'This Church Said Yes': Worcester Residents Give Views On Homeless Shelter Plans

WORCESTER, MA — Dozens of Worcester residents and local officials met Sunday night at Blessed Sacrament Church along Pleasant Street to discuss plans for a new winter homeless shelter that will open there before Christmas.

The crowd packed a meeting room in a Blessed Sacrament auxiliary building where the shelter will open, with many voicing their support for the shelter — but also plenty of residents criticizing how plans for the shelter were communicated, and expressing fear about how the shelter would change the neighborhood.

The Blessed Sacrament shelter could open as soon as Dec. 19 with room for about 60 people. The shelter will replace Hotel Grace, which lost its home at Ascension Church along Vernon Street in the spring when the property was sold. Net of Compassion, the nonprofit that operated Hotel Grace, was unable to find a new location in time for winter.

Worcester City Manager Eric Batista said the city approached 12 other churches in the city to host a winter emergency shelter, but only Blessed Sacrament agreed.

"This church said yes," Batista told the crowd, adding the city had to use a church for an emergency shelter due to state regulations.

Worcester Mayor Joseph Petty promised to continue meeting with the local residents and members of the church while the shelter is open to solve any concerns quickly.

"Everyone here wants to make sure this is successful," he said.

The new shelter will be operated by the local social services nonprofit Open Sky. It will be the first shelter the nonprofit has overseen, but Open Sky CEO Ken Bates and shelter manager Maydee Morales said Open Sky had hired many former Hotel Grace employees for the site.

Apart from Batista, Bates and Morales, a host of elected officials and Open Sky employees tried to reassure the crowd that the shelter would be well run and ultimately a benefit for the neighborhood. But some pushed back on the shelter being a benefit.

"Why should we have it in our community and not somewhere different?" one man said, opening up public remarks on the plan. He added that the homeless would bring in "trouble, drugs and stuff."

Some said the process of alerting local residents was mishandled. District 5 City Councilor Etel Haxhiaj went door-to-door in recent days inviting residents to the meeting; she also mailed letters to abutting streets about the shelter. But some said they did not hear about the plan directly either from the city or the church.

The shelter has come together quickly. Batista said discussions about a shelter at Blessed Sacrament only began at the beginning of November.

Laurie Barber, owner of Shirelle Hair Design near the shelter, asked for details about the property lines of the shelter, and said she was concerned about people standing in front of her business. Barber drew jeers from some in the crowd when she asked where "they will be let free" in reference to the shelter residents. Open Sky representatives clarified that shelter residents have the same freedom to move about the city as any other resident.

Blessed Sacrament Rev. Tom Landry said that offering homeless people shelter will ultimately be better for the community than the alternative: letting people live on the streets, exposed to extreme weather and not getting support. Some unsheltered people already live nearby in the woods at Newton Hill, he said.

"If they're going to be here, let's do something to help them while they're here," he said.

Like Hotel Grace, the Blessed Sacrament shelter will be "low-barrier," which means residents don't have to be sober as a condition of entry. There will be programs like Alcoholics Anonymous and drug treatment specialists working at the shelter, but residents won't be required to participate.

When one woman questioned that approach, Landry said that a person who gets shelter will almost certainly be more likely to be open to getting treatment if they have food and a warm bed first.

According to Open Sky, the shelter will be open 24/7 through March 31. That means its residents will be able to come and go as they please, not forced onto the street early in the morning. The shelter will have quiet hours overnight, and residents won't be allowed to congregate outside except during designated smoking breaks. Worcester police Lt. David Doherty said police will step up patrols in the area, but the shelter will also have private guards from Jet Security. The state Department of Housing and Community Development is funding the shelter.

People who attended the meeting expressed a range of opinions, from outright support to frustration over the seemingly intractable problem of homelessness.

Josue Rosa, who owns the Tu Moda salon near Blessed Sacrament, said he was upset city officials didn't inform residents sooner — but also said officials should be "ashamed" that Worcester has homeless people at all.

Nikki Bell, a former homeless person and founder of the nonprofit Living in Freedom Together, asked the crowd to think about homeless people as their neighbors rather than outsiders to be feared. Feeling hated for being homeless, she said, made her sink deeper into despair while she was on the streets.

"People experiencing homelessness need community, resources and support," she said.

Worcester Commissioner of Health and Human Services Dr. Matilde Castiel asked people in the crowd to raise their hands if they knew someone with either addiction or mental health problems — and a majority did. Castiel also pointed to the falling snow outside as an example of the extreme conditions the homeless endure.

"I can't imagine people being outside at this time," she said. Castiel added that the city is looking for a site for an overflow shelter for when Blessed Sacrament fills up. The number of homeless people in Worcester has risen in recent years, according to outreach workers.

The last person to speak was a woman who said she was homeless, and looking forward to being welcomed at Blessed Sacrament. After the meeting was over, she left to go back to living in a tent as snow continued to fall in Worcester.

"We're people, we're human beings," she said.