Just under 400 people were without permanent housing across the Cape and Islands when groups from across the region conducted this year's Point in Time count on a cold night in February.
The number of homeless people counted is at an eight-year high, but local officials say it may be the result of better collaboration across the region, which has led to more accurate numbers this year.
CAI's Kathryn Eident talked with Heidi Nelson, CEO of Duffy Health Center, for more on what this year's Point in Time Count tells us about who needs shelter, and how the pandemic impacted efforts to bring people in off the street.
Eident Did you see over the last year more people, with the kinds of services you offer, needing help in finding either transitional, temporary, or even permanent shelter?
Nelson Yes, most definitely. Our local single adult shelter called St. Joseph's House had to reduce its bed count. Normally, they have 50 beds. For social distancing and safety, they had to reduce to 40 beds. They usually increase by ten beds during the winter months because of inclement weather, and they were not able to add those beds either, at least not initially, which pushed a lot of people out into the street and into the woods and camping.
Normally in our "In from the Streets" motel stay program, over the course of a typical winter, [we] might have anywhere from 25 to 30 people on a night. Especially during December and January, we had upwards of 50-60 people.
Eident Is the motel program something you'd like to see expanded?
Nelson Because of new funding that has come to the Commonwealth, they're really looking at what they have been paying for shelter services over the years, and it's just been completely inadequate.
So Catholic Social Services, which is the organization that runs St. Joseph's House Shelter, is looking to increase their funding so that they can have the regular number of beds and their winter weather response, which they have not gotten paid for in the past.
Duffy — we've only used sort of private funding for "In from the Streets," but we'll be applying for ongoing funding through the state shelter program because we do think that this is a really effective intervention. We don't want to have people be too comfortable in the motel program; we work very effectively with the shelter to make sure that that's the first option for people. But when the shelter gets full and has to go into overflow status, or sometimes people have been barred from staying at the shelter due to behavioral issues, they can alternatively stay in the motel stay program.
Eident Are there other ways that you've had to change the way that you either seek out to identify and count people who need shelter, and also offer them services because of the pandemic?
Nelson Yes. So, we look forward to this summer — we didn't do it last summer, but we did it in 2020 — where we obtained a mobile shower unit from the state so that people who did live unsheltered were able to come to our parking lot, get a shower, talk to people about services. In fact, we had just about as many people who came for a shower as would come and not take a shower, but just ask for help.
I have to mention the fantastic work that's done by the Community Impact Unit of the town of Barnstable's police department, which offers something every Wednesday morning that we call the "coffee house." It's a way that folks can come and get a cup of coffee, maybe a sweet roll, and feel safe and talk to all of our case managers, street outreach staff, along with the Barnstable police to help engage people.
Eident Did you see any change in the demographics due to the pandemic and the fact that, you know, people lost jobs and the housing market now is tighter than ever?
Nelson Well, I guess I would say our job has become increasingly difficult. We actually only permanently housed less than ten people out of the motel stay program this year because, as you know, there's just no apartments, no housing that's available to people unless people are willing to move off-Cape. So, we have been really challenged in trying to do the work that we do to get people off the street.
Eident So anything else you want people to understand about our fellow Cape Cod and Islanders who, you know, maybe need shelter on a short-term or long-term basis?
Nelson So the other piece that we've been working on throughout, again, with fantastic support from Cape Cod Healthcare, has been the idea of developing a medical respite program. I always say people who are too sick to stay at the shelter, but not sick enough to stay at the hospital, need a kind of an interim place to be. And so we've developed a business plan to start to look at starting a medical respite program. And many, many organizations in the community are involved in that.
I think it's also really important to know the devastating impact of addiction and in particular the rise in relapse and people overdosing throughout the pandemic, and especially at the very beginning, people feeling very much at loose ends. My basic point is that we were making such great progress before the pandemic and then with the advent of fentanyl and then the despair that was created by the pandemic, we're just seeing those numbers rise to the heights that we have never seen before in the past for relapse and overdose and overdose deaths.
Eident A lot of heavy things there. Heidi Nelson of the Duffy Health Center, thank you so much for taking a few minutes to talk with us and give us an update on the Point In Time Count and some of the impacts of the pandemic.
Nelson Well, thank you, Katie, and thank you so much for your interest in this important topic.
This transcript was lightly edited for grammar and clarity.
