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Has Yvonne Abraham ever been in the Pine Street Inn?
By adamg on Fri, 06/20/2008 - 7:34pm
The Urban Paramedic is back from basic training and blogging again. And with his Boston job not resuming for another week, he has time to work up a head of steam over Yvonne Abraham tearing into the current president of the Upton Street Neighborhood Association in the South End for daring to call the Pine Street Inn "a very, very nasty place." The UP, who has been there, explains, in some detail that the Inn really is a very, very nasty place:
... The whole facility stinks of urine and body odor. The belongings of the residents are filthy. In fact, most of the residents are filthy.
Night is the worst time. The snoring of 400 people in varying degrees of health makes an incredible racket. Arguments break out. Residents sneak into the rest rooms to shoot up heroin. Others get drunk. They steal from one another. Violence is not unusual.
The staff is extremely dedicated. I give them a world of credit, because they try extremely hard to set rules that will give the homeless a decent place to sleep. But it's an uphill battle. Residents sneak needles and syringes into the shelter. And bottles of booze. And occasionally knives. ...
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Comments
I think the most interesting thing is...
...that at age 47 someone wanted to join the military and he was allowed to join.
I think
she was talking about some yuppie's comment that the PSI was "a nasty place" when he's probably never been there and is only concerned about his property price going down.
I'm sure the PSI is not heaven on earth, but for a bunch of people for whom the alternative would be to sleep outside on a bench and risk freezing to death or being abused or ripped off, its a better alternative.
The people who will be housed on Upton Street have been thoroughly screened to make sure they will be able to live on their own. They will not fit into the urban paramedics parameters.
Abraham's piece argues that there are some Upton Street residents who feel that Upton Street should be only populated by other yuppies such as themselves. Anyone "less than" that sholdn't be allowed to live there, for fear that it will ruin the "character" of the neighborhood.
Pine Street's Housing is different from Shelter
Anon hit it on the head — Pine Street's shelter is a place of last resort for people with no place to call home. It has a reputation for taking men and women turned away at other places. Pine Street's housing program like the project on Upton Street services men and women who have been screened, who have maintained sobriety, and who just want to have a place of their own and a normal, quiet life.
The Upton Street controversy seems to often conflate the housing population with the shelter population, and it often fails to recognize that the organization currently at the site in question is running program serving a similar population in larger numbers than the Pine Street plan.
I walked by the Pine Street housing site on Green Street in JP near the T stop for years before I knew it was a Pine Street housing site — very low key. And it's one of Pine Street's biggest.
Fair point
You raise a good point, Anon. That's not how I interpreted Ms. Abraham's comment, but after reading it again, I think you might be onto something.
Before you decide that I'm a jerk who hates the homeless, let me say in my defense that never argued against Pine Street's transitional housing plan. To the contrary, both on my blog and in responding to readers who left comments there, I've said several times that I don't think it'll pose any problem. It sounds as if the would-be residents are well screened and reasonably well supervised.
Perhaps I'd feel differently if I were the one who had just spent a million dollars and was watching homeless people move in as my neighbors. As far as I'm concerned, the Pine Street people have a right to continue with their project, but at the same time, the people of Upton Street have a right to object to it.
But for a bunch of people for
But for a bunch of people for whom the alternative would be to sleep outside on a bench and risk freezing to death or being abused or ripped off, its a better alternative.
Funny. They don't seem to appreciate it much.