WORCESTER—At last year’s Annual Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day, a man named Kevin shared his experience.
This year, Kevin was one of the people being remembered at the annual event to honor those who died unhoused in the past year.
“The person who stood here last year, Kevin, who was representing the community of people who are homeless, died,” Dr. Hugh Silk told the crowd gathered outside of the Mustard Seed on the longest night of the year. “He died in a house, he was housed. That was our goal. I think we’ve got to move the goal. It’s just not enough to get people housed.”
Silk, the keynote speaker for the 33rd annual vigil Thursday, works to provide clinical care to the unhoused population in Worcester through the Homeless Outreach and Advocacy Project run by Community Healthlink.
Dozens of people stood for about an hour in below-freezing temperatures, holding candles to honor the people who died in the past year.
Danielle LaRiviere, director of Worcester Health Care for the Homeless out of Family Health Center of Worcester, told the Worcester Guardian that the life expectancy for an unhoused person is 50 years old. And if the person is housed, he said, that adds seven years to their life expectancy due to the lifelong health consequences of experiencing homelessness.
The actual number of unhoused individuals that die annually is hard to track, according to LaRiviere, since individuals could end up dying in the hospital or indoors despite the cause being related to being unhoused.
In the last couple of weeks, six or seven unhoused individuals have died, according to LaRiviere.
While delivering her opening remarks to the crowd, LaRiviere said she struggled with what to say because the community has lost so many people in the last couple of weeks.
“I expressed that to my colleague Stephanie…when she reminded me about what tonight was for and that tonight we come here to remember those that we lost,” LaRiviere said. “We come here to honor them; we come here to say goodbye.”
The overall mood of the event was somber, especially when people read aloud the names of those who had lost their lives. However, there was also an acknowledgment of the efforts that were made to prevent further death and to house people.
Silk mentioned the efforts of different programs for the homeless, including the city’s Quality of Life Task Force, Open Sky Community Services, UMass Memorial Health’s Road to Care mobile clinic, and other programs and noted that Worcester City Manager Eric Batista has worked to coordinate efforts.
Formerly unhoused individual Chris Williams shared what led him to the situation, which included depression and medical conditions, and also what got him a roof over his head: the support of Open Sky.
“I’m not homeless no more,” said Williams. “I did it, OK? And you can do it. You don’t gotta be homeless no more, I don’t gotta be homeless no more…I’ve got my life back.”
While Williams shared a success story, Silk emphasized that the work needs to continue.
“People stepped up and people did a little more,” Silk said. “For the first half of the year, our overdose rate was down and it looked like we were doing good things and then, as Danielle said, the last few weeks have been really overwhelming. And it’s like we were doing it and we took our foot off the gas a little bit.”
Silk delivered a call to action to think about what each of us is going to do to address homelessness in the coming year and do better than we did in the past year. He asked specifically what the mayor is going to do, what the city manager is going to do, and what local elected representatives are going to do.
“If I can put Narcan in someone’s hand who can then take care of someone else then that’s huge,” Silk said. “We can get someone in a house and then introduce them to their neighbor and make sure that they keep checking on each other and they’ll take care of each other and so on and so on.”
Worcester Mayor Joseph Petty was not able to attend the vigil due to a school committee meeting but sent a proclamation declaring Dec. 21, 2023, National Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day in recognition of the people who have died without a place to call home in and around Worcester.
“Homelessness continues to be a serious challenge for many Worcester community members who have the right to adequate food, housing, clothing, safety, health care and economic opportunity,” Petty’s proclamation read. “In this season of generosity and sharing the Worcester Community is encouraged to commit themselves to promoting compassion and concern for all, particularly during the winter months that expose extreme hardships for unsheltered and inadequately housed persons in Worcester.”
The city opened an emergency winter shelter at the former Registry of Motor Vehicles building on Main Street on Dec. 12. The shelter has 60 beds and cuts down the shortage of shelter beds in Worcester to 137.
Kiernan Dunlop is an award-winning journalist who has spent the past five years reporting in Worcester, New Bedford, and Antigua and Barbuda. Her work has 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
