MANCHESTER, NH – As Families in Transition prepares to close down its two emergency winter shelters by the end of the month, Manchester Homeless Outreach Collaborative teams are making more in-person contacts with unsheltered homeless individuals, and counting new names to their ongoing census.
FIT spokesman Kyle Chumas said 41 beds at the former police station on 351 Chestnut Street and 39 beds at the former Angie’s Place on 434 Union Street will be closed at 10 a.m. on March 31. Both locations were set up at emergency winter shelters since the FIT-New Horizons shelter at 199 Manchester St. had reached capacity with around 110 beds.
Earlier in 2020, the Manchester Street shelter had to decompress its capacity to make it safer under COVID-19 guidelines, which reduced its beds to about 68. They brought it up to about 110 after relocating the pantry and converting the space for additional dorms.
While the winter shelters proved a success, with 190 beds available to individuals, and up to 180 being used at its peak, eliminating those 80 beds now will mean the Manchester Street shelter will be full.
“So it’s effectively going to be at capacity,” Chumas said.
Still, Chumas said FIT case managers have been making significant strides for the past several weeks to prevent any major displacement of unsheltered homeless people. He said they are working with various partners to find transitional and permanent housing for several individuals, connecting veterans with veteran-focused nonprofits and so on.
“It’s just been this Herculean effort to do the work that they do every day but to do it in this accelerated and increased capacity,” Chumas said.
So far, it’s too soon to say how many people will have been placed into housing programs by the time the additional beds disappear.
He said the winter shelters were secured with the help of the city as temporary leases. It was always the plan to close them in the spring.
Meanwhile, there was a 57 percent increase in the number of contacts with homeless people by the Homeless Outreach teams in February compared to January, despite being unable to meet people in the field for six days during a police manhunt, according to the monthly Outreach Collaborative report for February.
The total individuals identified to be unsheltered homeless people in the city has grown to 547 after holding steady at 508 for the previous two months. This number includes people whom Outreach teams have been unable to locate for more than 90 days.
While they made contact with more people than the previous month, the number of camps decreased from 27 to 22, and the number of active homeless people went down from 95 in January to 83 in February.
Team members define actively homeless individuals as people they located within 30 days of Feb. 28. There were 113 individuals who were not seen in that 30 day period compared to 137 in January, but were located within the 90-day window.
About 350 homeless people have not been located by Outreach teams in over 90 days, compared to 278 in January.
The increase in contacts is likely due, in part, to the warming weather. Outreach members previously said colder weather made it harder to find folks since many of them would hunker down in tents and decline to come out for visitors.
Indeed, contacts with homeless individuals steadily declined from 378 in October to 145 in January. February was the first month since then that saw an increase with 227 contacts.
In February, 83 people were transitioned to housing, emergency shelters or otherwise relocated, which is on par with 80 who were transitioned in January.
Manchester Ink Link is hosting a Publisher’s Roundtable Community Conversation about homelessness on March 31, 2021, at 7 p.m. Joining us wil be Ward 3 Alderman and State Rep. Pat Long and incoming Director of Homeless Initiatives Schonna Green. This is a VIP Members-only event. Already a VIP? Join the event page here to get the Zoom link. Ready to support our news mission? The Ink Link runs on memberships to keep the news free for all. Click here to to select your membership option.
