Small Homeless Shelter OK To Open In Worcester Church, Zoning Board Rules

WORCESTER, MA — Amid some vehement opposition from residents in a Worcester neighborhood, the Zoning Board of Appeals on Monday ruled that a small family homeless shelter can open in a church along Whitmarsh Avenue.

The ZBA found that plans for the shelter at Zion Lutheran Church fell within the bounds of the city's zoning rules. Although a handful of residents spoke against the shelter at the meeting — and others spoke in favor of it — the ZBA's authority to either approve or deny projects strictly adheres to whether they are in line with zoning rules.

The sponsors of the project sought three special permits from the ZBA: 1) to renovate a portion of a church building into a six-room shelter, 2) to allow professional office space and 3) to update a kitchen.

Although the shelter attracted most of the attention, it's part of a larger change at Zion Lutheran that will mean a new owner. Worcester Community Housing Resources, a community development corporation, is planning to buy the church campus to use to house its offices, and for the shelter. The church would continue to operate in perpetuity as a tenant, the Rev. Andrew Borden has said.

WCHR Executive Director Jennifer Schanck-Bolwell has said the shelter will be open to homeless families, specifically women and children, but also households that include fathers. The residents will be screened, and the facility will have a curfew. The Worcester social services nonprofit Friendly House will help run the shelter. It could open in 2024 when renovations are complete.

At the start of Monday's meeting, WCHR attorney Todd Rodman detailed changes to the plan that came after listening to concerns of residents, including eliminating a planned commercial kitchen that would've been used for food programs around the city. Some residents had asked WCHR to remove the shelter from the plan completely.

"We're not simply willing to drop the shelter use," Rodman told the ZBA. "In this case, the shelter consists of a total of six bedrooms housing six families inside an existing church that's been in the neighborhood."

Monday's meeting was packed, with dozens of people in person and attending online. ZBA Chair Russell Karlstad asked speakers to restrict comments to only new changes to the plan, but residents opposed to the project spoke about wider issues they have with the project, like fear of dropping property values, rising property insurance, the residency of the shelter residents and crime — and assailing WCHR itself. On the other side, local pastors and other residents spoke in favor of the project.

"You should be ashamed of yourself," a King Philip Road resident said to Borden during the meeting, saying the pastor "sold out" the neighborhood. At previous meetings about the shelter, Borden has said the church has been used as a shelter for almost 20 years.

Zion Lutheran partook in the Interfaith Hospitality Network, a shelter system where families stayed at churches around Worcester for weeks at a time. The network now has a static shelter along June Street.

Yenni Desroches told the ZBA she lives near the June Street shelter, and has seen neither a drop in property values nor an increase in insurance rates.

"It's about alleviating hardship, and it's not a hardship on the community," she said.

One Greendale resident named Alan told the ZBA the shelter, by his calculations, could cause an $80 million drop in local property values. He also questioned whether the shelter would add "undocumented and documented homeless refugees" to the neighborhood, and said WCHR should instead focus on the elderly and veterans.

"The people who have a vested interest in this country," he said.

Richard Cipro, a Worcester police sergeant and 2021 District 1 council candidate, insisted the shelter would expand this winter to become an emergency shelter. Karlstad said the expansion wasn't going to happen, and cut Cipro off.

Karlstad ended the public comment section of the meeting after an interaction with a speaker who railed against the shelter, saying the residents would not be required to have jobs, and would not be required to be sober.

The ZBA voted unanimously to approve WCHR's three special permits. Karlstad invited Greendale residents to appeal the decision if they wanted.

Monday's ruling was the second zoning approval so far this year for space to support the homeless. The Worcester Planning Board in January approved a plan to convert the Quality Inn off Lincoln Street into a 90-unit residential building with supportive services for the chronically homeless. WCHR is also backing that project, which some neighbors opposed.

Worcester and Massachusetts are in the midst of a homeless shelter crisis. The state's family shelter system has been overwhelmed in recent months due to rising homelessness and migrants coming to the state. The state has begun using hotels to house families under the state's right-to-shelter law.

Worcester lost a reliable winter shelter last summer when Hotel Grace closed its Providence Street operation. A 60-bed winter shelter opened as a replacement at the Blessed Sacrament church along Pleasant Street to wide opposition, and it's unclear if the facility will reopen there this winter.

The Rev. Dave Woessner, the pastor at St. Michael's On-The-Heights, spoke at the meeting to highlight that June 9 marks the 70th anniversary of the great Worcester tornado of 1953. The tornado killed 94 people, left many residents of Greendale and Burncoat homeless and destroyed St. Michael's. Woessner said Greendale banded together after that disaster, and he believes that community spirit will live on with the new family shelter in its midst.

"Our church would not have been rebuilt 70 years ago without that," he said.