WORCESTER—As of Oct. 23, the city of Worcester has identified 131 chronically homeless individuals this year, according to Evis Terpollari, the city’s Homeless Project’s manager.
That number marks a nearly 16 percent increase since the city established the Housing First Coordinating Council in 2018 when the city identified 113 chronically homeless individuals, according to Terpollari. An individual is considered chronically homeless if they have been homeless for at least 12 months or have been homeless on four separate occasions over the past three years, according to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Terpollari spoke in front of the Human Rights Commission Monday, giving the commissioners an annual update on homelessness in the city.
The number of chronically homeless individuals in the city has fluctuated in recent years, with 65 individuals identified as chronically homeless in September 2020 compared to the 131 identified this year, according to data provided to the commission by Dr. Matilde Castile, the commissioner of Health & Human Services. This means the chronically homeless population nearly doubled in the last three years.
The overall unhoused population in the city includes 544 individuals who make up a combination of sheltered and unsheltered, and 791 children and adults who are part of families, according to Terpollari. Since Massachusetts is a right-to-shelter state, the family members are either living in shelters or hotels and motels.
The Housing First Coordinating Council was first established to address chronic homelessness in the city, according to Terpollari, but due to a rise in family homelessness, Terpollari said he wanted to share that data with the commission as well.
The “housing first” method to address homelessness focuses on providing permanent housing for chronically homeless individuals without requirements such as sobriety, treatment, or service participation.
Commissioners asked Terpollari to explain what was contributing to homelessness in the city. The manager of the city’s Homeless Outreach Task Force pointed to inflation, rent prices and the city’s 0.5 percent rental vacancy rate as factors.
To paint a picture of the city’s affordability levels, Terpollari shared that there are about 110,000 households that rent in Worcester County, and about 40 percent of those households pay more than 30 percent of their income on rent.
He said his team advocates to find housing for unhoused individuals but many of the people they work with are making on average less than $12,000 per year, with some living on Social Security, which amounts to about $700 or $800 a month. That makes it difficult to house them when one single room can cost $775 a month and that rent price isn’t necessarily for the best space or neighborhood, Terpollari said. Mental health issues and substance abuse disorders also contribute to homelessness in the city, according to Terpollari.
In terms of what the commissioners can do to help address homelessness, Terpollari told them advocating for building more extremely-low income housing, creating more non-congregate low barrier shelters, and working to address “Not in My Backyard (NIMBY)” attitudes in the community.
At the Queen Street shelter, which has 50 beds, they had 161 individuals stay with them from Nov. 10-16, according to Terpollari. When the shelter beds are full, Queen Street places pads on the ground since it has a policy not to turn anyone away.
The city has an additional 54 shelter beds at MLK, which is run by Southern Middlesex Opportunity Council along with Queen Street. At the end of November, the city announced it would be opening an emergency winter shelter with 60 beds at the former Registry of Motor Vehicles building on Main Street the week of Dec. 11.
Terpollari said the opening of the emergency shelter will help alleviate some of the pressure being felt in the shelter system.
The city is also looking at spaces to potentially create a day resource center, where unhoused individuals could go to access services or simply hang out. Terpollari said the commission could help advocate for the day resource center as well.
Terpollari took some time at the end of the meeting to point out progress the city is making on addressing homelessness. The Worcester Housing Authority is opening a 24-unit building on Lewis Street for chronically homeless individuals and is in the screening process to select the individuals who can move in.
The city is working with Worcester Community Housing Resources, which purchased the Quality Inn on Oriol Drive, to create 90 units of supportive housing. A project on Wyman Street to create 15 units of housing is also set to open and the Worcester East Side CDC is working to build18 tiny homes specifically for people with significant mental health issues, according to Terpollari.
The commission passed several motions related to homelessness including ones that requested the city create an Emergency Task Force in partnership with surrounding towns to come up with a comprehensive plan to address homelessness in a short term, develop a strategic plan for hot spots, prioritize efforts to make a year-round climate controlled center, and explore options for a day resource center.
Kiernan Dunlop is an award-winning journalist who has spent the past five years reporting in Worcester, New Bedford and Antigua and Barbuda. She’s been published in Bloomberg, USA Today, Canary Media, MassLive, and the New Bedford Standard Times, among other outlets. She can be contacted at kdunlop@theworcesterguardian.org
