Spare Change News

Category: Homelessness & Poverty

  • Showly Nicholson Looks to a New Platform for Helping the Homeless

    Showly Nicholson Looks to a New Platform for Helping the Homeless

    CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—Harvard Square is, in many ways, an excellent snapshot of the unique qualities that define the greater Boston area: the same street corners and T stations that are frequented by Harvard University’s most promising students, and homeless individuals who don’t know when they will get their next meal. These streets are also the breeding…

  • More Than Just the Bridge: Long Island Clients and Allies Speak Out for Housing, Rehab and Improved Services

    On October 8, the Long Island bridge—the only access route to Boston’s largest shelter (450 beds), roughly half the city’s detox beds, and a total of 15 programs, including recovery, transitional, and re-entry services—was closed down with only a four-hour notice. Cleve Rae, 58, who had only been homeless for a few days, remembers being…

  • Angels in the Snow

    A frigid wind stung Bobby’s face as he pushed open the door of the package store. Sleet beat a staccato rhythm on the window of the store as he handed the man cash for a bottle of respite. Out the door, back into the yellow-jacket wind. Bobby clutched the bottle right against his body as…

  • Does It Really Matter?

    Does It Really Matter?

    So the elections have come and gone, and for the first time in eight years here in Mass. a Republican will be in the State House. I voted this past Tuesday, but like thousands who stayed home I wondered if it would make a difference. I mean, really, does it matter who is in the…

  • Remembering Menino: The Former Mayor’s Legacy on Social Justice

    Remembering Menino: The Former Mayor’s Legacy on Social Justice

    The late Mayor Tom Menino’s impact on the city of Boston was easy to see after his death on the morning of Oct. 30. Thousands visited his casket in Fanuiel Hall on Saturday, Nov. 2, and thousands more lined the route of his funeral procession the next day. As the oft-repeated statistic claims, more than…

  • New City Commission on Black Men and Boys Comes to a Vote

    New City Commission on Black Men and Boys Comes to a Vote

    BOSTON, Mass.—The founder of the New Democracy Coalition, Kevin C. Peterson, recently wrote an opinion piece in the Boston Herald giving Boston’s officials a red flag. “The status of black and Latino men and boys must become one of the city’s priorities,” Peterson said. “If it doesn’t, we are just kicking the can further down…

  • The Bridge To Nowhere

    I am sitting in my comfortable office chair with a Suboxone dissolving under my tongue as I write about the fellow addicts who have been sent into the dark night. It is all because of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ despicable planning and the sudden closing of the bridge that was leading so many addicts and…

  • A Pissing Contest

    A Pissing Contest

    In the May 2 issue of Spare Change News carried a cover story called “Infrastructure Inequality” by Alex Ramirez about the Long Island Bridge, which connects Boston’s homeless to the city’s Long Island Shelter via a bus route through Quincy. The bridge is old and rickety and has been in decay for years. It is…

  • The Secret to Life

    As I age, I reflect more and more on the forces that shaped my life, I feel incredibly lucky to be alive, to be me, just turned 67, happily married and feeling at peace with myself. The journey was difficult. It took a lot of hard work to trudge through alcoholism, depression, multiple suicide attempts,…

  • Frankenstein In Central Square, Part Six

    Ar Lain Ta taps his shoulder. Moshe Dean’s head snaps up and he opens his eyes. “I was paying attention,” was what he said. “I was just thinking about something else,” he said as he wiped the soup casually from his forehead and ground a soft potato into his thinning hair. A car alarm blares.…