The Boston Sun reports that Boston's efforts to find permanent housing for the homeless keep getting frustrated because just as the numbers of homeless people go down, more homeless people arrive in the city - driven in part by the fact that Boston has programs to house the homeless and most suburbs don't.
Transit Police will step up patrols in North Station and Boston Garden security guards will no longer be allowed to eject the homeless from the train station following the Globe's report on how some security guards apparently took out their aggressions on homeless people in the station.
Boston firefighters are at the Fairmount Line near where it crosses over Norfolk Avenue and where a pile of mattresses and other items used by the homeless have caught fire in a tunnel under the tracks. Firefighters report being able to battle the blaze without having to stop service on the train line.
Matthew I. reports he happened to have his camera with him on the way to Starbucks this morning when he spotted this man on Mass. Ave. in the Back Bay:
Gave this guy a couple bucks. Took his photo from across the street on the way back.
Copyright Matthew I. Posted in the Universal Hub pool on Flickr.
The shelter resident had a serious medical problem - he was suicidal. But a shelter nurse told him to tell 911 he was having a heart attack because that would make the ambulance get there faster. The responding paramedics had a problem with that.
He is 57, has a BS from a local college, has a wife and son. And now he sleeps in the entrance to the Harvard Coop. On the Street is a blog by a man who says he became homeless when he lost his job and he kept coming down with serious infections that require hospitalization:
For me the hardest part of being on the streets is trying to pass the time during the day when the shelter is closed. Where I am staying now closes at 8 AM and reopens at 7. On a day like today when the weather is good it isn't a problem but this being winter you never know.
Carpundit doesn't mind homeless people sleeping in ATMs - as long as they're gone in the morning, unlike the guy he found in one around 10 a.m. this past Sunday:
... By ten on a Sunday, most industrious bums are begging in front of the Dunkin' Donuts or scrounging for cardboard to make their excuse signs for holding up traffic. Does Boston have adequate shelter for these people on the bitter winter nights? No? Could we at least rent some vans and drive them to Cambridge, where they actively seek bums?
Aaron Swartz chronicles sleeping outside the Coop recently (why? Because he could, basically):
... Around 11:30 it was getting pretty empty and the musician began packing up his stuff. I didn't last much longer, so I laid my sleeping bag out along the side of the Coop and climbed inside. There were about five or six people on the other side, all tiled in nicely with each other, all in a different sort of gear. ...
Evan describes the various homeless people he's seen of late, including the guy who sleeps on the steps of his building.
KingVitaman photographs a homeless man sleeping in a Back Bay alley:
The irony here is that this alley runs parallel to two of the richest, most popular, well-traveled streets in Boston.
Carpundit comes up with a plan to solve the tunnel problems, create jobs, house the homeless AND clean up the Back Bay all at once.
That's what Jen Stewart calls the Boston Common these days:
... Now that the weather's warm, it becomes much more apparent just how many homeless people are sleeping on the Common. I feel like I'm walking through the world's biggest slumber party every morning. And not a happy, carefree, giggling 12 year old girl slumber party, either. Are they sleeping somewhere else during the cold months, or have we suddenly had a big influx of people with nowhere to go? ...
Jesse Kanson-Benanav wonders:
Has anyone else noticed all the homeless people around town wearing Farm Aid 2005 t-shirts? ...
Spare Change News, the newspaper by and for homeless people, says the Herald erred in making a connection between "the Stomper" (the allegedly violent homeless guy with a predeliction for stomping other homeless people) and the recent death of a homeless man in Downtown Crossing. Mark reposts Spare Change News's article (and gets a comment from a Herald editor dismissing the Spare Change News report):
HERALD SPREADS FALSE PANIC AMONG HOMELESS PEOPLE
Dennis Connolly didn't kill Steven Neiber, witnesses tell SCN ...
Baratunde stumbles across major road construction near Charles Street the other day - only to find all the workers were doing was replacing curbstones. And he wonders, when homeless people still roam the streets, why is the city replacing dirty curbs?
Spare Change News, the Boston-area homeless newspaper is in deep financial straits, according to this morning's Boston Herald and is desperately in need of help to insure its continued functioning.
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