Numbers of homeless out at night may worsen; Salvation Army to close shelter doors March 31
The Salvation Army on the outskirts of Central Square plans to close its homeless shelter March 31. (Photo: Marc Levy)
The Salvation Army homeless shelter in Central Square may shut down March 31 after the organization opted out of controversial grant funding, costing 35 beds in a city where there are 500 people in need on any given night.
The Army’s Cambridge Corps Community Center at 402 Massachusetts Ave. has operated for decades with an annual state grant – in 2022-2023, bringing in more than $700,000.
New conditions in the funding were just not worth adjusting to, even if it meant not having enough money to keep the shelter open, said the Salvation Army branch’s Maj. Douglas Hart.
Hart noted a regulation that says by accepting the money, the shelter could not deny entry based on a criminal record. This concerns managers because the building also offers a day care. “If we had certain level sex offenders, we wouldn’t be able to deny them access to the shelter,” Hart said.
The state Supreme Judicial Court ruled in 2015 that residency restrictions for sex offenders was unconstitutional.
“Low-threshold” rules
Massachusetts will also begin requiring grant recipients to be “low-threshold,” meaning no restrictions on drug use can be asked of residents as long as they are sober and competent enough to independently “cross the threshold” into the building. This goes against the Salvation Army’s goal of minimizing drug access. “The men who are living in the shelter” who are trying to get or stay sober, Hart said, “need an environment that won’t promote behavior to relapse.”
“There’s a place for the low-threshold shelters, and thank goodness we have them,” but for those in the shelter struggling with addiction or other mental health problems, Hart said, the “drama” that people in these conditions could add to the environment would not promote recovery.
A grant document supplied Saturday by the Department of Housing and Community Development that confirms Hart’s description of its terms. Samantha Kaufman, communications director for the department, confirmed that the Salvation Army had opted out of the funding.
City councillor Marc McGovern said he has talked with unhoused people who avoid low-threshold centers because they know it could threaten their own recovery. “There are so many folks who are struggling with substance-use disorders [who] need shelter spaces where they can go. I also get the flip side,” he said.
Fewer beds than needed
The Salvation Army in Central Square is working to get residents into apartments, but Hart says waitlists are long and people experiencing homelessness face a difficult housing market.
A city-run Ad Hoc Working Group on Homelessness led by McGovern reported in January that Cambridge had some 500 homeless people – a figure gathered before the clearing of the “Mass and Cass” area in Boston that led to even higher visibility of the unhoused in Cambridge. The tents there held an estimated 145 people.
With only around 300 beds for the homeless in Cambridge, losing 35 would be pretty significant, McGovern said.
A look for more shelter
Salvation Army managers are in talks with the city to find a new source of revenue and keep the center open, but Hart said that even if a collaboration with Cambridge is possible, the shelter may have to undergo significant changes. In addition to the 35 beds, this location offers emergency assistance, a drop-in day shelter, a community feeding program and other services. “It’s a lot of money,” he said, but managers “remain hopeful in one aspect. At least there’s discussion about it.”
The city was thinking about how to make up the beds somewhere else if the Salvation Army’s shelter shuts down, McGovern said.
The nonprofit Solutions at Work is looking at converting a home at 2222 Massachusetts Ave., North Cambridge – but it would have only around 16 beds. Councillor Quinton Zondervan, who has been involved that project, called it “very unfortunate that the Salvation Army has made this decision to close their shelter. The loss of 40-plus critical beds in Central Square is unthinkable.”
“I’ve made it clear to City Manager [Yi-An] Huang that we need to do everything possible to preserve those beds, but also that we need to expand our overall shelter capacity and not settle for just keeping it level,” Zondervan said.
A public meeting about the city’s unhoused population and an uptick in substance use in Central Square is planned for 2 p.m. Nov. 29 at City Hall, held by the City Council’s Human Services Committee. The committee is led by McGovern.
The programatic aspect of the Sally-Ann holds a uniqueness. It holds more than a cot and coffee and soup and sandwich. It doesn’t host a pity party and this site, in particular, provides child care. It’s absence would have a tragic ripple effect.
I’ve never bought into hearings for folk that don’t hear…but there’s some books and folks at Harvard and MIT and Lesley with hooks into foundations that do the real. I’ll pass on the photo-op and dog and pony show.
This is unwise. I appreciate that public policy and use of tax dollars involves trade-offs, but we’re making the wrong ones here.
Drug use can be legal, but still frowned upon and not welcome. We can try to forgive people with criminal histories, but still put other vulnerable people ahead in the priority list. The state’s requirements leave us cutting off our nose in spite of our face, to the detriment of Cambridge’s quality of life.
I’m fully supportive of low-threshold spaces – there have been too few of them in the past. I’m curious if Cambridge Day can publish the name of the relevant grant, or the PDF, so we can read it ourselves. I’m somewhat dubious that there is no state money that is going to non-low-threshold spaces, as this article implies, but I may be wrong.
The sex offender issue is real, though also simply a very difficult thing to manage for homeless shelters in general. I recall reading articles like this one: https://www.masslive.com/news/2019/08/auditor-suzanne-bump-faults-state-agency-for-not-informing-homeless-shelter-residents-of-sex-offenders.html. I’m again curious to read the grant / confirm whether this aspect of who they’re able to deny has changed – I was not under the impression that a regulation like this was new.
Finally, I just want to agree with Councilor McGovern and Zondervan that it would be a catastrophe if we lost these beds. The city should do all it can to make sure these stay funded either through Salvation Army or another provider
Peace Be Unto You
As a board member of the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC), I just returned from an invitation to the White House, to attend a meeting on Tenant Protection and Rental Affordability. I had the opportunity to speak out at this event, I inform them that the system was broken, and that it was the government responsibility to fix it. The same hold’s true and pertains, to Cambridge in this current Salvation Army crisis. The federal government has pumped enough of its monies into Cambridge to do so. By the way what has or is happening to this money?No official reports are being issued out to the public at large, about what’s being done with the recent blitz of federal funding into the City of Cambridge.
This current Salvation Army crisis is another in a series of examples that a silent war is being conduct against poor peoples and their causes. For over ten years I’ve advocating off and on. the record for homeless housing to be built from the ground up, with some of that federal money,etc., that been finding its way into the public treasury here in Cambridge, with no results.
How long can the powers that be,etc.,of Cambridge, MA keep turning a blinded eye away from truth. Cambridge, don’t be fooled, the resources to address the homeless crisis and other poor peoples crisis and causes, are available here too.
Yours In Peace
Mr. Hasson Rashid
Deeply Concerned Citizen
Cambridge, MA
I would love to live in the Belmont Hill area in Belmont but I can’t afford the housing or the taxes. Why does Cambridge insist on making the local residents suffer with the crime and drug abuse to support people who want to live in Cambridge, but have no homes.
Why bother working to afford a home when the city plans to make our properties unsaleable by eliminating all cars and parking?
The Salvation Army needs to stay and help the homeless. The the City of Cambridge should help keep it there, they have money.
Its like Cambridge is trying to ignore the homeless. Use some of the participatory Budget to help them. I’m sure the caring people in Cambridge would not mind helping people that need it….right? Salvation Army needs to stay.