total time: 5.04 minutes
total words: 773
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks for being here. This is Solidarity Live, where we discuss how COVID-19 is affecting Medford and Somerville. This show is really about getting through this crisis together. So if you have been affected by COVID-19, if you have lost income, if you're worried about a family member in a hospital, in a nursing home, in a jail, if you're struggling with school closures or anything else, please reach out. Good policy is based on hearing directly from people in need. And this show is about uplifting those stories so that we can solve these problems together as a community. One example of how we are doing that is with the SNAP, a food assistance program. Someone did reach out to the show a week or two ago to say that his doctor had told him that he needed to stay indoors because of his lung condition, but he cannot use his SNAP card to purchase groceries online. He has to go to the grocery store in person. So we had an expert come on the show and give some advice, but it turns out that other states are allowing people to do online grocery delivery, and that is where you, viewers of the show, come in. Please sign our petition to make Massachusetts one of the states that allows SNAP recipients to get their groceries delivered. Together, we can help our neighbors through this crisis. Our campaign is hearing directly from people in need, uplifting their voices, and engaging the community to solve these issues. So today I have on Hannah O'Hanlon from the Somerville Homelessness Coalition. She's going to talk about the homeless population here and how they're being affected. Then we'll have David Tizell from the Somerville Community Corporation to talk about the tenants that they have and what they're doing to keep them in their homes. And after that, we will have Movami Callahan, who's a Medford doctor, and she will be talking about how our medical system is holding up under the stress of COVID-19. So I will go ahead and get us started here. I'm gonna bring in Hannah O'Hanlon. I just have to get her on the screen. Oh, there we go. I... There we go. I have managed to find the right button. And by the way, anyone who is watching on YouTube, you can simply comment in YouTube's comment box and then ask any question you like and I can pull that question in and we'll answer those questions live. So, great. Hannah, thank you so much for being here. I would love to hear a little bit just about your organization in general and the work that you do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know, thank you so much for having me. First of all, I really appreciate it. So like you said, I work for the Somerville Homeless Coalition. It's a really small nonprofit in Somerville, but we serve a lot of people. We serve, you know, pretty much all greater Boston. We're part of what's called the balance of state. So we're not really just stuck to Somerville. We do take a regional approach to serving people experiencing homelessness. as well as people on the brink of homelessness. So my particular role there is called the emergency services program manager. So I kind of have two focuses. My main one is to supervise and kind of control the daily operations of our two shelters. So we have an individual shelter and a state funded family shelter. And then the second part of my job is to oversee our street outreach program, where we're going out into encampments in the area, hitting the streets where people are sleeping at night, kind of the most vulnerable homeless people that we see, and really trying to engage with them. So that's what I do.
[Anna Callahan]: That is great. Really needed work. Do you have an idea of how many folks you interact with as a homeless population in need, like on a daily or weekly basis?
[SPEAKER_00]: So our individual shelter alone services 16 people, and our family shelter holds five families at a time, a maximum of 20 people. At a given time, like I did street outreach today and I would say we probably saw 15 people out in encampment and then probably another maybe 5 to 10 people sitting in Davis Square. Separate from that, we also provide what's called permanent supportive housing, which is when we go out and we rent apartments, take people out of homelessness and put them in those apartments. So through that program, we lease up over 60 units and house probably over 100 people. That's amazing. And then, yeah, we also have our food pantry that on an average month, we see probably 300 to 400 people. Currently, we're definitely seeing that number kind of double. So it really all depends on the program as far as how many people we see. Yeah. And where does your funding come from? Oh, kind of everywhere, honestly. Our family shelter is primarily funded through DHCD. The state, our adult shelter has city funding, has state funding. the federal government. A lot of our homelessness prevention comes from the city of Somerville. We just kind of pieced together a lot of different funding sources to make sure we can stay open. And a lot of fundraising, that's for sure. We just did an online campaign where we raised, to the best of my knowledge, I think over $100,000, which was huge for us.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, that's amazing. Can you talk about how COVID-19 is affecting the people that you're helping?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's stressful, much like everybody else. And again, it kind of divides up into the different sections. Like our permanent supportive housing program, their services are now remote. And it's really hard to provide case management to an 18-year-old in recovery and living on their own for the first time when it's just a phone call. or our shelter now we're only, we've passed it at 13 right now, hoping to move out some more people. That way we can lower the number even more because social distancing just does not exist in a homeless shelter. It's real hard. Our family shelter, the kids aren't in school. So, you know, we're trying to engage them. We're trying to educate them. All of a sudden the direct care workers are now teachers just as much as parents are. Yeah, it's definitely hard. I think we're all tired, and we'll be grateful when it's over, but we're showing up every day. Our services remain open. We're still street outreaching, which is great. We have our masks on, we have our gloves on when we go out there, but You know, today when I was in the woods, a lot of people that typically make their money off of hand handling aren't getting money because people aren't going to work or people are afraid to stick their hand out the car window and give money. So people now are starving in the woods because they don't have any money to buy food. So when we go out there, it is constantly like, do you have food today? Do you have water? You know, those basic needs that normally aren't as dire, really are dire at this point. So things that I never thought kind of would have come up, like money from panhandling, but we're definitely seeing a lot of it.
[Anna Callahan]: Wow. What do you think is the best way for people to be able to help out? Where can they donate? Can they volunteer? Are there other ways that they can help?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I know our food pantry is taking volunteers and because they're getting absolutely swamped. And I think it was the month of March, typically we see 300 people and it was over 800 people. And, you know, Surrounding cities that have had to close their food pantries people are now coming to Somerville that typically, you know We don't service but we're not going to turn somebody away for food So we are you know, really looking for people to donate food to project seek our food pantry They can go they can help sort cans because we're just handing out bags of food at this point and we need to pack those bags and As well as, you know, you can always go on the website and donate money. Honestly, we're operating our shelter 24-7 right now, and that's not something we have funding for. Typically, our shelter's only open 16 hours a day, and since the beginning of March, we've been open 24-7. So, that's something that, you know, we need to find funding for. And that's one way the community could help, that's for sure.
[Anna Callahan]: Absolutely. Do you have any final thoughts, anything else that you want people to know about what's happening? Oh, you know, I heard on WBUR there was a segment on homeless shelters, and all I remember is hearing that they had gotten enough tests to test an entire homeless shelter, like every single person in the shelter, and that some crazy high percentage of them One in three. Yeah, that's what I remember, but I didn't want to quote it because it seems so high. But a lot of them were asymptomatic and they didn't show signs of the disease. What do you think that that means?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I think it's hard because we've really heard when it comes to, you know, the shelters, we need three things. We need depopulation, we need quarantine, and we need isolation. And I feel like this is always an issue with homelessness is, is it going to be a state response, is it going to be a regional response, a federal response, or a local response? And I've never seen that more present than I do right now. You know, how are we going to respond? Is it going to be the city? Is it going to be the state? Is it going to be regional? And so as we kind of sort that out, you know, things start, people get symptomatic, people get sick. It hit Boston hard. It hit the Boston shelters really hard, one in three. And now it's starting to make its way over the river. It's going to hit Cambridge, and then it's going to slowly progress. So the more we can do to get ahead of it and depopulate our shelters and set up those quarantine sites is going to really make the difference from Boston to the city of Somerville and Medford and the surrounding areas.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, absolutely. And so it sounds like the program that you have where you actually house people is the safest for them. Correct. In addition to being obviously the best for them. When you can house people and they can have their own home, it's clearly better for many reasons. But here in COVID-19, it's even more crucial.
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly. It's really showing kind of the holes in the system and what really will make the difference for homelessness in the future, which in reality will always be housing. It will always be what makes the difference for someone experiencing homelessness.
[Anna Callahan]: Well, thank you so much. The work you guys do is totally amazing. And I don't envy you the amount of work that you have to do these days. So, you know, we will be encouraging people to help you out, to volunteer and donate. Thank you so much. Yeah, it's really good to have an update. And stay safe. do personal care, everything that you need to do. And thank you so much. Thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah.
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