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​Finding Shelter
As housing prices soar in Rhode Island, an increasing number of people are living on the street, as the state struggles to provide enough shelter space. This week, Jim Hummel profiles a pilot program in Providence aimed at providing shelter beds during the coldest nights this winter and the volunteers who stepped forward to help make it work. It’s our second of a three-part series on the issue of homelessness.
PROVIDENCE – A pilot program aimed at providing shelter beds during the coldest nights this winter supplied a cot and meals for thousands of people over more than 50 days since December.
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Operation No One Dies received an initial $200,000 grant from the state’s Executive Office of Housing, but stretched its funding by developing a network of volunteers who cooked meals, donated supplies and shuttled people between the program’s hub downtown and churches on the East Side and in South Providence.
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Even with that help, the unexpectedly harsh winter prompted the state to kick in another $150,000 to finish up the season.
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“If we’re going to practice what we preach, our church - all churches - should be open to those who don’t have a place to be at night during the winter, and all throughout the year for that matter, if possible,” said Kevin Simon, director of outreach and communications at Mathewson Street United Methodist Church.
In order for the churches to open as shelters, the “feels like” temperature had to be 22 degrees or lower. Based on past winters, the group estimated that would translate to roughly 30 nights. Organizers planned for 75 to 100 people nightly spread across the three sites.
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The final tally for the harshest winter Rhode Island has seen in a decade: 53 nights and a total of 2,500 cots occupied between Dec. 5 and March 14.
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“Part of why we did this was to show exactly how people should be treated – with respect,” said Eric Hirsch, a Providence College professor who heads up The Rhode Island Homeless Advocacy Project. “At a lot of the shelters and warming centers you have a lot of burnout with the staff.”
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The idea for a new program began last summer when Harrison Tuttle approached Hirsch. Together they had rallied at the State House for the past several years trying to draw attention to the issue of homelessness; they implored Gov. McKee, unsuccessfully, to declare a state of emergency.
Hirsch suggested Tuttle contact the Rhode Island State Council of Churches to see what congregations might be willing to open their doors. Tuttle, Hirsch, Simon and Jerremy Langill, the executive minister of the council of churches, met at Mathewson Street regularly through the fall to develop a plan and approach the state for financial help.
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Mathewson Street, which already had an extensive outreach ministry, served as a base, with the Community Church of Providence on Wayland Avenue and Open Table of Christ Church on Elmwood Avenue providing space from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. on the qualifying nights.
While Tuttle is pleased with how the first season went, he reiterated what virtually everyone working with the homeless community focuses on. “Our ultimate goal is to provide people with permanent supportive housing,” he said.
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“The issue is that people are rapidly falling into homelessness and the state doesn’t have the infrastructure for the services that we are providing to the people currently experiencing homelessness. And we don’t have enough units that are permanent supportive housing to provide holistic care.”
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On Monday Feb. 2, the daytime temperature didn’t get out of the 20s and overnight it fell to single digits – below zero with the wind child.
​By 6:55 p.m. a caravan of vehicles lined the driveway adjacent to the rear entrance of the Community Church of Providence, where volunteer drivers brought those staying the night from Mathewson Street to the East Side and helped to get inside with their belongings. More than 30 people signed up to drive, with a core of about 15 regulars; some did evening and early morning shuttles.
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Someone just inside the door greeted the guests, who made their way to the bottom of the stairs leading to the basement. They got checked in, entering a cavernous space that included a spacious kitchen, a room for nearly two dozen cots, another room with tables set up for meals and a side room with a television.
The Rev. Sarah Reed Jay moved here from Indiana in 2023 to become pastor at CCOP. She immediately wanted to put the enormous building to use. She says 16 groups – ranging from choirs to yoga groups to Alcoholics Anonymous – now use some part of the building every week, but she still had 8,400-square-feet in the basement not being used.
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“I have this huge basement,” Reed Jay said. “One of my goals since I came to the church was to fill it up in many ways. I was talking to as many people as I could about who can I partner with to somehow use our space for housing, because housing is such a big issue here in Rhode Island.”
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When she heard that the council of churches was looking for participants in Operation No One Dies, she responded immediately. The program was attractive because the initiative provided staffing and supplies.
Each church had three paid overnight staff: two professionals trained in trauma care and CPR, with medical certifications to prevent overdose and practice deescalation. They also hired individuals who were formerly homeless or in transitional housing who knew the population, at $23 per hour.
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“This was really ideal, because I thought we’d have to do major construction first,” Reed Jary said. “To be able to open up, almost instantaneously in time for this winter was great.”
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She said she was nervous about approaching her board because she wasn’t sure how receptive members, and the surrounding neighbors, would be. The response from both was overwhelmingly positive.
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“Mathewson was providing meals to all of the sites every night,” she said. “Then we met neighbors and other churches that set up a meal train. Halfway through, individuals in the community made meals,” she said, adding that it helped stretch the grant money.
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Temple Beth-El donated a washer and dryer, now hooked up in the basement of the church.
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Staff often had to adapt on the fly. The night we visited, more people showed up than the staff had expected, meaning they had to scramble to provide meals for the extra people.
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“You run into those kinds of things,” Tuttle said. “By the end of it, doing it over 50 days, we were able to accommodate pretty much any situation that occurred.”
Many chose to ride it out in their tents because they either didn’t want to – or couldn’t – be around others in a congregate setting; others were feeding a drug addiction or were concerned they’d be robbed if they left.
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“They lump everything together,” she said. “You have to separate them out because the needs are different for each individually. It’s not just a house. You might be able to find housing, but you wouldn’t know what to do because you don’t have the skills to get their life back together.”
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Those living in tents throughout Rhode Island faced the added challenge of a harsh winter, with an extended cold stretch and two heavy snowfalls, including last month’s record-breaking blizzard.
Open Table of Christ had a more intimate setting: One room on the side of the church facing Alabama Avenue accommodated 14 cots, with an adjacent kitchen. We visited on Friday night Feb. 13 as guests began to gather shortly after 7 o’clock. While some walked directly from the neighborhood, most arrived via the volunteer transport from Mathewson Street.
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Pastor Joemily Collazo greeted most by name as they walked in. Like the other churches, parishioners at Open Table were happy to host and have seen the effects of the program. “People came out of the woodwork to be able to be part of this,” Collazo said.​
She said having smaller hubs helped reduce the anxiety of being in larger groups. “It’s also the fact that we’re able to help change lives in some ways,” Collazo said. “We’ve had a couple of instances where people have been at the shelter for a few days and are rested enough to have a clear mind and able to think straight and are able to make a good decision about going to rehab or going to the hospital to get help.”
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Back at Mathewson, the decibel level was higher, as more than two dozen people gathered, some in smaller groups. One man sat alone in a wheelchair, while another was sprawled out on the floor covered with a sleeping bag. Others grabbed a cup of coffee, while some read.
Simon grew up in Rhode Island but lived in Texas for many years. He returned home in 2012 to help an aging mother and discovered Mathewson when he attended a Sunday morning breakfast. “I fell in love with the place the minute I walked in the doors,” he said. “The kindness and compassion flowing from every corner of the building was truly inspiring, I’d never seen anything like it.”
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He was hired as outreach and communications director and is now on the path to becoming a pastor; Simon hopes to eventually be ordained.
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The biggest challenge this winter was the two stretches of extended snow – one in January and the last month’s blizzard, where staff at each location hunkered down and stayed with the guests from Sunday night until Wednesday morning.
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“We staffed six people to stay overnight when we knew the roads would be closed for a couple of days,” Tuttle said of preparations at CCOP. “So you needed a nighttime shift and a daytime shift to alternate in the church.”
And despite the name of the program – Operation No One Dies – Simon and Tuttle are both distressed that three people died during frigid stretches. A 48-year-old Narragansett man was found dead in downtown Providence during a bitter stretch in January.
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And last month, a 49-year-old man and his 75-year-old mother were living in a car where their bodies were found in a lot outside Miriam Hospital.
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Tuttle called them “extremely preventable deaths” and is bothered that Gov. McKee did not publicly acknowledge their passing.
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The Hummel Report put that question to McKee on Monday evening. He responded: “We’re very aware of that. We may not have made a public comment about it, but the fact of the matter is we’re aware of it. We know that in that case there were situations there that were not directly related to the homelessness and there (were) situations…. it’s a tragedy when anybody passes. But our focus has been to making sure we have enough shelter to keep everyone safe. And that people who want to get into that shelter had the ability to do it.”
Simon said: “The three that we know of who passed away because of the elements, I think that number would have been greater if the churches didn’t step up and open their doors.”
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Tuttle said the last day the pop-up church shelters were open this month was a difficult one for people who had regularly used the service. “It was very somber,” Tuttle said. “There are individuals who have come to rely on the services that we’re providing. And as much as we want to be able to provide that, we only have modeled based on this winter, and we need funding.”
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Simon said the group will debrief over the summer and see what can be improved for next winter. “I fear this is going to be worse before it gets better, with rising rents, cost of living, employment opportunities: it’s part of a perfect storm,” he said. “We need to do our part to be able to support folks to take positive steps forward. I think this was a big part of it this winter.”
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Hirsch said while Operation No One Dies made a significant contribution this winter, it’s a model he wishes would eventually be put out of business. “We’re not trying to set up tons of warming centers,” he said.
“They’re just the symptom. The answer to homelessness is not shelters and warming centers. The answer is units we can put people in. This tens of millions of dollars we’re spending on the homeless service system, it’s designed to put people in housing, but we just don’t have it.”
The Hummel Report is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that relies, in part, on donations. For more information, go to HummelReport.org. Reach Jim at Jim@HummelReport.org.