The Family Van parked in East Boston. Credit: Anna Bloxham. On a Wednesday morning at Liberty Plaza in East Boston, a colorful van is parked in the lot with a tiny sandwich board beside it reading “Free Health Screenings.” The people inside are volunteers awaiting clients who will enter the van and ask to get…
Hiding the Problem
Once again the Boston Marathon is upon us, and so is another tradition: pushing the homeless out of the marathon area. It happens every year. Homeless folks are sent packing while tourists, politicians, and runners travel back and forth around the area. Barriers are put up around the public library where the homeless sit, where…
Shelters Shouldn’t Do the State’s job
When I read that Pine Street Inn was planning to create 140 units of housing by putting up a five to six story building in Jamaica Plain I nearly fell over, and not from joy. For years I’ve been a staunch believer that shelter agencies, including Pine Street Inn, should not double as landlords. Why?…
Cambridge eyes major zoning relief for affordable developments
Cambridge City Hall. Cambridge City Council dedicated the March 20 Housing Committee meeting to hearing public comments on the 100% Affordable Housing Zoning Overlay. The proposal would allow developers of affordable housing exclusively for low and medium income renters to build significantly more densely and with a streamlined permit process citywide. The meeting drew a…
Bathrooms for customers only: Peeing with dignity in the city
Everyone needs to use washrooms, but public washrooms are hard to find. Just ask anyone with colitis, or who has ever cared for a child who really needs to go. Toronto, for example, has only one free and public washroom for every 9,213 residents. So, where do we go, when we really need to go? Whether…
Braintree resists denser development that would add to affordable housing
Braintree Town Hall. Hundreds of Braintree residents filled the town hall on March 25, standing and sitting wherever they could, as the town opened the public hearing process for extensive changes proposed for Braintree’s zoning laws. Before the hearing, more than fifty protesters were outside town hall holding signs with slogans such as “say no…
Pine Street Inn Bringing Housing to Jamaica Plain
One of the city’s most prominent homeless shelters is planning to bring 140 units of permanent supportive housing to Jamaica Plain. Pine Street Inn, the region’s largest homeless services provider, announced it is working with a nonprofit housing organization to create 225 new units of housing at 3368 Washington Street and is planning to file…
‘I Always Came Back’: A Story of Survival
“Hey, baby!” Linda Burston, with an illuminating smile and wide eyes, greets every woman who comes through the doors of Women’s Lunch Place. They always know when Linda is in the room; even among the clink clank of dishes being piled high, the scraping of metal fork against ceramic plate, the hum of conversation among dozens of…
Friday Cafe offered food and warmth during New England winters
Each week during the colder Massachusetts months, about 125 people meet in a renovated parish hall in Harvard Square for a free Friday lunch. The Friday Cafe is a one day a week day shelter and lunch run by Rev. Kate Layzer. This program offers a wide range of services designed to help either the…
When the media dehumanizes the homeless
A little over a week ago two separate stories about homelessness caught my attention. The first was an article in the Boston Herald in which the main focus seemed to be that homeless people were using MBTA as a place to escape from the cold. There’s nothing new about this. Homeless people have been using…