LOWELL — After months of almost weekly speakers, discussions and motions on the issue of the unhoused, the City Council takes a break from the conversation at Tuesday’s meeting.
The council is circling back to the bread-and-butter issues that marked the first part of their inaugural term: streets and traffic, trash and recycling and budget and spending updates.
Not being tasked with more motions on the complicated issue of the unhoused, City Manager Tom Golden may have time to catch his breath.
“I just need a little bit more time,” Golden said at last Tuesday’s meeting. “I think what we’ve been doing in the past, hasn’t been working. We’re trying to do things differently.”
Last September, Councilors Wayne Jenness and Vesna Nuon co-sponsored the first of what would be a series of motions from all the councilors on adult homelessness in Lowell.
Their motion asked Golden to provide an update around Lowell’s housing first strategy and the hiring of a director of homeless initiatives. The motion was augmented by members of the public who spoke to the issue.
Alaina Brackett, who opened the Purple Carrot Bread Company with her husband Doug in 2018, told the council about a consistent pattern of harassment by area “vagrants” was driving away customers and causing her fledgling business to suffer.
“We have lots of problems with the vagrant population,” Brackett said. “Not so much from the people who are getting help from the Lowell Transitional Living Center, and the agencies in Lowell working to help homelessness. This is an issue of people who do not want help. They want to live on the street. I believe it’s mental illness or behavioral problems.”
By mid-October, Golden announced Maura Fitzpatrick as the new director of homeless initiatives, a position that has been vacant since November 2021, under former City Manager Eileen Donoghue’s tenure.
A November Jenness-Nuon motion requested the city manager provide an update on the status of the Hunger and Homeless Commission. That response is part of Tuesday night’s meeting.
In December, a motion by Jenness requested that Golden have the proper department provide a report on implementation of the Winter Protocol Plan for individuals and families experiencing homelessness within the city, which the manager addressed the following week.
Jenness and Nuon co-sponsored another motion in December requesting the manager provide the council with a list of agencies, churches and social service organizations who provide homeless individuals with winter outreach, shelter and services. That motion response is pending.
Nuon suggested better information-sharing from the administration to the public could help address questions around the city’s response.
“What are the number of shelters we have? Who does the work?” he asked. “If someone were to give us a call right now, and say we need to place an unhoused person, we should have answers for that. We should have a list of organizations that provide those services ready to go especially during this cold season. Have it on our website, and have it available to council if we get a call. Shelter, food bank, service providers. Let’s share information.”
Other councilors proposed a homeless summit, a report on unhoused Lowell Public School students and exploring the use of city garages as shelters.
But after more than a dozen motions, countless discussions and various actions, Councilor John Drinkwater’s motion that suggested the city reach out to state agencies for a regional approach to emergency shelter for the unhoused drew the most comment. It was a practical assessment of the need for larger stakeholders to engage in an issue in Lowell’s backyard.
“We’ve had a number of motions and discussions on this topic,” Drinkwater said. “This isn’t a problem dealt with in each municipality on their own. This is a structural issue. It’s a housing issue. It’s a poverty issue. It requires a coordinated approach in partnership with state government.”
On Monday, the Healey-Driscoll administration filed a $282 million gross / $154 million net fiscal year 2023 supplemental budget to address urgent needs across the state’s family emergency shelter system, which is at capacity and facing significantly elevated levels of demand by families facing homelessness, as well as to extend two food security programs that will soon run out of funding.
Even as the funding doesn’t address the needs of the adults who are homeless, it signals high-level attention to the unhoused issue.
To date, the city has cleared the tent camps in at least four locations, expanded the number of available beds and has plans to open supportive housing for 21 unhoused residents on Westford St., that is owned and managed by Lowell Transitional Living Center,
Golden said the project addressed the shared goal of his administration and the City Council to treat the unhoused with dignity and respect.
“The City Council’s overall goal is to treat our homeless with more compassion,” Golden said. “We believe smaller regional residential homes with 24-hour wraparound services will allow professional case workers more time to work with individuals and move them towards a more successful and safer life.”
That housing will be followed by an eight-bed LTLC property on Andover Street, for a total of almost 30 beds — eventually.
That housing is in addition to LTLC’s Middlesex congregate location, which has more than 110 beds set aside for the unhoused to meet the needs of the winter protocol. Community Teamwork, Inc., another nonprofit provider, has more than 100 hotel rooms reserved to house people during the winter months.
Those beds are available this weekend when the weather forecast calls for temperatures in the below-zero digits.
The City Council meets in the second-floor chambers of City Hall, 375 Merrimack St., at 6:30 p.m. To speak at a meeting, contact City Clerk Michael Geary before 4 p.m. Tuesday at 978-674-4161 or mgeary@lowellma.gov.
