August 17, 2024 • 17 mins
The emergency shelter crisis in Massachusetts has reached a critical stage. State officials, including Governor Healey, have made moves to limit just how long families can utilize the shelter system, saying the influx of migrants and residents using the system has pushed it to a breaking point. Agencies like Heading Home in Boston have been working tirelessly to uphold the state's "Right to Shelter" law and ensure as many people as possible have a roof over their head. Heading Home CEO Danielle Ferrier joins Nichole this week to talk about the situation and what needs to happen to turn this concerning trend around.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
From WBZ News Radio in Boston. This is New England
Weekend where each and every week we come together we
talk about all the topics important to you and the
place where you live. So good to be back with
you again this week. I'm Nicole Davis. In all corners
of the Commonwealth, the emergency shelter crisis has now reached
a critical point. We're talking about a point where Governor
(00:27):
Healey and other state officials have now made a move
to limit how long families can use the shelters. This
move has angered advocates from migrants and unhoused families who
are calling on the state to reverse the move, something
officials say they just cannot do. They say, there simply
is not the support available out there to keep the
system running as it has been. Here at Massachusetts, finding
affordable housing is still a major hurdle. Not only are
(00:49):
people trying to get out of homelessness, but you've got
people who want to buy a home and simply can't
afford it. Rents are going up all over the Commonwealth.
At Heading Home in Boston, over on mass Ave, they've
been working looking for many, many years to try to
help as many people as possible navigate the complex housing
market and systems that are in place around the state,
trying to make sure as many people as possible can
get a roof over their head. Danielle Ferrier, the CEO
(01:12):
of Heading Home's here with us. Now we're going to
break down all of this. There is a lot to discuss,
so Danielle, thank you for your time. First and foremost,
give us a bit more background about Heading Home and
your efforts and what you do.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Heading Home is. We're actually in our fiftieth year this year,
so it's a big exciting year for us to celebrate
fifty years of our work in our communities. And we
started originally as a shelter for individuals and then over
the years, unfortunately we've expanded right because ultimately our mission
is to end homelessness, and so currently this year will
(01:45):
serve over four thousand people that includes children adults. We
do that in a variety of different types of programs
and housing models, and so we have family shelter. We
currently oversee the Base State Respite site that folks are
talking about. We have prevention, so we work to keep
families out of shelter as well wherever we can at
(02:05):
the front door and then and we have this for
both families and individuals. We have deeply affordable housing and
so we have a wide range of all of those things.
Plus we provide what we call supportive wrap around services
with all of those different models as well.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Obviously, Massachusetts we've been in a housing crisis far before
you know, the migrant shelter situation became front and center.
So let's talk about these factors. Are what are you
seeing as somebody who is deep into this, What are
some of the biggest factors you're seeing contributing to this problem?
Speaker 2 (02:37):
So great question. You know, before we had newly arriving families,
we had a system that was truly at capacity. Right.
So in Massachusetts, if you look at our cist economics,
right and you look at the housing affordability, in this
past year, we moved to number two in the country
in terms of cost of living and that is largely
(03:00):
driven by housing, is what I understand. And so if
we look at kind of cost of housing and rentals,
we see that it's a very difficult market, right as
everybody feels who lives in Massachusetts to rent and others.
We talk about ownership, right, but in terms of rentals,
very difficult market, more demand than supply, and we know that.
(03:21):
We hear, you know, the state and the governor's team
talk about needing two hundred thousand units, right, and we
in terms of affordability and different tiers of affordability. So
we know we had an issue to begin with. And
I think then when you kind of add inflation, right,
when you add more folks who need shelter, both Massachusetts
(03:43):
residents who still need shelter as well as newly arriving families,
what we see is we've tipped over into crisis in
our shelter system.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Well, let's talk about those shelters then, because we were
mentioning earlier about how this has become the big news story, right,
and obviously the newest development in this is that the
state has essentially said, look, now you get five business
days and then you have to be out. There's been
a lot of pushback on this, including from your group
heading home. Many people are saying, look, these are families,
(04:14):
these are children. Here the state is simply saying, look,
we have run out of money. We can't handle this anymore.
Tell me about heading home and your perspective on this
and what you think should be done here.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Yeah, it's a great question. So Heading Home's position on this,
as I've been told, is actually a little bit of
an outlier. I wrote an op ed that some people
have referenced from a couple of weeks ago. Sure, Heading
Home does support the governor and her team and their
decision as they've been rolling out new policies to put
some parameters around our shelter system and to make sure
(04:47):
that there are guardrails on the train tracks. The intention there,
at least my understanding and my hope and my belief
is that our goal is to preserve the right to shelter,
and that if we are unable to make it so sustainable,
I do think we run a risk of our right
to shelter law, which is not one that I personally,
as our CEO Heading Home and professionally want to see
(05:09):
us lose because of how critical I think it is
for children. And so I think we do have a
little bit of a different stance in that we don't
have a choice based on the crisis we're in, but
to start to have some parameters, some increased accountability, some
timelines that we're trying to work within for families. Any
(05:30):
good system has multiple entries at a front door. It
has different programs and services along the way so that
folks can move along that system and get the service
and help they need, and then has multiple exit strategies.
Heading home is actually uniquely positioned in that we have
every part of the system. We have the respite site,
(05:51):
and we are the only shelter provider to my knowledge
that has a respite site. And then we have prevention,
we have shelter, we have deeply affordable permanent housing for families. Right,
so we've got actually the full kind of continuum. And
what I do see with our team and is unique
for our lens, is that every part of the system
is overloaded and bottlenecked, and if we can't get the
(06:14):
system moving, we risk that the system in and of
itself kind of implows and collapses. Right, We've got because essentially,
if we're so full and families can't come in, then
the system isn't working. Right, And so I don't I
do believe we have to have certain time limits, certain requirements. Right,
providers should be accountable for the work we do as
(06:36):
well as the folks who are receiving the service. So
I do support those decisions whether exact numbers are correct, right,
we can figure out is it five days? In What
we do here at heading home is we let the
administration know if we're struggling with things, right, so we
make sure we say to the secretariat that we contract
with and work with, Hey, we're having a hard time
(06:57):
with this. We're seeing you know this works for some families,
it doesn't. So our belief is if we keep up
in communication and make sure we're feeding the information up
to the governor's team, that they then can at least
have the information to make the best decisions from a
policy perspective that they can and want to make. So
our position has been a little bit different that way,
(07:17):
in that this is not sustainable without any limits, and
if we don't put some reasonable, biscally responsible limits on it,
we run the risk of losing the entire right to
shelter law. And I am deeply committed, deeply committed that
we do not lose the right to shelter law.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Some taxpayers and residents of Massachusetts would say, and many
have said, that why is it up to us to
make sure that everybody has shelter right? Why is it
up to us to house these migrants these families who
need shelter. Why is it my responsibility to pay for that?
What would you say in response to that.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
I'm a team player, and the way I think about
winning the basketball game is the whole team participates. Right. Yeah,
there is an illusion that we love to have in
this country that we pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.
We've done it alone. Right, It's just nonsense. It's not true.
There are some folks who've done more without as much
(08:14):
help or support as others. But nobody functions in this world.
And I'm actually saying this to you as a former
trauma therapist. Nobody functions in this world entirely alone.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
That is true.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
And so that's the perspective I bring to the table
when I think about how we have what I consider
reasonable services available to help folks for periods of time
to help them advance or move forward or get out
of poverty. And so those are things that I are
just deeply embedded in my belief system of how we
(08:45):
have a healthy, productive, economically strong country.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
And I appreciate that you're a trauma therapist because these
people are experiencing traumas every day. You know, sometimes people say, oh,
trauma's become the big buzzword. I don't believe that I
am a per I am a firm believer that these
people are experiencing ongoing trauma. They're so in it in
the moment they don't have time to really process it.
And when you're in the middle of such a traumatic event,
(09:11):
you need assistance, you need people to lean on.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
As a deeply trained trauma therapist, being homeless in and
of itself is traumatizing. That is, before you even figure
out what the trauma is that usually drives somebody into homelessness.
So rarely there are times where folks have a one
off situation that they end up homeless right now, you
can have situations like fire right fire is one of those,
(09:37):
But often when folks are in homelessness for any period
of time, there are other variables that have been part
of the reason in which are the driver for how
they end up in a shelter. And what I say is,
if you end up in a shelter, to me, all
of our other systems have actually failed. Now it might
be because someone hasn't accessed them, but it also might
be that those didn't they couldn't quite address whatever we
(09:59):
need to do, to do to be in front of
ending up almost when someone is homeless. We can look
at the clinical and brain research because it exists. Right,
we are in fight or flight and the brain is
in the back part of the brain, which is the
survival basic instinct part of the brain, which is around
(10:20):
shelter and food. So it is the front part of
the brain at that point, which is your executive functioning,
right where you're thinking about like, hey, I want to
go to school in five years because I want to
be a nurse. I want to go to school or
get trained and certified to be a police officer. Right,
that part of your brain actually can't work and is
shut down because you're in the back part and you're
just thinking about where do I sleep and where am
I going to eat tonight? And so it is hard
(10:43):
for folks when their brain one part is turned on
and the other parts turned off to do the long
term planning, because that's actually just neurology, right, And the
doctors can speak that and the you know, the folks
who've done the brain scans and the research there, but
that at this point in the trauma world is well
established and we know that, and so to your point, Right,
(11:04):
folks are just in crisis and they're just trying to
get shelter and food and clothes and stabilized. And so
that's what our work is. Right when folks are coming
into whether it's the respite site or whether it's our shelters,
we're just trying to stabilize them and then start to
figure out safe housing where it's going to be. The
new policies are we are restructuring a bit of our
(11:28):
program model to respond to the new policies, Right, so
how do we move certain type of work up front
more intensely. We're shifting actually staffing structures and the service
delivery a bit to respond to that. And so we'll
see how that plays out.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Yeah, it's a matter of time. And honestly, at this point,
it's all just moving very quickly, and policy is changing
because it has to change, and it's not so much
at this point I feel a long term response, But
right now it's almost like a triage situation. I feel
bonding to the situation, and I'm sure over at heading
home it feels that way too.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
To an extent, Yeah, it definitely is a moment where
you're watching a system evolve due to crisis and change
because of the crisis in real time. And that's hard.
It's hard in many ways, right, it's hard for our families,
it's hard for our staff. Right, we're just responding. But
the pressures that we see at heading Home are from
(12:25):
the respite site. We have folks who have need, but
they're also on the shelter side. On the other shelters.
There's over seven hundred and fifty families in the Commonwealth
who need access to those shelters. So we feel the
pressure to try to help figure out how to keep
the system moving and having families move out, whether it's
in respite or shelter, to safe permanent housing. And so
(12:47):
that's the focus of our work at this point. And
you know, I think everybody is running one hundred and
fifty miles an hour because the need had already been
great and now it's even greater.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
But when you're able to place people and when you're
able to get people up on their feet again, that
must be rewarding as well.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
It is, you know, I take pride in the work
our teams here do to make that happen, and how
committed my staff are to try to figure out every
possible option and tool in the toolbox to be able
to present to anybody in shelter. And I see it
in the staff and there, you know, when we get
to report out at the end of the month, how
many you know families didn't move into permanent housing. There's
(13:26):
a great sense of pride in their work that they've
done that and they've accomplished that.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Where do we go from here at this point?
Speaker 2 (13:33):
The first commitment and belief I have is deeply rooted
in the right to shelter. That's a law that the
state brought into Massachusetts. We're the only state in the
country that has this as a total state. We have
some other cities across the country that have it in
their cities, but we as a state in nineteen eighty
three said that our commitment to children was so deep
(13:55):
that we believed we had to have right to shelter
because we knew before even all the clinical brain research
supported it, that housing was crucial for child growth and
for child safety. And that's the core of the right
to shelter law. And so the first place we go
from my perspective is we have to preserve that law
because that's about the Commonwealth's children, and the health of
(14:17):
our children and their futures, and our state. I think
everybody talks about housing production, and without question, that is
a large, the largest part of the equation. What I
would say is, I don't think that can be the
only answer to the equation. I don't think housing production
given that Heading Home actually does at times build buildings,
(14:38):
the length of time it takes to build new production
from a math perspective, you can't dig out of it
solely from that perspective, right, And so I think that
we have to tackle and this is for providers like
Heading Home as well as other folks in the community,
whether it's corporate companies who are looking to hire employees
right up through our government. We really have to figure
(15:00):
out what a multi pronged approach in addition to housing
stock is going to be for us, because just the
sheer number of units that need we can't so we
build out of quickly, right, And so we've got to
have a short, mid and long term strategy that my
belief has to have a few other options that we're
going to start to put on the table in order
(15:20):
to get ourselves out of this. Having said that, we
at the same time, I consider shelters like emergency rooms, right,
They're a critical part of your system that you need
to make sure folks are safe and that they have
access to shelter, and that then gives them access to food, clothing,
some very basic needs that we all have to function.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
So how can people help you? Because this is definitely
an overwhelming situation and I'm sure you could use all
the assistance you could get. Are you looking for money, volunteers, food?
What can people do?
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Great question? So heading home obviously, you know, we do
look for donations, we do look for volunteerism. We look
for you that we can rent for people and help
get rentals for families who are exiting shelter. We look
to partner with community companies right who are in our communities.
And we're we're up through kind of Lawrence region heavily
(16:13):
and Greater Boston and we're actually now down into the
southern region of mass a bit okay, And so we're
always looking for those partnerships, and you know, we look
to have folks at times if there's questions or they
don't understand what's going on or want to figure out
a place to help. You know, we're happy to be
a place that they reach out to, and we're pretty
good at helping folks get connected.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Okay, so how can they find you? Social media, website, telephone,
all that good stuff.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Yeah. So my team, who's younger, does better the social media.
You know, we have the old school website right www.
Heading Home Inc. Dot org, and then we are on
i think all platforms of social media Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn,
so folks were pretty easy to find.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Okay. So yeah, heading home Inc. Dot org. That is
the website, Daniel. I really appreciate your efforts, your time,
your energy. Thank you for being here today and all
the best of luck as you continue to tackle this
situation head on.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Thanks so much, pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Hey, have a safe and healthy weekend. Join me again
next week for another edition of 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 and every week we come together we
talk about all the topics important to you and the
place where you live. So good to be back with
you again this week. I'm Nicole Davis. In all corners
of the Commonwealth, the emergency shelter crisis has now reached
a critical point. We're talking about a point where Governor
(00:27):
Healey and other state officials have now made a move
to limit how long families can use the shelters. This
move has angered advocates from migrants and unhoused families who
are calling on the state to reverse the move, something
officials say they just cannot do. They say, there simply
is not the support available out there to keep the
system running as it has been. Here at Massachusetts, finding
affordable housing is still a major hurdle. Not only are
(00:49):
people trying to get out of homelessness, but you've got
people who want to buy a home and simply can't
afford it. Rents are going up all over the Commonwealth.
At Heading Home in Boston, over on mass Ave, they've
been working looking for many, many years to try to
help as many people as possible navigate the complex housing
market and systems that are in place around the state,
trying to make sure as many people as possible can
get a roof over their head. Danielle Ferrier, the CEO
(01:12):
of Heading Home's here with us. Now we're going to
break down all of this. There is a lot to discuss,
so Danielle, thank you for your time. First and foremost,
give us a bit more background about Heading Home and
your efforts and what you do.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Heading Home is. We're actually in our fiftieth year this year,
so it's a big exciting year for us to celebrate
fifty years of our work in our communities. And we
started originally as a shelter for individuals and then over
the years, unfortunately we've expanded right because ultimately our mission
is to end homelessness, and so currently this year will
(01:45):
serve over four thousand people that includes children adults. We
do that in a variety of different types of programs
and housing models, and so we have family shelter. We
currently oversee the Base State Respite site that folks are
talking about. We have prevention, so we work to keep
families out of shelter as well wherever we can at
(02:05):
the front door and then and we have this for
both families and individuals. We have deeply affordable housing and
so we have a wide range of all of those things.
Plus we provide what we call supportive wrap around services
with all of those different models as well.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Obviously, Massachusetts we've been in a housing crisis far before
you know, the migrant shelter situation became front and center.
So let's talk about these factors. Are what are you
seeing as somebody who is deep into this, What are
some of the biggest factors you're seeing contributing to this problem?
Speaker 2 (02:37):
So great question. You know, before we had newly arriving families,
we had a system that was truly at capacity. Right.
So in Massachusetts, if you look at our cist economics,
right and you look at the housing affordability, in this
past year, we moved to number two in the country
in terms of cost of living and that is largely
(03:00):
driven by housing, is what I understand. And so if
we look at kind of cost of housing and rentals,
we see that it's a very difficult market, right as
everybody feels who lives in Massachusetts to rent and others.
We talk about ownership, right, but in terms of rentals,
very difficult market, more demand than supply, and we know that.
(03:21):
We hear, you know, the state and the governor's team
talk about needing two hundred thousand units, right, and we
in terms of affordability and different tiers of affordability. So
we know we had an issue to begin with. And
I think then when you kind of add inflation, right,
when you add more folks who need shelter, both Massachusetts
(03:43):
residents who still need shelter as well as newly arriving families,
what we see is we've tipped over into crisis in
our shelter system.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Well, let's talk about those shelters then, because we were
mentioning earlier about how this has become the big news story, right,
and obviously the newest development in this is that the
state has essentially said, look, now you get five business
days and then you have to be out. There's been
a lot of pushback on this, including from your group
heading home. Many people are saying, look, these are families,
(04:14):
these are children. Here the state is simply saying, look,
we have run out of money. We can't handle this anymore.
Tell me about heading home and your perspective on this
and what you think should be done here.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Yeah, it's a great question. So Heading Home's position on this,
as I've been told, is actually a little bit of
an outlier. I wrote an op ed that some people
have referenced from a couple of weeks ago. Sure, Heading
Home does support the governor and her team and their
decision as they've been rolling out new policies to put
some parameters around our shelter system and to make sure
(04:47):
that there are guardrails on the train tracks. The intention there,
at least my understanding and my hope and my belief
is that our goal is to preserve the right to shelter,
and that if we are unable to make it so sustainable,
I do think we run a risk of our right
to shelter law, which is not one that I personally,
as our CEO Heading Home and professionally want to see
(05:09):
us lose because of how critical I think it is
for children. And so I think we do have a
little bit of a different stance in that we don't
have a choice based on the crisis we're in, but
to start to have some parameters, some increased accountability, some
timelines that we're trying to work within for families. Any
(05:30):
good system has multiple entries at a front door. It
has different programs and services along the way so that
folks can move along that system and get the service
and help they need, and then has multiple exit strategies.
Heading home is actually uniquely positioned in that we have
every part of the system. We have the respite site,
(05:51):
and we are the only shelter provider to my knowledge
that has a respite site. And then we have prevention,
we have shelter, we have deeply affordable permanent housing for families. Right,
so we've got actually the full kind of continuum. And
what I do see with our team and is unique
for our lens, is that every part of the system
is overloaded and bottlenecked, and if we can't get the
(06:14):
system moving, we risk that the system in and of
itself kind of implows and collapses. Right, We've got because essentially,
if we're so full and families can't come in, then
the system isn't working. Right, And so I don't I
do believe we have to have certain time limits, certain requirements. Right,
providers should be accountable for the work we do as
(06:36):
well as the folks who are receiving the service. So
I do support those decisions whether exact numbers are correct, right,
we can figure out is it five days? In What
we do here at heading home is we let the
administration know if we're struggling with things, right, so we
make sure we say to the secretariat that we contract
with and work with, Hey, we're having a hard time
(06:57):
with this. We're seeing you know this works for some families,
it doesn't. So our belief is if we keep up
in communication and make sure we're feeding the information up
to the governor's team, that they then can at least
have the information to make the best decisions from a
policy perspective that they can and want to make. So
our position has been a little bit different that way,
(07:17):
in that this is not sustainable without any limits, and
if we don't put some reasonable, biscally responsible limits on it,
we run the risk of losing the entire right to
shelter law. And I am deeply committed, deeply committed that
we do not lose the right to shelter law.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Some taxpayers and residents of Massachusetts would say, and many
have said, that why is it up to us to
make sure that everybody has shelter right? Why is it
up to us to house these migrants these families who
need shelter. Why is it my responsibility to pay for that?
What would you say in response to that.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
I'm a team player, and the way I think about
winning the basketball game is the whole team participates. Right. Yeah,
there is an illusion that we love to have in
this country that we pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.
We've done it alone. Right, It's just nonsense. It's not true.
There are some folks who've done more without as much
(08:14):
help or support as others. But nobody functions in this world.
And I'm actually saying this to you as a former
trauma therapist. Nobody functions in this world entirely alone.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
That is true.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
And so that's the perspective I bring to the table
when I think about how we have what I consider
reasonable services available to help folks for periods of time
to help them advance or move forward or get out
of poverty. And so those are things that I are
just deeply embedded in my belief system of how we
(08:45):
have a healthy, productive, economically strong country.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
And I appreciate that you're a trauma therapist because these
people are experiencing traumas every day. You know, sometimes people say, oh,
trauma's become the big buzzword. I don't believe that I
am a per I am a firm believer that these
people are experiencing ongoing trauma. They're so in it in
the moment they don't have time to really process it.
And when you're in the middle of such a traumatic event,
(09:11):
you need assistance, you need people to lean on.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
As a deeply trained trauma therapist, being homeless in and
of itself is traumatizing. That is, before you even figure
out what the trauma is that usually drives somebody into homelessness.
So rarely there are times where folks have a one
off situation that they end up homeless right now, you
can have situations like fire right fire is one of those,
(09:37):
But often when folks are in homelessness for any period
of time, there are other variables that have been part
of the reason in which are the driver for how
they end up in a shelter. And what I say is,
if you end up in a shelter, to me, all
of our other systems have actually failed. Now it might
be because someone hasn't accessed them, but it also might
be that those didn't they couldn't quite address whatever we
(09:59):
need to do, to do to be in front of
ending up almost when someone is homeless. We can look
at the clinical and brain research because it exists. Right,
we are in fight or flight and the brain is
in the back part of the brain, which is the
survival basic instinct part of the brain, which is around
(10:20):
shelter and food. So it is the front part of
the brain at that point, which is your executive functioning,
right where you're thinking about like, hey, I want to
go to school in five years because I want to
be a nurse. I want to go to school or
get trained and certified to be a police officer. Right,
that part of your brain actually can't work and is
shut down because you're in the back part and you're
just thinking about where do I sleep and where am
I going to eat tonight? And so it is hard
(10:43):
for folks when their brain one part is turned on
and the other parts turned off to do the long
term planning, because that's actually just neurology, right, And the
doctors can speak that and the you know, the folks
who've done the brain scans and the research there, but
that at this point in the trauma world is well
established and we know that, and so to your point, Right,
(11:04):
folks are just in crisis and they're just trying to
get shelter and food and clothes and stabilized. And so
that's what our work is. Right when folks are coming
into whether it's the respite site or whether it's our shelters,
we're just trying to stabilize them and then start to
figure out safe housing where it's going to be. The
new policies are we are restructuring a bit of our
(11:28):
program model to respond to the new policies, Right, so
how do we move certain type of work up front
more intensely. We're shifting actually staffing structures and the service
delivery a bit to respond to that. And so we'll
see how that plays out.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Yeah, it's a matter of time. And honestly, at this point,
it's all just moving very quickly, and policy is changing
because it has to change, and it's not so much
at this point I feel a long term response, But
right now it's almost like a triage situation. I feel
bonding to the situation, and I'm sure over at heading
home it feels that way too.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
To an extent, Yeah, it definitely is a moment where
you're watching a system evolve due to crisis and change
because of the crisis in real time. And that's hard.
It's hard in many ways, right, it's hard for our families,
it's hard for our staff. Right, we're just responding. But
the pressures that we see at heading Home are from
(12:25):
the respite site. We have folks who have need, but
they're also on the shelter side. On the other shelters.
There's over seven hundred and fifty families in the Commonwealth
who need access to those shelters. So we feel the
pressure to try to help figure out how to keep
the system moving and having families move out, whether it's
in respite or shelter, to safe permanent housing. And so
(12:47):
that's the focus of our work at this point. And
you know, I think everybody is running one hundred and
fifty miles an hour because the need had already been
great and now it's even greater.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
But when you're able to place people and when you're
able to get people up on their feet again, that
must be rewarding as well.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
It is, you know, I take pride in the work
our teams here do to make that happen, and how
committed my staff are to try to figure out every
possible option and tool in the toolbox to be able
to present to anybody in shelter. And I see it
in the staff and there, you know, when we get
to report out at the end of the month, how
many you know families didn't move into permanent housing. There's
(13:26):
a great sense of pride in their work that they've
done that and they've accomplished that.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Where do we go from here at this point?
Speaker 2 (13:33):
The first commitment and belief I have is deeply rooted
in the right to shelter. That's a law that the
state brought into Massachusetts. We're the only state in the
country that has this as a total state. We have
some other cities across the country that have it in
their cities, but we as a state in nineteen eighty
three said that our commitment to children was so deep
(13:55):
that we believed we had to have right to shelter
because we knew before even all the clinical brain research
supported it, that housing was crucial for child growth and
for child safety. And that's the core of the right
to shelter law. And so the first place we go
from my perspective is we have to preserve that law
because that's about the Commonwealth's children, and the health of
(14:17):
our children and their futures, and our state. I think
everybody talks about housing production, and without question, that is
a large, the largest part of the equation. What I
would say is, I don't think that can be the
only answer to the equation. I don't think housing production
given that Heading Home actually does at times build buildings,
(14:38):
the length of time it takes to build new production
from a math perspective, you can't dig out of it
solely from that perspective, right, And so I think that
we have to tackle and this is for providers like
Heading Home as well as other folks in the community,
whether it's corporate companies who are looking to hire employees
right up through our government. We really have to figure
(15:00):
out what a multi pronged approach in addition to housing
stock is going to be for us, because just the
sheer number of units that need we can't so we
build out of quickly, right, And so we've got to
have a short, mid and long term strategy that my
belief has to have a few other options that we're
going to start to put on the table in order
(15:20):
to get ourselves out of this. Having said that, we
at the same time, I consider shelters like emergency rooms, right,
They're a critical part of your system that you need
to make sure folks are safe and that they have
access to shelter, and that then gives them access to food, clothing,
some very basic needs that we all have to function.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
So how can people help you? Because this is definitely
an overwhelming situation and I'm sure you could use all
the assistance you could get. Are you looking for money, volunteers, food?
What can people do?
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Great question? So heading home obviously, you know, we do
look for donations, we do look for volunteerism. We look
for you that we can rent for people and help
get rentals for families who are exiting shelter. We look
to partner with community companies right who are in our communities.
And we're we're up through kind of Lawrence region heavily
(16:13):
and Greater Boston and we're actually now down into the
southern region of mass a bit okay, And so we're
always looking for those partnerships, and you know, we look
to have folks at times if there's questions or they
don't understand what's going on or want to figure out
a place to help. You know, we're happy to be
a place that they reach out to, and we're pretty
good at helping folks get connected.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
Okay, so how can they find you? Social media, website, telephone,
all that good stuff.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Yeah. So my team, who's younger, does better the social media.
You know, we have the old school website right www.
Heading Home Inc. Dot org, and then we are on
i think all platforms of social media Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn,
so folks were pretty easy to find.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
Okay. So yeah, heading home Inc. Dot org. That is
the website, Daniel. I really appreciate your efforts, your time,
your energy. Thank you for being here today and all
the best of luck as you continue to tackle this
situation head on.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Thanks so much, pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Hey, have a safe and healthy weekend. Join me again
next week for another edition of the show. I'm Nicole
Davis from WBZ News Radio on iHeartRadio.
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