Mark Hayward’s City Matters: Winter is coming. Is the city ready to take care of the homeless? | City Matters

“We get kicked out wherever the cops tell us to go,” mentioned Kalee “Little Bit” Chaput, whose tent is on the nook of Pine Street and Manchester Street. She was there a couple of month after the city cleared their camp in the wooded space beneath the Amoskeag Bridge.

November climate is chilly and dry at some point, heat and moist the subsequent. But this month the air shall be chilly and it’d snow. In this regard, as you drive down Pine Street and both bow or shake your head, notice the following.

The tents stand exterior the grownup shelter run by Families in Transition (avoiding the identify New Horizons, the identify of the decades-old shelter the group took over greater than 5 years in the past). The capability of the shelter is 138.

Even in August, it accommodated 130 individuals an evening. It’s now busy almost each evening, mentioned Stephanie Savard, FIT’s director of exterior relations.

“We’re overwhelmed,” Savard mentioned.

On Thursday, the evening warming station opened at the 1269 Cafe. People can discover a heat place to keep so long as they’re seated at tables.

1269 can sustain to 53 individuals heat by holding individuals seated at tables somewhat than on cots. If 1269 added cribs, they may sleep 17, mentioned 1269 co-founder Mary Chevalier.

Last yr the heart was principally full with a mean of 52 customers per evening.

The tents are legally positioned on the pavement, in accordance to the Manchester Mayor’s Office and Police.

Police usually patrol the sidewalk and implement legal guidelines, they mentioned. The tents can’t occupy the sidewalk and block the passage.

Mayor’s spokeswoman Hannah Chisholm mentioned a foot was huge sufficient for passage, however stretcher Dennis Higgins mentioned he is attempting to preserve sufficient clearance for a wheelchair to get by.

How lengthy are they authorized?

Dam Wright, a homeless activist, not too long ago posted a city ordinance on the Manchester Homeless Lives Matter Facebook web page. The ordinance says the city will solely implement its no-camping ordinance if “overnight accommodation” is accessible.

The regulation doesn’t present a transparent definition of what “overnight place” or “overnight accommodation” means and whether or not the room “Café 1269” qualifies.

Higgins mentioned the sidewalks are secure, not like life in the woods, the place the susceptible might fall prey and issues can get out of management.

At instances, residents and church teams go to and distribute meals and heat drinks.

But the greatest unmet want?

“Public toilets. That’s the biggest problem right now,” Higgins mentioned.

“I go once a day,” mentioned Chaput, who normally makes use of the lavatory at Cafe 1269.

The FIT homeless shelter will even not enable the homeless residing exterior their door to use the lavatory, Savard confirmed.

Savard mentioned FIT is overstretched and doesn’t function a drop-in-day program. “We don’t have public toilets.”

Food did not appear to be an enormous difficulty after I visited. Cafe 1269 affords a scorching lunch, and whereas FIT has no plans to reopen its soup kitchen to outsiders, groceries can be found at the pantry on Lake Avenue.

On Pine and Manchester individuals really feel each the love and hate of the Queen City. Strangers and church teams will come by with meals and scorching drinks, Chaput mentioned.

But motorists will honk their horns late at evening to wake individuals from their sleep, Higgins mentioned. He wonders how the snowplow will deal with the sidewalk dwellers.

Wright mentioned he noticed individuals being pelted with eggs, stones, BBs and firecrackers.

“It sucks being treated the way we are out here. The only difference between us and them is the roof over our heads,” Chaput said.

Meanwhile, activist groups like Rights and Democracy New Hampshire and Wright’s Facebook page, which has 2,000 followers, are debating homelessness on social media.

Lawyers also speak at biweekly city council meetings.

But they don’t seem to have much impact. In October, city councils passed an ordinance that pushed homeless people out of another place in the city — parks.

And the city is promoting its See Click Fix app, which lets residents take photos of encampments and report them to the city, which basically equates the life of the homeless to a run-down roadside couch.

The city’s new homeless tsarina, Adrienne Beloin, the former director of Boston’s St Francis House homeless shelter, began work in Manchester a week ago today. Don’t expect anything right away.

“We’re giving Adrienne time to settle earlier than any modifications or selections are made,” Chisholm said.

Understandably, Beloin didn’t want to speak to reporters during her first week on the job, she said.

Beloin’s direct boss, Fire Chief Ryan Cashin, said in an email Friday that there are 116 homeless people in the city, with that number “at all times altering,” along with the number, size and location of camps.

Wright, who describes himself as a consultant for coordinating homelessness initiatives, said he knows 150 people living on the streets and if you count people in cars or those hiding, the number could top 1,000, a Estimate I seriously doubt.

Nevertheless, the need is there. The young adult Waypoint Shelter attracted a lot of interest last month when it opened its 14 beds. 50 families are on the waiting list for 11 places in the FIT family accommodation.

And at Manchester City Welfare, the entire focus has shifted from housing the homeless to preventing homelessness by preventing evictions or foreclosures in the first place, said director Charleen Michaud. It’s almost impossible to find housing for the homeless, she said.

“It’s terrible, terrible proper now,” Savard said of the lack of emergency shelters.

“We’re on the different aspect of COVID and our heads are spinning round discovering the greatest companies and the way can we type them out?”