, building fire, funeral expenses-- could put us over the edge into homelessness.

A rumor of housing

I hear the city's homeless director, Gerry McCafferty, was hanging out in the parking lot of the Warming Place shelter last night, telling the guests going in for the night that there was plenty of shelter at Friends of the Homeless and the Springfield Rescue Mission. Gee, she could have gone inside. Whenever I've wanted to pass out flyers for Arise at the Warming Place, I've gone in and asked permission. A few times I forgot and just went in.

I hear if you want to stay at the Rescue Mission's Taylor St. shelter, you have to take a breathalyzer test, can't bring in food or a radio, and have to participate in evening prayer, preaching and discussion.

I hear a guy from Mental Health Associates went down to the Warming Place tonight and told people that if they could find apartments, the city would come up with first, last and security for rent, to forget about that "other program." Some folks were upset. "Wait, I was on that waiting list!" It all seemed very confusing to the homeless.

If this is true-- this idea of first, last and security-- its a good idea for all the wrong reasons and won't work without planning and support and won't work for everybody anyway. As things stand now, it's an act of desperation on the part of the city and Mayor-- anything they can come up with to empty the shelter before the Warming Place's hearing on its injunction Friday to keep from being evicted by the city.

To think that there were times when I actually had some faith in the goodwill of the city officials and business leaders that were going to make sure nobody went unsheltered after June 30. The last of that faith evaporated at the May 22 Emergency Shelter Committee meeting. "Well, the fix is really in," I remember saying. "You all know exactly how this is going to turn out."

Shelter seeks injunction against city to prevent closure.

GOD HELPS THOSE WHO HELP THEMSELVES: This Sunday morning, which was to be the Warming Place shelter's last morning, friends are invited to come and join in a prayer vigil at 8:30 am. All friends are welcome

This Friday, Open Pantry Community Services, which runs the shelter, is taking the City of Springfield, MA to court, seeking an injunction which will stop the forced closing of the shelter.

The city has put the squeeze on the Open Pantry and homeless people for some time. First Church, Court Square, had offered to let the Warming Place stay in their basement for a few weeks. This is not acceptable to the city. A few days ago, Gerry McCafferty, head of the city's Office of Homeless and Special Needs Housing, told OP's director Kevin Noonan that Mayor Ryan would consider it an act of political protest if the shelter moved to the church.

Political protest is about all that's worked when it comes to getting the city's attention focused on solving homelessness! It took two homeless men freezing to death and a tent city that lasted six months and housed 400 different people before a real planning process began.

Now that there is some progress to show, seems like those who've been on the front lines defending the homeless, as well as the homeless themselves, will now pay the price. But the Open Pantry, at least, is not going quietly. I can't resist putting in the entire text of the injunction.

Open Pantry Community Services vs. City of Springfield, MA Acting By and Through its Office of Housing and Neighborhood Services.

The plaintiff is the provider of essential food, shelter and emergency housing services to those otherwise homeless residents of the City of Springfield, Massachusetts who are poor or homeless.

The plaintiff has been providing its services to 90 to 102 persons a night under funding provided by both the City and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts pursuant to certain Community Development Block Grants (the “CDBG Funds) and private donations since September 2005 through March 2006. In March 2006 Open Pantry was awarded a contract for $400,800 in Emergency Assistance (EA “funds”) funds through the State Department of Transition Assistance (the “DTA”).

In the providing of its services Open Pantry had been utilizing the City’s facility located on West Columbus Avenue, more commonly known as the former York Street Jail.

Since March 2006, as a requirement of the Department of Transitional Assistance, the City issued temporary occupancy permits to the plaintiff which it permitted to operate and provide its homeless housing services.

Since the issuance of the first temporary occupancy permit, the City has intentionally issued subsequent temporary occupancy permits which allow fewer and fewer persons to be sheltered at the facility when the actual number of such persons has remained constant or been increasing.

The current temporary occupancy permit expires on June 30, 2007 after which there will no longer be shelter beds available at the former York Street jail.

Upon information and belief, the City has engaged in a specific plan and scheme to reduce the number of available beds and to remove or reduce the shelter facilities which provides spaces to those persons who are at great risk and in need.

The City has failed to provide reasonable alternative shelters and/or housing for those persons presently being cared for at the former York Street Jail.

One alternative shelter facility proposed by the City is religious and sectarian in nature, discriminates against women, and has a requirement that all occupants be “well behaved.”

The City claims that the plaintiff may no longer use the former York Street Jail; and that it must be closed in order for certain asbestos abatement work to commence.

Any purported asbestos abatement work is in a separate building (connected by a corridor with sealing doors at each end) pof the former York Street jail.

Upon information and belief, no contract has been awarded by the City and/or no asbestos abatement work has been scheduled at the former York Street Jail.

The allegations of the City regarding asbestos abatement work and the need to close the facility are but a mere pretext for the underlying purpose of reducing and limiting the number of available shelter beds within the City of Springfield.

The City, by refusing to extend the temporary occupancy permit, caused the plaintiff to lose its eligibility for State Department of Transitional Assistance and ESG funding.

On or about June 18, the City assured the plaintiff that it would fund and provide a site in which to operate through the fall of 2007.

The plaintiff attempted to resolve the problem with the City by engaging in numerous meetings and discussions after which the City ultimately regeged on its promises and assurances.

There is a great likelihood of immediate and irreparable harm to the plaintiff, its staff and to those vulnerable people in whose care the plaintiff is charged and responsible unless the requested relief is granted.

Maintaining the status quo will not be more burdensome or detrimental to the defendant than to the plaintiff as the defendant has failed to demonstrate its ability to provide care and facilities for the homeless persons at the York Street Jail.

THEREFORE, the plaintiff respectfully requests:

the Court maintain the status quo by enjoining the eviction or relocation of the current occupants being cared for by the plaintiff at the former York Street Jail.

the Court order the City to issue a temporary occupancy permit for the former York Street Jail for 100 persons a night from May 17, 2007 through December 31, 2007 or until further order of the Court.

the Court enjoin the City from interfering with the plaintiff’s application process requesting State Emergency Shelter Grant funds.

the Court order the City to cause to be issued to the plaintiff its Federal Emergency Shelter Grant funds in the amount of $60,000 from the federally funded state funds and $20,000 from the City’s existing funds.

For such other relief as is just and proper. By Norman C. Michaels, Esquire

What part of "Safety Net" don't you understand?

I was trying to reach Ron Willougby, director of the Springfield Rescue Mission, today-- tried three times but he was on the phone, in a meeting, or just left.

With anybody else, I'd think he was blowing me off, but not Ron. Ron is reopening the Taylor St. Shelter, which has been open the last two years as a winter-only.shelter for sober men. It had closed, as scheduled, on May 31, but just when the city has having to do some real scrambling to figure out how to shelter homeless people after their planned eviction of Warming Place shelter June 30, Ron announced that he was reopening Taylor St.

Seeing that the Springfield Rescue Mission does not take any funding from the city or state, I wondered if the mission had come into a windfall. Really, I just wanted to know how long Ron could keep it open.

"So maybe you can answer a question for me," I said to the very nice man who told me Ron had just left, "I understand you're reopening Taylor St?"

"Yes, we are," he answered.

"How long are you planning to stay open?"

His voice deepened over the seriousness of what he was about to say.

"Well, we have no funds. We're going through prayer to get the money."

"Well, good luck to you," I said, which, now that I think about it, was probably not appropriate to say.

I don't blame Ron or the Rescue Mission for reopening the shelter-- their motive, as it says on their website, is "to meet the physical and spiritual needs of the hungry, homeless, addicted and poor by introducing them to Christ and helping them apply the Word of God to every area of their lives." Fewer people will be unsheltered because of Taylor St.

But I continue to be astounded that Mayor Ryan and Gerry McCafferty, head of the Office for Homeless and Special Needs Housing, are willing to let the "safety net" plan and the well-being of the homeless depend on divine intervention.

(painting by deb hoeffner)

Homeless man found dead in Springfield; is this just the beginning?

Bad news all around for homeless people in Springfield today: a man has died and the state has made a decision which could lead to the deaths-- and will certainly lead to the misery-- of more homeless people.

A homeless man was found dead on a park bench in Riverfront Park today. The police don't believe foul play was involved. He was 46 years old and his name is not being released until his family can be notified.

"Whoever he is, I know him," my sister said, already mourning, just not knowing for whom. She works at the Warming Place shelter.

Now the other bad news: as of June 30, the Warming Place shelter will no longer be funded by the state, the city of Springfield can evict the program, and then the city will demolish the old jail that's been the Warming Place's home since September, 2005.

When the numbers of the homeless clash with the politics of the city, the homeless lose.

The contract to provide 85 beds for the homeless which has been the Open Pantry's (the Warming Place's parent) for the last three years will go instead to the Friends of the Homeless. Problem is, only 54 beds will be new; the rest of the contract will be used to pay for beds. F. O. H. provides but isn't paid for. Seeing as the Warming Place has been sheltering about 100 people a night, 46 will be left without shelter. Over at F.O.H. half of the 54 people will be housed in the basement and half in the room that is usually the soup kitchen for the shelter. And the rest? And anyone new who becomes homeless? The city says it'll have some housing vouchers available in September, if they can find landlords.

What a mess. Gerry McCafferty, the city's Homeless and Special Needs Housing Coordinator, recently admitted at a meeting I was at that the city intends to have "no excess capacity" in shelter beds. So it seems like the city's plan is moving right along.

For years, through every administration I can remember, the city has rejected affordable housing and neglected the homeless. For years the Friends of the Homeless was run by the crook Frannie Keough and everybody knew it but nothing was done until the F.B.I. stepped in.

That history began to change when only a few days into Mayor Ryan's first term, a homeless man froze to death on the steps of Symphony Hall. It has not been all uphill-- Sanctuary City, a tent city run by the homeless with others helping, filled a six month shelter gap-- but once the city began its Ten Year Planning Process, there was a chance for continued, small gains.

Now I believe that Mayor Ryan and those who work for him have manipulated the process and the outcome every step of the way. At least one of their goals is to eliminate the Warming Place shelter because its director, Kevin Noonan, has been unfailingly faithful to sheltering the homeless. That makes him a radical and radicals are not wanted in Springfield.

The end of this chapter is marked by another death.

Correction on Numbers; Why Doesn't It Seem to Matter?

Gerry McCafferty, the city's Homeless and Special Needs Housing Coordinator, corrected my housing voucher numbers from Monday's post-- I wrote 100 vouchers, and Gerry reminded me that it's actually 140-- 40 people were placed into housing-- earlier this year?-- through a program run by Mental Health Associates.

I tend to forget those 40 vouchers because they seem to have had no impact on the number of people in shelter.

In the short-term, my attention is focused on June 30-- that's the day the city is forcing the closing of the Warming Place shelter at the old York St. jail. Maybe the WP will find a place to relocate, maybe it won't-- but the bottom line is that the city is willing to risk a number of people being shelterless and the remainder of the homeless being overcrowded. It's the city's plan to achieve the "larger" political goal of having no "excess capacity" for the homeless in Springfield-- as if the homeless were a stagnant pool that once drained, will not recur.

Sooner or later-- I hope sooner-- we are going to have to talk about the lack of decent, affordable housing and living wage jobs in this city.

Gainseville Tent City - guess who said this?

llenge for cities around our country has been to capture the [sense of] community and the camaraderie that often occurs in a tent city, that self-organizing principle that takes place. We need to ensure that we keep a good grip on ... the effectiveness of organizing that the homeless people themselves have done, but to then transfer that to housing that provides security they need."

It's Phil Mangano, executive director of the federal Interagency Office on Homelessness, and promoter of the Ten Year Plans to end homelessness that some 300 cities are now in various stages of designing and implementing. His statement is right on target with what I saw at Springfield's Sanctuary City. Thanks to the 13th Juror for finding this quote. Phil Mangano, in his trip to Springfield for our plan's kick-off, said we had one of the best plans he'd seen. Of course, I'll bet he says that to all the cities.

I talked to Gerry McCafferty today about the 100 vouchers (starting to take on a mythical nature, like the Hundred Blows or the Hundred Year War) that are supposed to make a serious dent in our homeless population and make the Warming Place shelter unnecessary.. Thirteen apartments will be ready to rent in July and another 30 are supposed to be ready between July and September. So we are way behind.

On the good side, Gerry says the city will now be looking for service providers willing to buy small buildings-- 6 to 8 units-- to provide both housing and services to the homeless folks who occupy them. The best thing about this is not the idea per se (great in theory, devil in the details) but that the city is willing to develop new strategies where older one haven't fit the bill.

Back to tent city-- The Gainseville Sun has done two excellent articles about why homeless people form tent cities, what they get out of it, their impact on the broader community and their future. Redjenny has a post about Edmunton, Alberta's homeless encampments. The photo is from her site.

Emergency Shelter Meeting -- Nothing Happened

I couldn't make the Emergency Shelter meeting on Friday because I had to be in Boston for my job but I checked in with Kevin Noonan, Open Pantry director which runs the Warming Place. Bottom line: the city STILL has no plans for what will happen to 100+ homeless people after June 30. I know Kevin is talking to some churches to see if they might provide some temporary shelter....but I also know these churches have their own challenges right now, and, if a church says yes, that church will be under a lot of pressure from the city...all of the churches are in the downtown area, the last place where they are wanted.

I did, however, hear a rumor from another source that the city is now thinking the majority of the apartments with subsidies that are supposed to start making a dent in the hardcore homeless population will not be available until September 1st. I will call Gerry McCafferty, Homeless Housing Coordinator, to see what she has to say about this.

On another note, I've exchanged a few emails with a fellow blogger who is in a homeless program. In one of his blogs he mentioned his partner, who is in Florida prison. I asked him how long his partner would be incarcerated and got this response:

He has a life sentence, with no chance for probation or parole, because he robbed at age 16, and again at age 21. Noone was ever injured, and all property was returned. Just another archaic Floridian law.

Christopher's blog is at www.r25288.com

Better Buy A Tent

Where do I start?
Maybe with the ending:
As of June 30, best case scenario, there will be from 50 to 70 men and women without any shelter.

From today's Emergency Shelter meeting: The city has refused to extend the Warming Place shelter's occupancy of the old York St. jail. Somehow, this jail has become symbolic with Springfield's blight and has taken on magical powers-- along the line of, "Tear it down, and they will come (and all the homeless will go)." I would say there is no getting the city to change its mind on this one. About 90 people a night stay overnight at the Warming Place.

Taylor St. shelter, run by the Springfield Rescue Mission (36 men), is due to close May 31, although I will call the director tomorrow to see if on the offchance his organization has come into a sudden windfall and can keep the shelter open.

If the Warming Place closes, and Friends of the Homeless' shelter on Worthington St. is funded by by the state instead, it will only mean 50 new shelter beds, because they will use the rest of the contract to cover the costs of beds they already provide.

Just writing this, I'm thinking, no wonder so many people think homelessness is an industry! It's really a competition-- the feds and the state only give enough to get 50% of the job done, leaving the shelter providers to fight over the crumbs.

A major part of the city's plan to "end chronic homelessness" is the Housing First strategy. To that end, the city is counting on 144 housing vouchers to place people into housing with supportive services. Problem is, landlords are not beating down the doors to participate in this program. It's slow going. Well, so be it. It's still a solid (if not sole) piece of strategy.

But what happens in the meantime?

It is incredibly difficult to get a straight answer out of Gerry McCafferty, the city's Homeless and Special Needs Housing Coordinator, about how many people will be in their own apartment by June 30, probably because she doesn't know herself. Supposedly 36 people have already been placed, but the shelter population remains the same.

When I asked her what was supposed to happen to people without shelter after June 30, she switched to talking about the responsibility of other communities, like Ludlow, Chicopee, West Springfield, and Holyoke, to house their own homeless people. (Actually Holyoke houses a huge amount of family shelter.) In other words, homeless people will be used as pawns to pressure surrounding communities. But nothing will happen quickly enough (if at all) to prevent people from being without shelter. She said that the city felt that if there was any vacancy at all in Springfield's shelters, that it would bring in homeless people from outside Springfield.

When I asked her who had made this decision, she said the mayor and the Control Board.

At one point I asked for a show of hands of the other eight people at the meeting: how many had been born in Springfield? Four of us put up our hands. How many lived in Springfield now? Four. My point was not that other opinions were illegitimate, but that population is fluid. Do none of us have the right to move and call another city or town home?

I was suddenly hit with a sense of how really far away poor people, maybe most people, are from the source of real power. When I think of the Control Board, its members seem as inaccessible as the president or a king.

Right now my thoughts are turning to how to get the word out to people in the shelters about what's going to be happening. Of course they are always the last to know. Unity among the homeless is not high right now, because they all know about the housing vouchers, and everybody wants one-- but of course there are more homeless people than vouchers. And the vouchers are for the "chronically homeless," so many will not be eligible.

If you are labeled mentally ill, have a substance abuse problem, or have spent a long time bouncing from shelter to shelter (usually because of mental illness or substance abuse, you've got a shot. If you are eighteen years old and just aging out of foster care, lost a place to live when you got divorced, lost a job because of an illness or are just down on your luck, you can forget about it.

All right, it's tired and I'm getting late, more tomorrow.