Question: After Reviving Downtown, How Do We Fix This?

This morning, while heading to the Concord Farmers’ Market, a reader took the following pictures: A shot of some of the new work being done on Main Street as part of a scaled back, Complete Streets Downtown Concord construction project. The reader then shifted the camera ever so slightly to show something unsightly: A person passed out next to a liquor bottle mere inches away from the beautiful new light posts and sidewalk renovations.

“Did this Main Street project attract the homeless?,” the person queried. “Today is the farmers’ market and this guy was right across from that. It doesn’t look good on the town.”

No, I answered back, Concord has always had homeless people as far back as I can remember. And no, it doesn’t look good for the city, especially after sinking more than $10 million into the Main Street project and committing another $16 million in maintenance costs for the next two decades to fix cobblestones, pavers, the “red carpet” cleanup crew, etc.

In the past, the homeless problem wasn’t as pervasive as it is today. We pretty much had one guy – Norman – who pushed his shopping cart around town speaking to himself in the 1980s. Other times, you might hear about a family temporarily living in a car at a park-and-ride or others asking for assistance and the community would provide.

But in the last 10 years or so, it has become extensive – tents by the river, a massive campsite behind the arena, major, gruesome assaults and rapes, and even homicides. and alleged homicides. It’s been young people and old people. Before, homeless people were assisted with services; now, those services aren’t enough and panhandling has become rampant and aggressive, to the point where people are spitting and screaming if they don’t get a tip for holding a store door open. Often, the panhandling is subsidizing drugs and alcohol.

Collections of people, after being moved out of the arena camp, just spread the problem around instead of it being in one central location. In fact, like the heroin epidemic that public officials continue to not want to zero in on because it’s a regional, statewide, or “Massachusetts” issue (umm, no, it’s not), the homeless problem is similar. The problems are multifaceted and the solutions – beyond personal responsibility – are expensive. The city has a homeless coalition thinking, working on plans, etc. But does the city need more plans or does it need actions?

One newspaper editorial board suggested not that long ago that the city come up with millions of dollars a year – a permanent property tax increase of about 20 percent a year – to provide lodging for every person in the city that needed it. It was an insane, unrealistic editorial when one counts all of the other services that are needed and provided now (healthcare, substance abuse, mental health services, disability checks, SNAP assistance, EBT assistance, etc.) But at least it was action.

When a bunch of people overdosed from bad Spice last summer, Gov. Maggie Hassan, D-Exeter, declared a state of emergency and directed police to round it all up from the stores. How many more people die from frostbite, drowning, alcohol poisoning, assaults, even being run over by a train? Many more than died from the Spice that was an emergency.

What should be done about this problem? Leave a note in the comment section and let’s start a conversation about the community’s next steps.