Amherst eyes plans to assist homeless

By Mary Carey
Staff Writer

Published on August 17, 2007

AMHERST - One woman was working at an area manufacturer until she had to go into the hospital for seizures, lost her job last September and became homeless in December.

Another person went to jail after being arrested on a breaking-and-entering charge and ended up homeless.

A Pioneer Valley-wide council established earlier this year is gathering stories like these with the goal of producing a plan to identify local and state barriers to ending homelessness, establish funding priorities and push for any necessary changes in relevant laws.

Northampton Mayor Clare Higgins and Holyoke Mayor Michael Sullivan are co-chairs of the group called the Three-County Leadership Council to End Homelessness, formed in January following a regional symposium, sponsored by Springfield, Holyoke and Northampton.

Peg Keller, housing and community development senior planner for Northampton, presented an update on the council's progress on Monday to the Amherst Select Board, which is deliberating whether to create its own committee to end homelessness in Amherst.

Keller said the Hampshire-Franklin-Hampden counties group joins a nationwide effort. Some 300 entities are participating to end homelessness across the country and hundreds of models to address homelessness have been developed that the Pioneer Valley council could employ, she said.

"I'm not sure it's possible to end it, but certainly reduce the numbers," Keller added.

The council is unique because it includes a wide range of members from social service agencies, higher education, government, and labor groups, religious organizations and the business community.

One of its goals is to build the political will to effect changes needed, and having such a broad-based group should help with that Keller said.

Within the next six months, sub-committees on housing opportunities, family stabilization and homelessness prevention, access to mainstream services, chronic homelessness and data and research will bring their work to the Leadership Council, which will produce a final plan, Keller said.

"We don't want to belabor it," Keller said. "We want to get down to work. We want to hammer it out."

Once colleges are back in session, students likely will be going into area shelters with video cameras taping interviews with shelter residents about how they became homeless and what they have found helpful and not helpful.

Earlier, members conducted a "point-in-time" survey one night and found that 669 people were homeless, 442 of them in Springfield. There were 33 people living on the street at one time and 53 in the three counties.

Prior to becoming homeless, 18 percent of people said they last lived in Springfield, 16 percent gave Northampton as their last address, 13 percent came from Greenfield, 6 percent from Easthampton and 3 percent from Amherst.

Town Manager Larry Shaffer has advised the Select Board that it would be best if Amherst focused its efforts on the regional committee rather than form its own committee, as requested by Select Board member Hwei-Ling Greeney.

Amherst had an Emergency Homeless Task Force, which examined homelessness in town and concluded it would be best to support the regional effort, because homeless people often travel from town to town.

"In one sense, any proposal to end homelessness in Amherst (alone) really runs counter to this initiative," Shaffer told the Select Board, speaking of the regional effort. "I would urge you not to dilute or deflect our limited resources in efforts that are parallel or counterproductive to this effort. I think we need to get on board with this."

Roy Rosenblatt, Amherst's community services director, is a member of the council, Shaffer pointed out. But Greeney and Select Board member Anne Awad said they think Amherst should have its own committee that would work with the regional group.

"I'm ... feeling the voice of Ken Mosakowski telling us to directly put our hands on the problem of homelessness in Amherst," Awad said of the instigator of the Emergency Homelessness Task Force who has since died.

Select Board members agreed to revisit the subject and vote whether to create another Amherst committee on homelessness at a future meeting.

Mary Carey can be reached at mary.carey@att.net.