by Andrew Ryan


"A coalition of clergy and interfaith leaders has been critical of the city’s response, in part because temporary cots and crowded facilities can further tax an already fragile population.

'We’re frustrated,' said the Rev. Nancy S. Taylor, senior minister at Old South Church, which recently opened a temporary daytime warming center for the homeless in Copley Square. 'We’re anxious for a population of people who are already dispossessed and made refugees, for whom everyday becomes more dire.'"


Read more at BostonGlobe.com

As a collection of travelers waited for the last trains to depart South Station, a small group of homeless people began setting up blankets, planning to stay through the storm.

Transit Police inside the train station said shuttles were available to transport people to the Pine Street Inn on Harrison Avenue. But a group of about five said they did not want to go.



Read more at BostonGlobe.com

Since the closure of Boston Harbor’s Long Island in October, there’s been much debate over how to care for the homeless people who resided there. But the island also hosted another 200 people in substance abuse recovery programs. In fact, Long Island housed about a third of the women’s recovery programs in Greater Boston. Now there’s a critical shortage of detox beds.

Jeannie and Rebecca are both 30 years old and could be any roommates trying to make lives in Boston.

They look happy, healthy, and stylish — an appearance that shows just how far they’ve come. The two are recovering from heroin addiction — a habit that Jeannie says almost killed her.

"I relapsed back in March of last year and I woke up with a breathing tube down my throat and lucky just to make it," she said.

Now, Jeannie and Rebecca consider themselves lucky to have ended up in jail instead of dead. While on probation, they were beginning to put their lives back together — living at the halfway house on Long Island.


Read more and watch the video at the WGBH website. 

by Lisa Wangsness

Old South Church in Copley Square, with support from a coalition of interfaith leaders and congregations from across Greater Boston, plans to open two of its rooms on Monday as a temporary daytime warming center for the homeless.

Clergy spearheading the “Boston Warm” effort say the need for the shelter underscores the shortcomings of the city’s response to the hundreds of homeless people displaced last fall. A structurally unsound bridge to Long Island was closed abruptly, cutting off access to the city’s main emergency shelter and recovery houses.

Read more at BostonGlobe.com

This essay appeared in the Boston Globe. 

This call for action was written by religious leaders in the Boston area concerned about the consequences of the closure of the Long Island Bridge:

There is a crisis in Boston. It doesn’t erupt; it doesn’t boil over. Instead it simmers on low, night after night, week after week, in storefront alcoves, vacant lots, makeshift spaces in the lobbies and dining rooms of privately run health care and homeless centers. It happens at the margins. If we, the comfortable, register its effects at all, we see them peripherally, out of the corner of our eye. But for those caught in the middle of this crisis, homelessness is deadly.

Read more at BostonGlobe.com

by David Abel

Three weeks ago, asbestos tiles covered the floors and many of the windows were cracked or drafty. Grimy paint peeled off plaster walls also filled with asbestos, and an array of bulky tools littered the old workshop where for decades city workers made signs, meters, and traffic lights.

Since then, in a feat of unparalleled speed for any previous city building, the Boston Transportation Department’s old sign shop has been completely transformed into the city’s new shelter for the homeless -- with $2 million worth of new floors, walls, plumbing, lighting, fire alarms, sheetrock, paint, electrical and heating systems, and much more.


read more ... and watch the video ... at BostonGlobe.com

by David Abel
With temperatures expected to plummet below zero this week, city officials and homeless advocates are racing to find more space to house the surge of people sleeping on the streets since the city’s largest shelter on Long Island closed last fall.

Read more at BostonGlobe.com