It’s more difficult to find a bed in one of the state’s homeless shelters than it was last year.
That comes from state officials who are putting the finishing touches on their annual shelter and homeless report.
Overall, the state figures aren’t good.
The statistics suggest the number of homeless is growing.
And that competition for bed space is increasing.
New Hampshire Public Radio’s Dan Gorenstein reports.
sfx: griddle, eggs
One of the Nashua Soup Kitchen and Shelter volunteers fries eggs for egg and muffin sandwiches.
Over the course of an hour, about 40 people come in and out, eating breakfast, socializing.
Bags of bread and bagels divide the room.
A man who gives his name as Bruce says he’s been homeless off and on for 22 years.
The past two weeks, he’s spent nights at the Nashua shelter.
Before that, he slept in a tent during the summer, and says he’s noticed there are more people that don’t have a place to live.
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7:11 ... people do come to Nashua, Manchester, they do sleep out along the Merrimack River, Nashua River, Mines Falls, power lines, or in alley ways, or abandoned cars, yes they do.
State data shows that calls to the Homeless Hotline have more than doubled over the past year.
Shelters have added beds since last year.
But they have to turn away as many people.
Those findings square with Eileen Brady’s experience at the Nashua Shelter and Kitchen.
She’s worked there for ten years.
But over the last three, Brady says, people have been staying longer.
There’s no place else to go.
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2:44... SO there is a lot of competition. Getting up a first months rent is in the environs of 2 thousand dollars. There are few rooming houses available. A lot are upwards of $150 a week. So it is very hard to move out of a shelter. And then people lose their jobs. The service economy is not a steady source of income for people. So it is difficult ot present yourself as a great tenant if you haven’t kept a steady job.
Brady is quick to point out, shelters are supposed to be for emergencies, floods, fires, unexpected layoffs.
But in 2003, the state reports in 40 shelters spread across the state, the average length of stay grew from 37 nights to 46.
John Morris works at the state Health and Human Services Office of Homeless and Housing Services.
He agrees with Brady; this year’s numbers indicate two brewing problems:
One: some homeless can’t even find a bed for a night.
Two: those in shelters can’t find permanent affordable housing.
But it’s not the growth of the homeless population that surprises the HHS’s Morris.
It’s the make-up of that population.
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2:31 the number of people that are working, part-time, if not full time that are keeping these shelters full, that is the most surprising.
While the state doesn’t have solid numbers, anecdotally, the face of homelessness seems to be changing in New Hampshire.
No longer is it that homeless guy under the bridge.
State officials, homeless outreach workers, and the homeless say increasingly, homeless people work and many are families.
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:42 you have this mix of the need for the state to step in and be helpful. The federal government to step in and be helpful, and the local city and towns to be helpful.
Again, John Morris.
...I think in terms of what is being done now, and the dollars we have to work with, we can say we are getting a very good effective, efficient use of every dollar. The needs are there, it just seems like there could be more dollars. If I could see dollars go anywhere, I could see it go into low-cost permanent housing project.
Most everyone agrees, New Hampshire needs more affordable housing.
The only question is where?
Judy Silva is with the New Hampshire Municipal Association.
She says given the tax structure and how education is funded, some towns fear shouldering the added expense.
And, towns interested in developing low-cost housing, she says, don’t get applications from developers.
Basically, Silva says the market just isn’t supporting the creation of affordable housing.
Track 24
1:00 if you are sitting someplace, trying to hold onto a job, trying to find housing, I am sure it is not a satisfactory answer to hear that it is part of the market. But I think if you are looking at how are we going to fix this, the market has to be interfered with in some fashion to create an area that makes it viable to build additional affordable housing.
The debate over tax policy, education funding and land conservation will likely dog the state for some time.
But that someday solution doesn’t make it any easier for Eileen Brady to meet that face at the door of the Soup Kitchen.
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:42 ... Whether it’s a mother with a kid, if it’s a single person, an elderly person, they say, you don’t have any room? What am I going to do now...i think what is really frustrating is to get the message from the people who are actually meeting all the people, and try to convince a legislature who doesn’t see those people. It is a really hard canyon to jump. To convey the idea of how it feels for that person.
For NHPR News, I’m DG.
