June 3, 2023 • 17 mins
The Boston Planning and Development Agency recently approved a plan for the Comfort Inn on Morrissey Boulevard in Dorchester to be transformed into permanent supportive housing for seniors. The project got some blowback from neighborhood groups and lawmakers, but Pine Street Inn says it's a critical step to help unhoused seniors make their way off the streets and rebuild their lives. Lyndia Downie, Executive Director of Pine Street Inn, talks with Nichole about the project, the fight over the Long Island Bridge, and their upcoming workforce development graduation.
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(00:08):
From WBZ News Radio in Boston.This is New England Weekend where each week
we come together we talk about allthe topics important to you and the place
where you live. It's great tobe back with you again this week.
I'm Nicole Davis. One of Boston'sbiggest nonprofits helping people out of homelessness,
is celebrating this month after city officialsgave the green light to a brand new
(00:28):
housing project in Dorchester. The BostonPlanning and Development Agency recently approving the plan
for the Comfort In on Morrissey Boulevardto now be transformed into what's called permanent
supportive housing. Pine Street in isteaming up with the community builders to make
this happen. And what they'll dois create these housing units for seniors coming
off the streets. Some lawmakers,neighborhood organizations, and city councilors were not
(00:51):
too happy about this. They pushedback saying it was not only too many
units, but they were worried aboutthe potential of crime and drug use coming
into that part of Dorchester. Let'stalk about this. Lyndia Downey, the
president of Pine Street in no strangerto the show, It's great to have
you back Lindia. Let's get intothe details of this project. Tell us
about your plan. Well, youknow, cal we've been looking for a
(01:11):
hotel really since the beginning of COVID. We knew some other states were looking
at and some other cities. We'relooking at hotels as potential conversions to permanent
you know, small studio apartments permanenthousing. And so we have been looking
literally for probably well over two years. And we heard the hotel was coming
(01:34):
up for sale and the Community Builders, who are is the developer of the
building. We will be the supportprovider, they will be the developer,
reached out and they worked out arrangementto purchase the hotel. You know,
it's it's, frankly for us,a very good location. It's you know,
central to Boston to services and jobsfor people on the one hand.
(01:57):
On the other hand, you know, it's not smack dab in a residential
neighborhood either. You know, it'son a quite a main road on Morrisey
Boulevard, and it's a building that'sin good shape. The conversion, we
hope will be relatively quick because weare really turning most of the rooms into
small studio apartments and the people whoare going to be living here. These
(02:20):
are formerly homeless seniors. Correct,that's right. So people who are sixty
two an older who are chronically homelesswill have a preference, which means they
will be the first people on thelist when the list is created to lease
up the building. And you know, we have a list in Boston of
everybody who's who's longtime homeless, andthe seniors will will float to the top
(02:44):
of that list. There has beensome pushback from the neighborhood and from the
community, city councilors and neighborhood groupsall saying, look, you know,
we see the problems happening around thecity when it comes to crime and drugs
and so on and so forth.And of course there is a stay that
is connected to unhoused people, andof course there are also unhoused people struggling
(03:05):
with substance abuse. So tell usa little bit about how you responded to
those concerns and your thoughts on thoseWell, what I'd say is everything you
said, Nicol, All of theabove is true. Right. There are
people struggling with both mental health andsubstance abuse that are homeless. There are
also many more homeless people who arefrankly not struggling with that. In fact,
(03:27):
most people exit homelessness fairly quickly,within a few weeks a month,
maybe because they've got another plan inor they you know, go back to
family or friends, or you know, they're working and they save enough money
while they're in shelter to to gofind a place. What I think is
hard, the stigma piece is hard, as you mentioned, because I think
(03:50):
what people see on the street iswhat they think one hundred percent of what
homelessness is. And it's just notthat simple, right. There's whole variety
of people who are homeless. There'sa whole variety of reasons people become homeless.
And the thing that we do sayto the neighborhood and I you know,
people were not unsympathetic, and theywere not ungracious. They were worried
(04:15):
about their neighborhood and worried about changesto their neighborhood. And that's very understandable.
What I'd say is, you know, all of our housing, We've
got, you know, thirty fourdifferent buildings where we provide permanent housing now
across Broston, Boston and Brookline.And while nothing is perfect, for the
most part, I think we've managedthem certainly, if not well, certainly
(04:36):
adequately. And part of the reasonthe staff are on site is to deal
with anything that might be coming upso that there isn't an issue in the
neighborhood. And so if we thinksomeone's really struggling, there's a way to
help them in the house and getsome support to them. But it is
I think again, the perception,the stigma. It's hard to overcome when
(05:00):
what people see, especially in thepress, is not quite the reality.
The good part about this is thatit's one step toward creating more permanent supportive
housing in Boston. But I reallydo believe and the studies have shown that
the more permanent supportive housing you createand you put these wrap around services in
place, I mean, this coulddo wonders for helping solve the problem of
(05:24):
homelessness here in Boston. Oh,there's no question. I mean, permanent
supportive housing really is a well researched, well practiced, uh you know,
set of interventions for homelessness. Again, we've been doing permanent support of housing
at Pine Street for well over twentyfive years on a smaller scale. We're
(05:46):
not we're not trying to scale itup as much as we can, but
there's lots of permanent supportive housing acrossthe country. There is tons and tons
of research about the stability it bringsto people, the outcomes around not just
an individual person having a place tolive, but the outcomes around bringing down
homeless numbers, really helping people nothave to rely on emergency system so much.
(06:10):
And I mean everything from emergency shelterto the emergency room at the hospital.
So's it's a well proven and Ithink well tested set of interventions.
And you know, we're thrilled thatwe'll be able to get this hotel moving,
we hope in the next few months. Yeah, And the city of
Boston is going through a housing crisisanyway, so really any housing we can
(06:31):
build is going to be a boonfor the city. Agreed, we need
housing at every level, frankly,but any housing we get, especially housing
that is affordable for the poorest people, is a very big victory. Absolutely.
You know, I did want toget your thoughts on this. There's
a lot of talk again about theLong Island Bridge, and there's a lot
of talk about well, maybe creatinga floating hospital to deal with a substance
(06:54):
abuse and mental health issues, andthere's a lot of fight over whether we
should rebuild the bridge or open upUS services on Long Island. What are
you hearing about this in your circlesand what is your thought about all this?
Well, I think I've heard,you know, rumors all of the
above. Again, you know thatthere's still some look at the possibility of
(07:15):
the bridge being rebuilt, which whichwill take some time and a lot of
money. I think there's still discussionabout the possibility of a boat faring people
back and forth. I have heardthe floating hospital idea as well. Look,
I think all of these ideas,Nicole deserve merit and research and study
(07:35):
around what is the best intervention wecan have for homeless people. And in
particular, I think, you know, a lot of the discussion around the
bridge has really been related to masscast Right, how do we help people
that we're staying out on the islandin a recovery campus years ago get back
there? And I think there's alot of positives to having a recovery camp
(08:00):
is ironically isolated like that, becauseyou got to focus on your recovery right,
You're you're there to you know,get sober and do what you need
to do, and in many ways, having a beautiful spot like that is
somewhat conducive to you don't have thedistractions that you would have, for example,
you know, maybe back at massCast. Whatever we do, whether
(08:22):
it's a boat that's transportation, whetherit's a boat that operates like a recovery
center, or we build the bridge, we've got to look at this holistically
and we have to be able toeither persuade or in some cases stay to
folks. You can't stay here onmass Cast. You're going to have to
(08:43):
come out to the island or whereverthis might be. Because one of the
challenges I think is that as quicklyas we place people, and we are
placing people both in treatment down atmass Cast and housing, in some cases,
you know quickly those people are movingout, someone else's showing up,
and so we really do need astrategy around how do we deal with I
(09:07):
think the constant, just the constantcoming and going down there. Yeah,
and I think that there's unfortunately aproblem where I see that a lot of
people relapse very quickly because even ifthey're getting into treatment at BMC or another
facility nearby, the second year out, especially if you've been in treatment,
or if you've been in shelter fora long time and you don't have that
(09:30):
supportive system behind you. The firstthing you're going to want to think of
is, I know addiction. Iknow my circles in addiction. I feel
comfortable with my circles in addiction.And the rate of relapse is just overwhelming.
So what are your thoughts on thatside of the situation, And do
you believe that Long Island or thefloating hospital or something different will help to
(09:52):
cut down on that. I thinkit's such a complicated disease, right,
It's a it's a physical disease,it's a mental disease, it's an emotional
disease. And you know, you'veheard people say it's it's a spiritual disease,
because you've you've if you're using tothe level that you're sleeping out or
you're you're staying on mass casts,life has gotten really horrible and you're you've
(10:13):
lost probably any sense of hope thatlife can be different and better. And
we should never underestimate the physical addiction, especially with FeTNA and some of the
even newer classes of drugs that we'reseeing, it literally has a vice grip
(10:35):
on people's brains and it's very hardto unloosen that grip right at any level.
And what I'd say, you know, here's what we know works,
right. We know that often lowbarrier treatment works. You get people in,
you get them out of the environment, and you start with very slow
steps. You know. First ofall, you try and get people a
(10:56):
little bit healthier so they can actuallyclear their head a tiny bit and have
a conversation about what might be nextfor them. And then you really engage
them with the right kind of clinicaland supportive staff to say, you know,
have you thought about sobriety and howdo how do we help you get
there if that's a possibility, Andthen you give people time. You cannot
ask people who have been sleeping outa masscast for two years or a year
(11:18):
or even a few months to pickup everything, get clean, sober and
get a job in thirty days,right, It's not going to happen.
And so we need to give peoplethe time they need to recover and move
on. The best treatment we have, and none of it's perfect, but
medicated assisted treatment where people are usingsubox own or one of the subox own
type drugs are really the best,most researched with the highest outcomes. So
(11:45):
if you can get folks to geton to medicated as Sister's treatment and stay
with it, and it means tostay with it, you often have to
support people to stay with it.That's where we're seeing that really, combined
with some degree of therapy for people, is where we're seeing the highest sobriety
rates. And that's I think thechallenge is how do you get that kind
(12:05):
of treatment two people, as manypeople as possible, and how do you
help them sustain it? And empathyI think is important as well, not
just as we deal with the fightagainst substance abuse, but also when we're
trying to help people who are unhousedchronically unhoused. Empathy really does go a
long way in your work, Ibelieve, well, you know, I
(12:26):
think you know many of the folksthat we work with know that they're stigmatized.
They know what people think of them, they have their own sense of
shame around being homeless. They're nothappy about it. In my thirty odd
years doing this, I haven't everhad anybody sagging. I'm so happy to
be here at the Pine Street inand the shelter, and you know,
never happened because because it's it's theresult of so many things that have gone
(12:48):
wrong in people's lives. And theempathy. If you don't start with empathy,
you're not really going to get veryfar. And it's absolutely true for
people that are actively using they knowat life is not where they want it
to be. They don't want knowwhat to do about it in some cases,
but they're also acutely aware that therest of the world thinks less of
(13:11):
them, and so you really dohave to start there. It's the foundation
of whatever you do, whether it'shousing or whether you're going to bring people
into lower barrier treatment. Never enoughof that, Frankly, I agree,
in life in general, not evenjust in the words you do, we
could all do a little bit betterwith we if we had a little bit
more empathy. So good news herecoming up in just a few days.
(13:31):
You've got your workforce Development program graduation. Very exciting about this. You've got
a big speaker for the keynote here. Yes, yes, So every year
here at Pine Street and we doa graduation for the people who finish our
job training programs. And when Itell you it is the loveliest day of
the year. You know, peoplewho haven't graduated from anything, or people
(13:52):
whose graduation might have been interrupted theycouldn't finish school necessarily get to march down
the aisle with with caps and gownsand pomp and circumstance. Um. Andrea
Campbell is our graduate, our keynotespeaker, and we are thrilled to have
her here. We're very excited.We're really looking forward to what she has
(14:13):
to stay where graduates. Um.Yeah, and how you know exciting is
it to have uh, you know, our Attorney General here in front of
our graduates. It's going to begreat. Yeah, So how many people
are going to be graduating this yearand what happens after that graduation? So
we have seventy five graduates, someof people you know, won't be here
next week for the for the ceremonybecause they're working, which is which is
(14:35):
a good thing. Yes, likeyeah, right, so that that's a
good thing. Well, so wewe have the ceremony. We have a
graduate speaker who finished the program.Um. The graduate speaker this here as
a young woman who ended up homewith with with a young son. She
she slept in her car. Umended up sleeping down at the Bus and
(14:56):
Medical Center emergency room, and wewere able to work with her to get
her shelter and she finished the programactually a couple months ago. She's already
lined up a full time job.So we're very excited. So what will
happen? Typically is we after theceremony, we usually have a nice lunch.
(15:16):
The graduates get to hang with eachother and congratulate each other and just
give each other a, you know, a really nice fist bump for all
they've been through. And then ifyou haven't had the job yet, are
the folks on our team here atKine Street who do job placement. We'll
be working with the graduates to helpthem line up a job, hopefully in
fairly short order. So you aredoing so much great work, and of
(15:39):
course that work requires money, andit requires time and energy. How can
people help if they want to contributeto all the incredible work you're doing across
the city and really around Greater Boston. Yeah, you know, Nicole,
I want to say something that Idon't always say when when I get asked
this question. I spoke at aworkshop last week for Harvard Business School alumni
(16:03):
who are on boards and doing differentthings. And I said, look,
if you really want to end homelessnessin your city or your community, show
up at your local zoning board.And when someone shows up and says I
want to build affordable housing, raiseyour hand and say I'm going to support
this. So that's the first thingpeople can do. Yes, I just
come to your community, you know, have some courage and stand up and
support them. For all the peoplein Dorchester who showed up and said,
(16:25):
look, we understand this isn't perfect, I'm going to take a leap of
faith. I'm going to support this. I want to say thank you,
because that is what changes things forpeople, is being able to offer them
a place to live. So Idon't want to underestimate that. And then
I would say, you know,we're always looking for donations at food certainly
cash donations, and the easiest wayto give is to go right on our
(16:47):
website, Pine Street and dot workand there's a list of things we're looking
for, everything from gift cards tocoffee to things like that, and there's
a way to give online if you'dlike to do that. Beautiful and really
it's the little things, even ifyou only have a few dollars or even
if you can only donate some foodat this point, every bit helps in
this fine every bit, every bit. Listen. You know, we have
(17:08):
people who send us a few giftcards here and there, and we use
them when we're out on the street, for example, trying to engage people
on the street to say to somebody, hey, here's five or a ten
dollars gift card and let's go geta cup of coffee together. Those small
things matter and having them is onemore tool where you can engage people.
So really, anything helps, allright, I love it. All the
(17:29):
work you do is just incredible.Lindia Downey over at Pine Street, and
thank you again for all you doand best of luck with this new project
in Dorchester. Thanks Nicole, havea safe and healthy weekend. Please join
me again next week for another editionof the show. I'm Nicole Davis from
WBZ News Radio on iHeartRadio.
From WBZ News Radio in Boston.This is New England Weekend where each week
we come together we talk about allthe topics important to you and the place
where you live. It's great tobe back with you again this week.
I'm Nicole Davis. One of Boston'sbiggest nonprofits helping people out of homelessness,
is celebrating this month after city officialsgave the green light to a brand new
(00:28):
housing project in Dorchester. The BostonPlanning and Development Agency recently approving the plan
for the Comfort In on Morrissey Boulevardto now be transformed into what's called permanent
supportive housing. Pine Street in isteaming up with the community builders to make
this happen. And what they'll dois create these housing units for seniors coming
off the streets. Some lawmakers,neighborhood organizations, and city councilors were not
(00:51):
too happy about this. They pushedback saying it was not only too many
units, but they were worried aboutthe potential of crime and drug use coming
into that part of Dorchester. Let'stalk about this. Lyndia Downey, the
president of Pine Street in no strangerto the show, It's great to have
you back Lindia. Let's get intothe details of this project. Tell us
about your plan. Well, youknow, cal we've been looking for a
(01:11):
hotel really since the beginning of COVID. We knew some other states were looking
at and some other cities. We'relooking at hotels as potential conversions to permanent
you know, small studio apartments permanenthousing. And so we have been looking
literally for probably well over two years. And we heard the hotel was coming
(01:34):
up for sale and the Community Builders, who are is the developer of the
building. We will be the supportprovider, they will be the developer,
reached out and they worked out arrangementto purchase the hotel. You know,
it's it's, frankly for us,a very good location. It's you know,
central to Boston to services and jobsfor people on the one hand.
(01:57):
On the other hand, you know, it's not smack dab in a residential
neighborhood either. You know, it'son a quite a main road on Morrisey
Boulevard, and it's a building that'sin good shape. The conversion, we
hope will be relatively quick because weare really turning most of the rooms into
small studio apartments and the people whoare going to be living here. These
(02:20):
are formerly homeless seniors. Correct,that's right. So people who are sixty
two an older who are chronically homelesswill have a preference, which means they
will be the first people on thelist when the list is created to lease
up the building. And you know, we have a list in Boston of
everybody who's who's longtime homeless, andthe seniors will will float to the top
(02:44):
of that list. There has beensome pushback from the neighborhood and from the
community, city councilors and neighborhood groupsall saying, look, you know,
we see the problems happening around thecity when it comes to crime and drugs
and so on and so forth.And of course there is a stay that
is connected to unhoused people, andof course there are also unhoused people struggling
(03:05):
with substance abuse. So tell usa little bit about how you responded to
those concerns and your thoughts on thoseWell, what I'd say is everything you
said, Nicol, All of theabove is true. Right. There are
people struggling with both mental health andsubstance abuse that are homeless. There are
also many more homeless people who arefrankly not struggling with that. In fact,
(03:27):
most people exit homelessness fairly quickly,within a few weeks a month,
maybe because they've got another plan inor they you know, go back to
family or friends, or you know, they're working and they save enough money
while they're in shelter to to gofind a place. What I think is
hard, the stigma piece is hard, as you mentioned, because I think
(03:50):
what people see on the street iswhat they think one hundred percent of what
homelessness is. And it's just notthat simple, right. There's whole variety
of people who are homeless. There'sa whole variety of reasons people become homeless.
And the thing that we do sayto the neighborhood and I you know,
people were not unsympathetic, and theywere not ungracious. They were worried
(04:15):
about their neighborhood and worried about changesto their neighborhood. And that's very understandable.
What I'd say is, you know, all of our housing, We've
got, you know, thirty fourdifferent buildings where we provide permanent housing now
across Broston, Boston and Brookline.And while nothing is perfect, for the
most part, I think we've managedthem certainly, if not well, certainly
(04:36):
adequately. And part of the reasonthe staff are on site is to deal
with anything that might be coming upso that there isn't an issue in the
neighborhood. And so if we thinksomeone's really struggling, there's a way to
help them in the house and getsome support to them. But it is
I think again, the perception,the stigma. It's hard to overcome when
(05:00):
what people see, especially in thepress, is not quite the reality.
The good part about this is thatit's one step toward creating more permanent supportive
housing in Boston. But I reallydo believe and the studies have shown that
the more permanent supportive housing you createand you put these wrap around services in
place, I mean, this coulddo wonders for helping solve the problem of
(05:24):
homelessness here in Boston. Oh,there's no question. I mean, permanent
supportive housing really is a well researched, well practiced, uh you know,
set of interventions for homelessness. Again, we've been doing permanent support of housing
at Pine Street for well over twentyfive years on a smaller scale. We're
(05:46):
not we're not trying to scale itup as much as we can, but
there's lots of permanent supportive housing acrossthe country. There is tons and tons
of research about the stability it bringsto people, the outcomes around not just
an individual person having a place tolive, but the outcomes around bringing down
homeless numbers, really helping people nothave to rely on emergency system so much.
(06:10):
And I mean everything from emergency shelterto the emergency room at the hospital.
So's it's a well proven and Ithink well tested set of interventions.
And you know, we're thrilled thatwe'll be able to get this hotel moving,
we hope in the next few months. Yeah, And the city of
Boston is going through a housing crisisanyway, so really any housing we can
(06:31):
build is going to be a boonfor the city. Agreed, we need
housing at every level, frankly,but any housing we get, especially housing
that is affordable for the poorest people, is a very big victory. Absolutely.
You know, I did want toget your thoughts on this. There's
a lot of talk again about theLong Island Bridge, and there's a lot
of talk about well, maybe creatinga floating hospital to deal with a substance
(06:54):
abuse and mental health issues, andthere's a lot of fight over whether we
should rebuild the bridge or open upUS services on Long Island. What are
you hearing about this in your circlesand what is your thought about all this?
Well, I think I've heard,you know, rumors all of the
above. Again, you know thatthere's still some look at the possibility of
(07:15):
the bridge being rebuilt, which whichwill take some time and a lot of
money. I think there's still discussionabout the possibility of a boat faring people
back and forth. I have heardthe floating hospital idea as well. Look,
I think all of these ideas,Nicole deserve merit and research and study
(07:35):
around what is the best intervention wecan have for homeless people. And in
particular, I think, you know, a lot of the discussion around the
bridge has really been related to masscast Right, how do we help people
that we're staying out on the islandin a recovery campus years ago get back
there? And I think there's alot of positives to having a recovery camp
(08:00):
is ironically isolated like that, becauseyou got to focus on your recovery right,
You're you're there to you know,get sober and do what you need
to do, and in many ways, having a beautiful spot like that is
somewhat conducive to you don't have thedistractions that you would have, for example,
you know, maybe back at massCast. Whatever we do, whether
(08:22):
it's a boat that's transportation, whetherit's a boat that operates like a recovery
center, or we build the bridge, we've got to look at this holistically
and we have to be able toeither persuade or in some cases stay to
folks. You can't stay here onmass Cast. You're going to have to
(08:43):
come out to the island or whereverthis might be. Because one of the
challenges I think is that as quicklyas we place people, and we are
placing people both in treatment down atmass Cast and housing, in some cases,
you know quickly those people are movingout, someone else's showing up,
and so we really do need astrategy around how do we deal with I
(09:07):
think the constant, just the constantcoming and going down there. Yeah,
and I think that there's unfortunately aproblem where I see that a lot of
people relapse very quickly because even ifthey're getting into treatment at BMC or another
facility nearby, the second year out, especially if you've been in treatment,
or if you've been in shelter fora long time and you don't have that
(09:30):
supportive system behind you. The firstthing you're going to want to think of
is, I know addiction. Iknow my circles in addiction. I feel
comfortable with my circles in addiction.And the rate of relapse is just overwhelming.
So what are your thoughts on thatside of the situation, And do
you believe that Long Island or thefloating hospital or something different will help to
(09:52):
cut down on that. I thinkit's such a complicated disease, right,
It's a it's a physical disease,it's a mental disease, it's an emotional
disease. And you know, you'veheard people say it's it's a spiritual disease,
because you've you've if you're using tothe level that you're sleeping out or
you're you're staying on mass casts,life has gotten really horrible and you're you've
(10:13):
lost probably any sense of hope thatlife can be different and better. And
we should never underestimate the physical addiction, especially with FeTNA and some of the
even newer classes of drugs that we'reseeing, it literally has a vice grip
(10:35):
on people's brains and it's very hardto unloosen that grip right at any level.
And what I'd say, you know, here's what we know works,
right. We know that often lowbarrier treatment works. You get people in,
you get them out of the environment, and you start with very slow
steps. You know. First ofall, you try and get people a
(10:56):
little bit healthier so they can actuallyclear their head a tiny bit and have
a conversation about what might be nextfor them. And then you really engage
them with the right kind of clinicaland supportive staff to say, you know,
have you thought about sobriety and howdo how do we help you get
there if that's a possibility, Andthen you give people time. You cannot
ask people who have been sleeping outa masscast for two years or a year
(11:18):
or even a few months to pickup everything, get clean, sober and
get a job in thirty days,right, It's not going to happen.
And so we need to give peoplethe time they need to recover and move
on. The best treatment we have, and none of it's perfect, but
medicated assisted treatment where people are usingsubox own or one of the subox own
type drugs are really the best,most researched with the highest outcomes. So
(11:45):
if you can get folks to geton to medicated as Sister's treatment and stay
with it, and it means tostay with it, you often have to
support people to stay with it.That's where we're seeing that really, combined
with some degree of therapy for people, is where we're seeing the highest sobriety
rates. And that's I think thechallenge is how do you get that kind
(12:05):
of treatment two people, as manypeople as possible, and how do you
help them sustain it? And empathyI think is important as well, not
just as we deal with the fightagainst substance abuse, but also when we're
trying to help people who are unhousedchronically unhoused. Empathy really does go a
long way in your work, Ibelieve, well, you know, I
(12:26):
think you know many of the folksthat we work with know that they're stigmatized.
They know what people think of them, they have their own sense of
shame around being homeless. They're nothappy about it. In my thirty odd
years doing this, I haven't everhad anybody sagging. I'm so happy to
be here at the Pine Street inand the shelter, and you know,
never happened because because it's it's theresult of so many things that have gone
(12:48):
wrong in people's lives. And theempathy. If you don't start with empathy,
you're not really going to get veryfar. And it's absolutely true for
people that are actively using they knowat life is not where they want it
to be. They don't want knowwhat to do about it in some cases,
but they're also acutely aware that therest of the world thinks less of
(13:11):
them, and so you really dohave to start there. It's the foundation
of whatever you do, whether it'shousing or whether you're going to bring people
into lower barrier treatment. Never enoughof that, Frankly, I agree,
in life in general, not evenjust in the words you do, we
could all do a little bit betterwith we if we had a little bit
more empathy. So good news herecoming up in just a few days.
(13:31):
You've got your workforce Development program graduation. Very exciting about this. You've got
a big speaker for the keynote here. Yes, yes, So every year
here at Pine Street and we doa graduation for the people who finish our
job training programs. And when Itell you it is the loveliest day of
the year. You know, peoplewho haven't graduated from anything, or people
(13:52):
whose graduation might have been interrupted theycouldn't finish school necessarily get to march down
the aisle with with caps and gownsand pomp and circumstance. Um. Andrea
Campbell is our graduate, our keynotespeaker, and we are thrilled to have
her here. We're very excited.We're really looking forward to what she has
(14:13):
to stay where graduates. Um.Yeah, and how you know exciting is
it to have uh, you know, our Attorney General here in front of
our graduates. It's going to begreat. Yeah, So how many people
are going to be graduating this yearand what happens after that graduation? So
we have seventy five graduates, someof people you know, won't be here
next week for the for the ceremonybecause they're working, which is which is
(14:35):
a good thing. Yes, likeyeah, right, so that that's a
good thing. Well, so wewe have the ceremony. We have a
graduate speaker who finished the program.Um. The graduate speaker this here as
a young woman who ended up homewith with with a young son. She
she slept in her car. Umended up sleeping down at the Bus and
(14:56):
Medical Center emergency room, and wewere able to work with her to get
her shelter and she finished the programactually a couple months ago. She's already
lined up a full time job.So we're very excited. So what will
happen? Typically is we after theceremony, we usually have a nice lunch.
(15:16):
The graduates get to hang with eachother and congratulate each other and just
give each other a, you know, a really nice fist bump for all
they've been through. And then ifyou haven't had the job yet, are
the folks on our team here atKine Street who do job placement. We'll
be working with the graduates to helpthem line up a job, hopefully in
fairly short order. So you aredoing so much great work, and of
(15:39):
course that work requires money, andit requires time and energy. How can
people help if they want to contributeto all the incredible work you're doing across
the city and really around Greater Boston. Yeah, you know, Nicole,
I want to say something that Idon't always say when when I get asked
this question. I spoke at aworkshop last week for Harvard Business School alumni
(16:03):
who are on boards and doing differentthings. And I said, look,
if you really want to end homelessnessin your city or your community, show
up at your local zoning board.And when someone shows up and says I
want to build affordable housing, raiseyour hand and say I'm going to support
this. So that's the first thingpeople can do. Yes, I just
come to your community, you know, have some courage and stand up and
support them. For all the peoplein Dorchester who showed up and said,
(16:25):
look, we understand this isn't perfect, I'm going to take a leap of
faith. I'm going to support this. I want to say thank you,
because that is what changes things forpeople, is being able to offer them
a place to live. So Idon't want to underestimate that. And then
I would say, you know,we're always looking for donations at food certainly
cash donations, and the easiest wayto give is to go right on our
(16:47):
website, Pine Street and dot workand there's a list of things we're looking
for, everything from gift cards tocoffee to things like that, and there's
a way to give online if you'dlike to do that. Beautiful and really
it's the little things, even ifyou only have a few dollars or even
if you can only donate some foodat this point, every bit helps in
this fine every bit, every bit. Listen. You know, we have
(17:08):
people who send us a few giftcards here and there, and we use
them when we're out on the street, for example, trying to engage people
on the street to say to somebody, hey, here's five or a ten
dollars gift card and let's go geta cup of coffee together. Those small
things matter and having them is onemore tool where you can engage people.
So really, anything helps, allright, I love it. All the
(17:29):
work you do is just incredible.Lindia Downey over at Pine Street, and
thank you again for all you doand best of luck with this new project
in Dorchester. Thanks Nicole, havea safe and healthy weekend. Please join
me again next week for another editionof the show. I'm Nicole Davis from
WBZ News Radio on iHeartRadio.
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