Since January, an emergency shelter in Manchester has provided refuge and resources for about 40 people who were pushed out of a downtown encampment. When they were evicted from the streets, most found a safe place there.
But that emergency shelter's doors will close by the end of June, and Daniel Fisher already fears he must return to living in his car. The shelter, he says, has provided him with addiction and mental health care on a one-on-one level. It's also provided smaller gestures of kindness: Recently, the shelter staff brought ice cream for Fisher and others to enjoy during a stretch of good weather. He feels he is making progress.
“I am not looking to stay here forever, but I need to get back on my feet a little more,” Fisher says. “This is what this place was doing for me.”
Fisher says the support he receives at the emergency shelter, located at 39 Beech St., is much different from what he has encountered at the Families in Transition shelter, the city's largest. In the past, some unhoused people have reported that its services are inefficient.
The Beech Street emergency shelter has 17 staff members that serve 40 people in three shifts. The Families in Transition has 20 that also rotate in three shifts, but it also serves around 138 people each night.
“We are also not immune to the staffing shortages and challenges being faced industry-wide and city-wide,” says Jeffrey Zwillenberg, chief development officer at Families in Transition.
Ron-Dal Burgison, the emergency shelter’s supervisor, says the generous number of people working there allows them to engage better with the unhoused population they help.
“Here, people are comfortable enough to use us as a support,” she says.
Kayla West and her husband were among the first people at the doors of the emergency shelter when it opened. They lived at the encampment for a few weeks before it was disbanded and were grateful to find a place to pass the winter. West says she appreciates that she can talk privately to the emergency shelter staff.
“We wonder where we are going to put a tent when this place closes, but that is illegal,” she says. “Fingers crossed something would happen in the next two months.”
But some problems have arisen in recent days. Residents at the emergency shelter report they are no longer receiving breakfast and lunch.
The manager at the emergency shelter, Jake King, says they do not have a kitchen, so they have to rely on food prep from the New Hampshire Food Bank. They are in the midst of renovations and cannot supply food for all meals right now.
“We are working on a solution but trying to use this as an opportunity to get our guests to take ownership of their needs,” he says.
King says the city is considering opening a daily engagement center that could be a solution — for now — to keep offering services after the shelter closes. But in the long term, he hopes the city will work toward a housing-first model that prioritizes providing permanent housing instead of opening emergency shelters every winter.
“If the city doesn’t get private or federal funding, there is not much they can do,” he says.
About 10 people at the emergency shelter have obtained more permanent housing, King says, but for the rest, the future is uncertain. He worries the most about people with addiction and about 25 other people who are on the waiting list for a cot.
“It’s going to be challenging for everybody,” he says.
Adrienne Beloin, Manchester’s director of homelessness initiatives, says the city intentionally changed some of the rules at the emergency shelter to provide resources not offered in other shelters in the state — offering more space for storage, more relaxed hours and more flexibility permitting couples to stay together.
“That makes a big difference to them,” she says.
The engagement center Beloin’s department is proposing would be open seven days a week but will not offer overnight stays. It would offer meals, showers, job training and health resources. Neither the funding nor the location has been finalized, but city officials aim to open on July 1.
“We are looking everywhere,” Beloin says. “Homeless people deserve respect and patience; they are suffering.”
But while people at the emergency shelter say they are finding resources to help them thrive, on the other side of the city, around the streets where the January encampment occurred, the situation is much different.
Some unhoused people who can’t find shelter or prefer to stay outside say the police have been moving them more frequently lately from that location, trying to keep that area clean.
Harry Moy says he and three others lost their belongings last week, after the Department of Public Works removed their items from the sidewalks without notice while they were having breakfast at another location. The Manchester Police Department says they were only picking up trash.
“Moving us up to other streets or emergency shelters that open and close doesn’t solve anything,” Moy says.
