By Ann Mostue

It’s a weekday morning in the basement of Old South Church in Copley Square. About 50 people are sitting on couches and chairs, chatting and eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. A 53-year-old man named John is reading a novel.

“I’ve been coming here for about 2 weeks, since it opened. It’s terrific. Because of the heat and the food and the cots.”

A woman named Denise eyes six cots covered with wool blankets. They’re behind a curtain in the back of the room.  

“They’re wonderful. I came in yesterday and I was tired, but I ended up sleeping for like 4 hours in the back. It was really nice. I haven’t been able to do that since I’ve been in this position.”

Denise says she’s been homeless since Christmas, and that it’s hard to sleep in an overnight shelter. But the atmosphere here is pleasant, quiet even. This is one of two warming shelters in the city – the other’s at Emmanuel Church. They’re open to anyone who needs to come in from the cold, but they’re closed at night. 

... Read more at WGBH's website.

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 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

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

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 Sonali Y. Salgado and Caroline T. Zhang
Weeks after Boston officials closed a major homeless shelter located on a island in Boston Harbor, local homelessness service providers said they are already struggling with increased demand before the onset of winter. 

The Long Island Shelter was the Boston area’s largest, housing more than 700 people a night. When Boston city officials closed the only bridge servicing the shelter on Oct. 8 due to concerns about its stability, these people were left without a place to live.

“There’s an increased demand for services across the board,” said David K. Tang-Quan ’15, a Harvard Square Homeless Shelter administrative co-director.


Read more at thecrimson.com.