In Homeless Policy Shift, Worcester Turning Away From Shelter Beds

WORCESTER, MA — Leaders in charge of Worcester's homelessness response say they will not proactively expand temporary shelters, a policy shift that comes after officials last year helped open a winter shelter due to a rising homeless population and the loss of one of the city's main low-barrier shelters.

Worcester City Manager Eric Batista and Commissioner of Health & Human Services Dr. Matilde Castiel said the city will now focus on finding homeless residents spots in transitional and permanent-supportive housing. Those types of housing are higher-quality than congregate shelters, but are also scarce and take longer to build from scratch.

"What we want to target, what we want to really focus on, is transitional housing," Batista said this week. "We want to put all our efforts into [that and] permanent-supportive housing instead of putting our efforts into congregate shelters."

In October, city officials considered declaring a public health crisis over homelessness, a legal maneuver that would've made it easier to use municipal buildings as shelters. That came after projections showed Worcester was heading toward a winter with a record high homeless population, according to records provided to Worcester Patch.

Instead, leaders of Blessed Sacrament Church and the social services agency Open Sky teamed up with help from city leaders to open a 60-bed, low-barrier shelter along Pleasant Street. The shelter closed in March, and Open Sky reported that it was at-capacity every day. The nonprofit also reported 30 residents were able to find permanent housing after working with their counselors.

But the shelter also posed a political problem for city leaders. Neighbors and business owners near the church complained of issues related to the influx of shelter residents. Batista, Mayor Joseph Petty, police leaders, District 5 Councilor Etel Haxhiaj and Open Sky leaders held multiple community meetings to hear from neighbors. Some meetings grew heated, with neighbors saying they saw an increase in litter, loitering and drug use. A shelter resident who was kicked out for being unruly entered a person’s yard next door and punched the homeowner.

Homelessness rising

The Blessed Sacrament shelter was a replacement for Hotel Grace, a winter shelter that operated at a church along Vernon Street for several years. Net of Compassion, the group that ran Hotel Grace, lost its lease at the church in 2022.

Last fall, the Central Massachusetts Housing Alliance presented city leaders a projection showing that the local homeless population could top 850 people by February, a record high in any recent winter.

Facing the loss of Hotel Grace's 60 shelter beds, officials began searching for a solution. In a memo, Castiel's office counted a maximum of 202 beds available in shelters operated by the South Middlesex Opportunity Council, Abby's House, Lift and Veterans Inc. But beds at Abby's House, Lift and Veterans Inc. are not available to people walking off the street and often have wait lists.

Without Hotel Grace, SMOC's approximately 150 beds were all that would've been open in a region with a rising homeless population.

Castiel's memo said Worcester would need an additional 230 beds to make it through winter. Had the city declared a public health crisis, the former Denholm department store, the Mercantile Center and the former RMV building along Main Street might've been used as emergency shelters.

Worcester also considered erecting a Pallet shelter village. The Seattle-area company manufactures freestanding shelters that can be built en masse in about a day. Boston erected a Pallet village at Shattuck Hospital in Jamaica Plain to house homeless people displaced by Mass and Cass sweeps. The city council in Burlington, Vermont, recently approved a 30-unit Pallet village. The Pallet shelters can also be broken down and stored for use during disasters.

According to records, Worcester had identified eight potential sites for a 30-unit Pallet village, including a former grocery store along Mill Street, a parking lot at Quinsigamond Community College and the former Showcase Cinemas parcel. Pallet provided the city a quote of $624,000 for the village, although winter upgrades could've pushed the price up to $1.5 million. Batista said this week the Pallet village is no longer under consideration.

Castiel said the city wants to move the homeless into housing that provides "dignity" — and she said Pallet shelters don't provide that.

Ultimately, Blessed Sacrament filled the need. The shelter was a private collaboration between Open Sky and the church, although city resources went into the shelter in the form of increased police patrols, health and safety checks and additional trash and street sweeping services. The state gave $1.1 million for the facility.

Wider crisis

Batista acknowledged there is a demand for congregate shelter beds, but implied Worcester is on the hook for a larger regional crisis.

"We know if we built a congregate shelter with 100 beds, it'd be filled tomorrow," he said. "But we can't guarantee all those people will be Worcester residents."

There are no congregate shelters in the towns that border Worcester, and officials and residents have often talked of people being dropped off in the city to receive services. At the same time, the state Department of Housing and Community Development's shelter system has been maxed out recently due to a rise in homelessness and migration to the state. As of this week, DCHD was housing more than 800 people in hotel rooms across the state, according to the Boston Globe, due to a lack of shelter space.

DCHD is opening a portion of the former Westborough state hospital as an emergency shelter with 20 beds for families. The state also uses two extended-stay hotels in Westborough to house families, including some from Worcester.

Batista said it's possible private organizations could create congregate shelter space in Worcester. Those proposals would be subject to zoning approvals and would be taken on a "case-by-case" basis," he said.

There's an example of that process going on right now: Worcester Community Housing Resources, Inc., has asked the Zoning Board of Appeals for approval to use a portion of a Greendale church complex to create a six-bed shelter for homeless refugees. That plan for that shelter — much smaller than Blessed Sacrament — has alrady been criticized on social media by local residents ahead of a May 15 public hearing.

Congregate shelter alternatives

If no new congregate shelters open in Worcester, where exactly will the homeless go?

Castiel said there may be enough congregate shelter beds for the upcoming winter through SMOC and specialized shelters like Abby's House, Lift and Veterans Inc. She emphasized hat Worcester wants to focus on finding single-room occupancy spaces for homeless residents, like hotels. The city had not as of this week identified a local hotel where it could place homeless people.

"The reality is, we should not be having congregate shelters now," Castiel said. "We need to figure out how we're going to do this differently."

Worcester is also betting on a constellation of housing projects in the pipeline, although only one may be ready before winter.

A nonprofit is working to convert a Quality Inn into 90 units of permanent supportive housing, which might open in 2024. That project also faced high opposition from residents living along Lincoln Street, and from local officials including District 2 Councilor Candy Mero-Carlson.

A 24-unit Worcester Housing Authority development along Lewis Street is expected to be complete this year, and WHA has already closed the application process for it. A similar project at 30 Winfield St. has yet to break ground. A tiny house village is planned for a parcel along Stafford Street, but the project is idle because there is no organization to operate it. SMOC also recently received a state grant to create 20 units of permanent supportive housing along Chandler Street, but it's unclear when that project will be complete. Castiel also pointed to rooms at the YWCA and sober facilities as possibilities.

Castiel also highlighted the city's new Affordable Housing Trust Fund, a pot of money that can be used to create or renovate space to create new extremely low-income units. She encouraged residents and local developers to get involved in creating new affordable housing by contacting the city.

Meanwhile, homeless camps dot Worcester, from Green Hill Park to the banks of the Blackstone River. Both Castiel and Batista say homeless camps are a public health and safety risk and bad for the homeless and residents living near them. The city's Quality of Life team routinely sweeps encampments, and residents who decline services often just move to a new location, a problem for which "there is no real answer," Castiel said.

This week, Maydee Morales, a city council candidate who worked at the Blessed Sacrament shelter, sent a petition to the council seeking a temporary moratorium on encampment sweeps. The item will be up for discussion at the May 9 Public Health and Human Services subcommittee meeting.

"We believe in the fact that we want to provide treatment and services. Leaving them out there is not the best course," Batista said when asked about Morales' petition.

Batista said the city will open daytime warming and cooling centers, part of the city's new emergency management plan. The city opened an overnight warming center in February when temperatures plunged to 30 degrees below zero. The city can also open overflow shelters if needed, a city spokesperson said.

Months before a winter when Worcester might go without shelters like Blessed Sacrament or Hotel Grace, Batista said he's confident the city and community will come together to find beds for homeless residents in higher quality spaces.

"I have all the confidence in this city and its partner agencies to find resources for transitional housing," he said. "What we as a city are saying is that we want to put our resources into permanent-supportive housing rather than put our efforts into congregate shelter."