Troubles, uncertainty on display at Woonsocket’s ‘homes of last resort’ 

By JOSEPH B. NADEAU

WOONSOCKET — If you look for them, you can find people living in Woonsocket these days who, for a wide range of reasons, have no real place to call home.

At least no place offering a wood-and-shingle roof or a bedroom with windows, walls or a bed in which to spend cold spring nights or rainy days.
You will find them tucked away in sections of woods off a busy city road or in the thickets bordering the Blackstone River and its tributaries.
Their campsites are places to live but might seem more like an open-air living room with someone’s discarded sofas or chairs arranged in a semi circle around a fire pit or center table littered with the byproducts of a disordered life. Empty cigarette packs, pieces of clothing, empty half-pint bottles, rain-wilted paper products, blankets, plastic sheeting, books, collected but useless home appliances, 40-ounce beer bottles, tattered tents and woven plastic tarps.
Josh Martin, 29, calls such places home today while trying to find his way out of the problems that keep him from claiming a better place to live.
So does John, an older man who says he has a place to stay in the city but prefers his open-air mattress and the plastic sheet he covers up with while sleeping in the raindrops.
“I lie down here because it’s peaceful,” John said after waking from a sound sleep at one of the city’s homeless camps one recent rainy night.
Asked why he wasn’t in a tent, John said he had one “new in the box” but preferred his mattress and sheeting set-up. “I have all this plastic, I never get wet,” he said.
While John was found alone at his site off a Blackstone River tributary, Martin had a few friends with him when found at another.
A young woman walking into camp with him said she had come out to the woods to visit Martin’s site for something to do. An older woman found on a sofa at a nearby camp said she was there while waiting to check into an alcohol recovery program.
The woman said she hoped to get into an out-of-city treatment program the following day but needed to call someone at Landmark Medical Center to see if anything would be available.
Sleeping outside in a makeshift camp is far from the life Martin said he’d like to have, but he has few alternatives at the moment.
“I’m out here because I have to pay some court cost and fines that I have,” he said. Money he gets goes to paying those costs and not to rent, he said. “To be honest, I’d rather be homeless than in jail,” Martin said.
“As soon as I pay my fines, I’m out of Woonsocket,” he said.
Martin has a tent — but a damaged one — that someone slashed while he was sleeping in it. He covers the torn area with a tarp to keep out the rain and said the incident has left him nervous about a repeat attack.
Once darkness falls, the night can be long when you are alone, he said. “That’s why people come by. It’s someone to talk to and it kind of cheers me up.”
Woonsocket’s homeless camps are not a new curiosity in this community of 44,000,  but actually a longstanding alternative to programs such as the wintertime men’s shelter run by the Rev. Gene Giguere at the Harvest Community Church on North Main Street, outreach assistance from other churches, low-income housing, and federally-funded social service programs.
When the winter shelter closes in late March, its temporary occupants head out to wherever they can find a place to sleep, some in the remote locations of Woonsocket’s hidden housing. The homeless include many people with longstanding life problems, substance abuse, mental illness, legal troubles, domestic abuse and child support concerns, or just an inability to fit into traditional communities.
The Rev. Brian Souza, pastor of  “The River” United Methodist Communities at 17 Federal St., believes as many as 100 to 120 people may actually be living in the greater Woonsocket area in some form of transient camp or temporary housing. His church has given out 100 tents to people seeking alternative housing but Souza said it’s hard to know exactly how many are being used in the area. The church also operates a mobile food kitchen that its members use to bring meals to those in need during the warmer months while they live outdoors.
“They move around,” he said. “They can almost expect the city to come in and move them from place to place,” he said. Usually the camps are tucked away out of view and might be abandoned for a time and re-inhabited when needed again. Woonsocket has several frequently used sites off the beaten path; there are also camps in the woods of nearby Manville, Cumberland and North Smithfield, he said.
Souza has helped homeless people in the area make it through the cold of winter with a variety of outreach efforts,  and this spring set up four tents in the church’s courtyard to call attention to their plight. The city eventually ruled the tents a violation of zoning and Souza’s parish removed them, but the problem of people being unable to find proper housing has not abated, according to the pastor.

A day in the life of a homeless person
A typical day for someone living in an out-of-the-way tent site begins early, usually with daybreak. The morning could bring a visit to a local church hall for a cup of coffee and a donut or maybe to a local fast food restaurant.
“A lot of times they will go to see whether they can get a day of work,” Souza said. Some may be able to find a job doing landscaping for painting work, or even something at a local business, he said.
Even a day’s pay can help,  and Souza said he knows members of the homeless community who have started the road back with just that.
When there is no work available, some people may look for a place to sit out the day — and some of those with problems,  like substance abuse, may seek a place to feed their addictions, according to Souza.
By sunset it is time to start making your way back to camp, he said, especially if the site is remote or deep in the woods or brush.
“If you go looking for someone who is homeless at 2 a.m., you are going to find them already hunkered down for the night,” he said.

A call for action
The River recently held a forum to gauge the community’s interest in solving the problem of homelessness in the area, and Souza said he found it to have been good first step in that direction.
Harvest Community Church and St. Charles Catholic Church had representatives attending, as did Family Resources Community Action, Northern Rhode Island Mental Health and the city of Woonsocket.
There appeared to be some support among the groups for a longer-term housing facility and a related support network to address the problems of the chronically homeless, and also for cooperation in building a community network seeking to help people without homes get back to productive lives.
The state does operate a shelter for homeless people, Harrington Hall, on the grounds of the former state hospital in Cranston, and the Crossroads program in Providence also provides services to those without homes. But the assistance programs rely on dormitory settings to service their larger populations, and some prospective residents view them as dangerous or unsuited to their needs.
During the forum, some of the area’s homeless talked about the difficulties they faced trying to solve alcohol and drug abuse problems without access to treatment programs, finding worthwhile employment, or regaining visitation rights with children lost to state custody over bad life choices.
One woman told how she has failed in recovery in the past and fears a relapse in the future over the inability to work out her parental right issues. Others talked about the risks that go along with life on the streets and remembered people they knew in the homeless community who have died while out in the cold or alone on the street.
A man named Danny said Mayor Susan D. Menard might point to the city’s shelter and low-income housing programs to declare there are no homeless in Woonsocket. He would dispute that view.
“I know that is a crock because I am homeless in this city,” Danny said. A self-described recovering drug addict, Danny said he is working out his substance abuse problems and also working to reconnect with his young son. But he also remains homeless while trying to accomplish that change.
Some may say there is no option of change for people without homes, he said. And from his own experience, Danny said he knows there are many roadblocks “to encouraging not only you, but others to help pull yourself up.”
There is a lasting stigma to being homeless and even a stigma to trying to help the homeless, according to Danny. It is one of the reasons homeless people have difficulty in applying for the jobs they need to begin working their way back. It also keeps people who have resources to give from providing that assistance.
“There is no shame in being friends with someone who is homeless. The homeless need help from everyone to get up from where they are,” he said.
One woman told of the anger she still feels over the city’s action to raze a campsite her friend, Diane Derosier, and Diane’s boyfriend had inhabited for a time on the banks of the Blackstone off the Main Street Bypass and Clinton Street. Desrosiers lost everything when the city drove a front-end loader through the camp and forced her to live with friends on Chester Street. She went missing in February of 2008 and her body was recovered from the Blackstone River in April.
“I just feel the city didn’t need to come down with these trucks and bulldozers and not give these people time to get their belongings out of there,” she said.
A man who had lived at the Harvest shelter through a winter said he has been able to get himself back into work and a regular home and also knows that change can come when people receive support.
“The homeless need education opportunities and good paying jobs,” he said
John Joyce of Providence said he decided to join an effort to set up the Hope City tent camp on Dyer Street in that city when a good friend died and he had to help identify him. The idea behind Hope City was a simple one, “we reach out to people no one else wants to take care of,” he said.
The Hope City started out helping eight people and quickly grew to assisting 18 or 20, Joyce said.
 The city has become a community where people can connect with the services they need and that is a start, according to Joyce.
“But Hope City and tents is not the solution, affordable housing is the solution,” Joyce said. The state, Joyce argued, can do more to provide such affordable housing opportunities.
Jeffrey Polucha, Woonsocket’s director of human services, said he went to the forum to show the city’s interest in doing what it can to help, but also maintained the problem of homelessness is not unique to this city. The national downturn in the economy, unemployment, foreclosures, and the related personal problems have forced a growing number of Americans onto the streets, according to Polucha.
“Obviously the economy has increased the number of homeless people and put them in public view and that has helped to bring the problem to the forefront,” he said. The challenge now is to find workable solutions that can address the growing housing problem.
“What we need to do is get organized and take a systematic approach to finding solutions to the problem,” he said. There is little the city can do to turn around the national economic problems, according to Polucha, but the city can participate in a dialog with groups like Family Resources, Rhode Housing, Northern Rhode Island Mental Health and community groups to seek other solutions.
“I can’t create jobs but we can try to help here,” he said. “We can work together and try to help as many people as we can.”
For his part, Souza remains optimistic about what can be done to help the homeless. He knew the two principals of a documentary film about the homeless titled “Lost in Woonsocket,” debuting locally several years ago. Mark is now in college working to become a substance abuse counselor, and Normand is out touring the country speaking to groups about his experiences in recovery and doing “fantastic,” Souza said.