City Council and homelessness
The City of Lawrence has created the position of Coordinator of Homeless Services and after nine months on the job, they decided to call him before the council. After a long presentation loaded with statistics obtained from different sources, councilors felt there was no useful information and grilled him with questions.
Anil DaCosta has been attending meetings with several organizations in the area learning what they are doing to service the homeless population and has nothing to show for as a result of his own efforts. It was obvious to them that Mr. DaCosta’s figures did not make any sense.
He made it clear that he is just trying to find the root of the problem and that he is not a case manager; he only makes referrals to other agencies. For that, he created a resource guide that will be printed and giving out so that they know where to go for services and he credits himself for having increased communication among non-profits.
After mentioning the more than 600 individuals in the Greater Lawrence Family Health Center’s list and more than 270 students in the Lawrence Public Schools, it was understood that people were being counted twice and many of them have temporary housing or stay in shelters in Lowell and Haverhill, so they are not considered “homeless.”
Cities are at a loss for answers and the government believes that throwing an occasional crumb of cash will help. That was the situation last Tuesday night. The Council was to accept or reject a $136,000 grant from the state and the plan was to refuse it. That money is supposed to be used in helping with rental expenses, that’s assuming the homeless person or family has a job and found an apartment, which is almost impossible. When they are available, rents are terribly inflated mostly if the landlord knows there is an organization helping with the first month and security deposit.
The way some councilors had reasoned it out, they would have to come up with an average of $4,500 to $5,000 per apartment which meant that that sum from the grant could only help some 30 recipients. That’s far from putting a dent on the emergency housing facing us.
Several city councilors questioned him harshly, clearly bothered by the lack of progress. District F Councilor Marc Laplante asked Mr. DaCosta what is the current count. In 2016 there were 45 homeless people accounted for in the city. By 2017, it had gone up to 101. Then, Councilor Laplante wanted to know if there was any progress during this past year and he said, “No, it has gone up!”
This week, a new count will take place to see how many homeless people we have. By the time they eliminate the ones who don’t qualify because they sleep in shelters or a friend’s sofa, we won’t get a true picture.
I certainly don’t have the answer but that’s the reason why we have people in charge, politicians who have access to influence and money and they are silent. Where’s our legislative delegation on all of this? They just keep throwing money towards Lawrence while they are campaigning to advance to bigger and better things.
Yes, homelessness is a national problem just like opioids but we should not be content with that. This is our problem and we cannot expect to resolve it from the outside. Time for our local politicians to put their thinking caps on!
Low-income housing
The mayor keeps converting empty mill buildings into apartments; some are at market rate like Pacific Mills, others for low income families. The city is loaded with apartments belonging to non-profits providing zero dollars in revenue to the coffers.
Has the mayor ever considered turning one of the empty or misused city properties into a temporary shelter to get them off the streets? Obviously, it’s not money what he is after and the city will look cleaner besides doing a real service to the homeless population.
