Category: Columns
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Stray to Tent A Forever Home: A Book Review
Stray to Tent A Forever Home http://www.straytotentaforeverhome.com What a glory! This book by Gary Clark is beautifully illustrated to raise children’s awareness about homelessness in a positive, loving way. It says that it is for children from the ages of 5 to 8 but really, this is a book for everybody. Really, I found the…
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Boston Housing Authority employee slights the city in letter to residents
Recently, someone mentioned that perhaps the Boston Housing Authority needs a consumer advocacy group made up of tenants and other partner agencies. This group could advise BHA on problems such as it’s ponderous orientation program and interview process. But after a recent and undoubtedly colossal mistake by the agency, maybe it’s time to just start…
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Healthcare is a Human Right
By the time you read this, I will have had my second surgery to plant a fistula in my arm for my eventual dialysis treatment. But that is not what I want to talk about today. After all, I’m fine, and I’m reasonably healthy because I have been lucky. I have great healthcare, and I’m…
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A running diary of suboxone withdrawal
August 12, 2018 I’m in the third day of my Suboxone withdrawal and starting to feel it. I have night sweats, my appetite is diminishing and I’m only sleeping five hours at night. I’ve gone from three Suboxone a day down to one-half of a Suboxone a day. It’s a familiar feeling because I used…
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Not Buying It: Boston Claims Chronic Homelessness is Down 20 Percent
A couple of weeks ago the City of Boston had a round table conversation with the press to let us all know that due to their efforts chronic homelessness in the city has been reduced by 20 percent since 2016. If yours truly had been present at this conversation, those government employees would have gotten…
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Fifty Years After the Fair Housing Act, Discrimination is Still an Issue
The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Fair Housing Act (FHA) of 1968, celebrated this past April, begs the question: where do we stand as a nation half a century later? The enactment of this law is the legacy of the work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and many other civil rights activists, and as a…
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The Forgotten Crisis: Nobody Thinks It Could Happen to Them
Sometimes when I talk to groups about homelessness, unless they’re activists, I get a blank stare, like I’m talking to a bunch of empty chairs or an empty room. I get it: homelessness isn’t sexy or trendy like climate change, gun control, LGBTQ rights, or even animal rights for that matter. Those are all important…
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Awakening
Over the last few years I have felt disconnected from the black community, not coming from them but me. It wasn’t on purpose, mind you. I wasn’t as young people call it these days “cooning;” that means Uncle Tom for you folks that aren’t up on street slang. I railed against everything that affects us,…
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Stand Together
I said I wouldn’t criticize Mayor Marty Walsh and the City of Boston about the Point-in-Time Count (homeless census). I lied. I mean I really wasn’t going to say much of anything more than what I said in my last column, then I read that the mayor was looking to get a raise; not only…
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Stand Together
I said I wouldn’t criticize Mayor Marty Walsh and the City of Boston about the Point-in-Time Count (homeless census). I lied. I mean I really wasn’t going to say much of anything more than what I said in my last column, then I read that the mayor was looking to get a raise; not only…