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NEW BEDFORD — The map at first glance might appear to show city wards, but look again. The numbers marked in heavy black handwriting don’t make sense for a six-ward layout: two fives, three sixes, one eight.
It’s not a political map, although it has political implications, showing the number of homeless encampments in the city per ward in early June, at least two people living in each one, 36 locations in all. City councilors considered the map Wednesday night in looking at an option to address growing homelessness never before considered: city-authorized encampments as a temporary measure until sustainable solutions can be found.
With varying degrees of emphasis, all councilors say they do not like the idea of the city officially allowing this. That includes At-large Councilor Shane Burgo, who introduced the notion of an “authorized encampment” for consideration.
Nonetheless, Carl Alves, who along with his other work heads the New Bedford Homeless Service Providers Network, showed the map to tell councilors that while they may not like homeless encampments, they’re here. They’re all over. The people living in tents and under tarps in stands of trees, behind shopping centers, alongside highway ramps, and in their cars may get hustled from one place to another, but they’re not going away. Quite the opposite.
“The numbers are moving in an exponential way,” said Alves, who is also director of Positive Action Against Chemical Addiction, or PAACA, a mainstay of New Bedford’s substance-abuse treatment network. “This problem is growing significantly. It has to be addressed.”
He stood before the Special Committee on Affordable Housing and Homeless Affairs in June 2024, in a city where homeless folks congregating at the bus station and along downtown streets was a common sight decades before the phenomenon emerged across the country.
Burgo, who chairs the committee, said he recognizes that the city is working to curb housing costs by cultivating housing supply, particularly low- and moderate-income housing. He also recognizes that if the effort does affect housing prices, it will take years. In the meantime, he said, something has to be done.
The council agreed, and last month decided to at least talk about this as a starting point, if nothing else. Council members all received copies of a report by the New Bedford Outreach Workers Coalition, a group of advocates for homeless people, that argues for a temporary encampment.
As Alves put it, the city has to muster the “political will to do something … The challenge is we’ve got no place to put people.”
The numbers of people who are not housed, in New Bedford and across the country, is growing for a few reasons — not least the rising cost of housing. Among the unhoused now are more people who are working, and more elderly people, finding that their wages or monthly benefits cannot cover living costs.
The Outreach Workers cite research published this year by MassINC reporting that from January 2022 to January 2023, rents in New Bedford increased 27%. That was one of the sharpest growth rates seen among Massachusetts cities.
The annual report on New Bedford’s sheltered and unsheltered homeless population just released by the city’s Office of Housing & Community Development shows an increase from 2023. The number of people found living outside in the city during 24 hours on Jan. 24 was 110, the highest since the first year shown in the report, 2010. The 2023 count was 67.
The change from last year is not quite as great as it seems on its face.
Danielle Brown of Steppingstone, the nonprofit agency that runs the count, noted that temperatures on Jan. 24 never dipped low enough to prompt opening the winter emergency shelter at the Dartmouth Motor Inn, which accommodates up to 30 people. Had that shelter run by Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Fall River been full, those 30 people would not have been counted as unsheltered, potentially reducing the count to 80. That would be a 19% increase over 2023.
Homeless people in New Bedford have few options for emergency shelter. The city’s limited shelter supply is run by three organizations accommodating individuals and families.
Two shelters accepting walk-up clients run by Catholic Charities, and one by the Missionaries of Charity can accommodate 46 people. Catholic Charities can house 25 men and 11 women at two spaces in the South End. Missionaries of Charity can accommodate 10 women and children, but no boys older than 5, in a house just north of downtown.
That is, if they have an open spot. As of last week, Catholic Charities was expecting two openings to be filled the next day, said Happiness Unaka, Catholic Charities’ chief operating officer. And, she said, “there’s always a waiting list. That’s really everywhere.”
Missionaries of Charity had four spots open, said Sister Jasmin, M.C.
Catholic Charities also leases four family units in New Bedford in a program run by the state Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities that now includes 76 units of “scattered sites” in Bristol County. The state agency screens people for those units, and refers people to Catholic Charities to arrange the move.
Unaka said the number of units in any given place can vary, as leases expire, as new spaces are leased. As of last week, she said all 76 units — all but seven of them in Fall River — were filled.
Lack of vacancies is not only about the numbers of people looking for space, but how long those who do get a spot are staying put. Unaka said at the emergency shelters and the family units, where there is no set time limit, the average stay is a year or more.
High Point, which runs the area’s largest substance abuse treatment operation, also manages Harbour House, a congregate living shelter on Shawmut Avenue that can accommodate up to 16 families. That shelter, which does not provide addiction treatment, also runs under the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities, said director Shelly Correia.
The lack of shelter leaves homeless people to fend for themselves, sometimes taking to the woods to set up camps out of sight of local police or residents who might report their presence.
Last summer, a wooded area along Kings Highway in the North End was accommodating more than a dozen people. A few people had made camp in the woods of Buttonwood Park. Tents have been pitched from time to time in the grassy area next to the I-195 ramp off Route 18 in the North End.
When camps are found in New Bedford, city agencies respond using a procedure called the Homeless Encampment Action Response Team or HEART protocol. If the camp is on private property, public officials notify the owner. If it’s on public ground, the people are given referrals to social service agencies, including options for housing, and they’re given up to 72 hours to go elsewhere.
The protocol represents an effort to move people in a more humane way, but Alves told councilors that it’s become obvious this is not an answer.
“Right now it’s ‘You can’t stay here.’ And that’s the end of the conversation,” he said.
Advocates for homeless people say hustling them from place to place disrupts the connections they might otherwise develop with field workers. That can make it more difficult or impossible to provide health care and drug treatment services.
Stephanie Perry, a nurse addiction specialist with Southcoast Health who does field work with homeless people, said the approach not only makes it hard to find people who might need help, but it destroys the trust necessary to encourage people to accept help. That can be especially true for people who need substance abuse treatment and/or psychiatric care.
The Outreach Workers’ report argues that constantly moving people forces them “into a cycle of consistently searching for new shelter and replacement of essential survival belongings,” which they often lose when camps are broken up.
Burgo also notes that, depending on the decision in a case expected to be released this month by the U.S. Supreme Court, cities could lose their authority to order homeless people to move from public spaces unless they are given somewhere else to go.
How an authorized encampment would work is hardly clear. The Outreach Workers’ report includes pages of basic outline, but no details about cost per person, or, say, how liability for the city would be handled.
Ward 3 Councilor Shawn Oliver asked Alves where such an encampment might be located. Alves said “in a more industrial area,” away from residential neighborhoods. He said no details had yet been worked out about location or how much this would cost.
Oliver expressed skepticism, not least out of concern that taking this step could make the city a magnet for homeless people.
“It’s going to be like “Field of Dreams” here, ‘If you build it they will come,’” Oliver said, referring to the movie based on a novel about an Iowa farmer who builds a baseball field in a cornfield to summon the ghosts of legendary ballplayers. He called it “a tough ask” for the people of New Bedford.
“It’s an outlandish idea for the general public to swallow,” Oliver said.
Ward 1 Councilor Leo Choquette said he was utterly opposed to a “tent city” option.
“I worry about homeless folks being outside without a locking door,” he said, suggesting that shuttered churches might be converted into shelters that would be more secure.
A city-authorized tent camp seemed an improbable outcome. Action of any kind seemed unlikely anytime soon.
With two members absent for attending a community meeting that night, the committee, which comprises all councilors, voted unanimously to put the next step into the hands of Burgo, who prompted the conversation. He’s been assigned to convene a group to draft a plan to address homelessness with “programs and increased shelter capacity,” as the council motion reads, and report back on progress in 45 days.
The group is to include folks who wrote the Outreach Workers report, members of the HEART task force, Josh Amaral, head of Housing & Community Development, Police Chief Paul Oliveira and a representative of the Office of Mayor Jon Mitchell, if not Mitchell himself.
After the meeting, Burgo emphasized a point that Alves and the Outreach report made: an authorized camp would hardly be ideal. He said it’s an alternative that could be done sooner than many other options, and it would be safer for homeless people than the scattered makeshift sites shown on that map.
“That’s what this is all around, is harm reduction,” Burgo said.
Email reporter Arthur Hirsch at ahirsch@newbedfordlight.org.
With all of the empty buildings in New Bedford, why aren’t they converted into shelters for all of the homeless families and people of New Bedford? There are so many of them that are empty and they have been for years. This seems to be a common solution for all. I think it’s disgusting what the mayor did by chopping down all of the trees at the I 95 exit ramp in New Bedford and putting all the homeless peoples tents in a pile to be distributed to dumpsters that is all of their belongings that is all that they own.
The mayor doesn’t care about anything other than maintaining his personal fiefdom and making money for his well-to-do friends. Do you think he really cares about the housing crisis? He and all his Ivy League friends are doing fine.
For the man who’s been living on rt.18 for like YEARS now me and my son pass him daily and i’ve seen that man live in all the elements and it breaks my heart that there’s just nothing to be done besides watch.!! Much like the other comment we have so many abandoned bulidings and homes that could be redone to house the needy. It truly breaks my heart that this is just how he lives and not only him but so many others
The mayor has attacked an actual solution to this crisis. Instead of supporting healthy homes for women in recovery, expections mothers, battered women, he has issued letters of intent with jail time, I have the paperwork to prove, please help us fight city hall on the citys unreasonable and viscous attacks on law abiding sober house owners
All the empty buildings in the city are private property, but even if they were donated to the city, who’s going to pay to make those buildings livable for anyone?
Once the city directs homeless people to a particular place other than a shelter, they become liable for those people, and the city is really the tax pacers, it’s not the mayors fault, he’s making the correct decision on behalf of the tax payers, that’s his job and his responsibility.
My son is 49 years old and was evicted because the person who owned the property he was living at told him that he had to move because the person who owned the property passed away, he told the person that he hadn’t been able to pay the rent that was due because he had medical issues and after going to his dr’s and getting a letter to notify the owner that my son was under his care and was being treated for Severe Diabetes and was now evicting him would be like placing a death sentence on him currently he has run out of people to ask to help him because due the COVID-19 it took a lot of family members so that’s a lot of options he could depend that are now deceased. I can’t let him stay here because I live in Federal Housing and it is not allowed. Currently he is left riding the bus just to stay out of the weather he sat down at button wood park and was exhausted from the constant walking around well he fell asleep and was that he had to leave it wasn’t allowed to sleep in a public park he needs a place to eat a meal due to the diabetes. I go down to the bus station to get around to pay my bills and I see so many homeless people who need not only the bus but he has to worry about getting robbed or hurt and especially if he was to get robbed or attacked and they were to steal all his meds he has got to the point where he came to see me the other day and found out that another friend had passed away and he said I was thinking about hanging myself.i can’t understand how the city can allow this to happen. The other day I stopped at a restaurant and got a soda and a sandwich and a gentleman asked if he could get a cup of water so he could take his medication,we don’t have cups to give out you will have to buy water the gentleman said I’m 72 years old and I am homeless. I asked him all you need is water and he said yes sir you don’t have to call me sir I told him stay right here I went to the cooler and got him bottle of water and he refused it because he couldn’t afford it I told him was you in the service, he said yes what branch were you in? I was in the army and stationed at ft dix. Again I placed the bottle in front of him and I said this is from one army soldier to another and he was so used to getting treated like he just was for a lousy cup or water and he was so strong on his beliefs that he said prove it I said what would you like me to get you a copy of my DD214 BUT THEN HE Surprised me and took off his dog tags. Hopefully I bought him a sandwich and fries and has he said a large black coffee. I hope he enjoyed it I paid the bill and I had 10.00 change coming back I told the girl when she handed me the change give the change to the gentleman who got the water. God bless my son and my new friend . The mayor has no problem calling asking if I plan on voting for him but I never received a call saying could you please help some homeless people. My son as sick as he is with the diabetes and the pain in his legs and his feet he has I believe it is called neuropathy I agree with the people who suggested using the vacant builds im sure a lot of the people would be willing & able to help assist with rebuilding these buildings
I so feel compassion for the many homeless I see on the streets now! Especially the elderly and the families with children!! Even a single person holding a decent job can barely afford to maintain an apartment and decent lifestyle with the bare necessities with rents as high as they are!! I know this first hand. It is probably the worst feeling I have ever experienced in my life, the not knowing where to turn, living on a fixed income, and serious heart issues to boot!!! This lasted for several months moving from motel to motel ,paying 100.00 a night just to try and feel safe. I will be totally honest here and tell you I am now proudly a 65 yr old woman very proud and grateful to be almost a year in recovery!! Many of the people on the streets are addicts to some substance. This does not make us all bad,unworthy people. Every persons story is different. Yes evil does exist not only on the streets but in offices,and governments and every walk of life!!! Wake up people!! Start being kind to each other,helpful. Our world is slowly falling apart. As an individual right now turn around and do or say one kind giving thing to another. Hand a needy person a dollar or two ,some change. Give away some things you don’t use or need anymore. Donate to a shelter or lower your rents a little. Put yourself in someone else’s shoes for a minute and really think “how would I feel if this was me???!!!”