By Kristin Toussaint

“We know that many of the people that come to the warm centers have never had that opportunity — to be somewhere warm and safe — for many years,” said June Cooper [City Mission Society]. “Many people have been sleeping [at other shelters like Pine Street Inn and Rosie’s Place], but they have to get up and out real early, some folks have told me by 6 a.m..”

Boston Warm was initially slated to operate until March, but Cooper said they’re having meetings about the need to keep the day shelters open for an additional month.

“We know that the resources that the city is putting in place will take longer than anticipated,” Cooper said.


read more at Boston.com. 

by Deborah Becker 

While Boston continues to deal with mountains of snow andextreme cold, the city is also grappling with an even larger than usual number of homeless people.

... 

One way they’re trying to do that is by reopening what’s known as the Boston Night Center, a downtown refuge of last resort for those who live on the streets. Dozens of people have been coming to the night center, which is open from 8:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. every day, to get warm, get a meal and sometimes get medical attention from Dr. Jim O’Connell, president of Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program.

“The nighttime drop-in center is designed to take in the people who, for whatever reasons, won’t go or can’t go to the shelter,” O’Connell said.

...


one condition that O’Connell and other medical professionals in Boston are having a tough time treating is substance abuse. When Boston officials closed the bridge to Long Island in October and shuttered the city’s largest homeless shelter on the island, they also closed substance abuse facilities — including Andrew House, the city’s largest detoxification unit. It typically served about 100 people a week and often referred them to further treatment.

“Almost all of these people were in Andrew House at some point,” O’Connell said. “So some people would now be in detox with the hope of going on to further treatment. Now, none of that is happening. By the time morning comes, they’re so sick, they want to go and drink or whatever and they can’t make it to the detox. Even if they did find detox, there’s no place to send them so they’re back after four or five days. So that system has just fallen apart, right at a time when such focus has been on avoiding the drug overdoses.”

Some estimates suggest that Boston lost about 60 percent of its substance abuse treatment beds when the Long Island bridge was closed for safety reasons.


Read more at WBUR.org. 

by Peter Schworm


St. Francis House, a shelter in downtown Boston that provides refuge to hundreds of homeless people, used to open its doors each morning at 7. But after the city’s shelter on Long Island abruptly closed in October, the line of people waiting to get in stretched down the block, and the shelter decided to open a half-hour earlier.

In the late afternoon, the dining room tables are now pushed aside for 25 cots, part of a citywide effort to take in those displaced from the Long Island shelter as winter begins.

“The whole system is in chaos,” said Karen LaFrazia, executive director of St. Francis House, the largest day shelter in New England. “When you throw all the pieces up in the air, you aren’t really sure how they are going to fall.”

Read more at BostonGlobe.com

by David Abel

In the hours before dawn, when five layers of clothing, two blankets, and the crucifix around her neck no longer blunt the cold, Lisa Jenkins rises from the faux leather couch she has hidden in the woods and paces in the dark.

Sleeping alone outside stirs other concerns, aside from frostbite. She has set booby traps to protect against potential stalkers and feeds the possums, raccoons, and other wildlife to keep them friendly.

Read more at BostonGlobe.com

by David Abel, Globe Staff
Trailing the flashing lights of a police escort, the city bus completed its journey in front of a bleak building in the South End, where more officers and guards were waiting.

Out filed some of the 700 former residents of Long Island, where the city’s largest homeless shelter operated until earlier this month — before officials condemned the only bridge leading to the refuge on Boston Harbor.

Now, the city’s homeless pack into a former fitness center, while city officials hastily seek a more permanent solution to the loss of about one-third of the city’s available beds.

They live in cramped, disorienting conditions with fewer amenities and social services than they had on Long Island. Instead of beds, they sleep on pillowless cots, set inches apart in a windowless room. Bright lights stay on all night. There are long lines to use the two bathrooms. Fans swirl humid air.


Read more and watch the video at BostonGlobe.com