Pandemic puts extra strain on Cape Cod homeless shelters, services

HYANNIS —  For the first time ever, there is a waiting list to get into the St. Joseph House homeless shelter in Hyannis.

Faced with fewer beds due to restrictions brought upon by the COVID-19 pandemic, staff at the shelter are struggling to meet the increased demand for its services during the winter months.

Before the coronavirus pandemic hit, the shelter offered 50 beds with 10 overflow beds. But in an effort to follow COVID-19 regulations and guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, St. Joseph is now down to at total of 40 beds.

Offices, a conference room and a room that used to be a women’s television room have been dismantled to accommodate more beds with appropriate social distancing.

“We’d love to be back at 50 beds,” said Shauna Kane, day program manager with St. Joseph House. “Even with 50 beds and overflow beds, there’s more need than we can meet in the winter.”

House Manager Stephane Ruault has been inundated with calls from people in need of shelter. Currently there are 24 men and 16 women living at the shelter. When a resident leaves, Ruault moves as fast as he can to fill the bed by checking the wait list.

“It’s not how the system is supposed to work,” Kane said. 

What Kane wants people to know is that there are homeless people in every community on the Cape. A majority of them are native Cape Codders, and Kane said many of them are elderly.

With winter upon us, the need for emergency housing is only expected to grow.

According to the Annual Point in Time Count on Jan. 28, 2020, the total number of homeless persons on Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket was 336. That included adults and children, sheltered and unsheltered.

But there simply aren’t enough homeless shelters for everyone in need. 

The Housing Assistance Corporation manages four family shelters at sites in Hyannis, Bourne and Falmouth. St. Clare’s, located on Pitcher's Way in Hyannis, provides transitional housing for women who are coming out of incarceration. A message on St. Clare's website urges individuals or families who are homeless to contact shelters in Fall River, New Bedford or Taunton. But calls made to those shelters Monday revealed that they were all full and not accepting anyone else. 

The shortage of beds is not a problem unique to the Cape. Joe Finn, president of the Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance, cited a recent report that speculated that Massachusetts is short a few hundred beds statewide, leaving many communities scrambling to find space to spare.

In her role as a program director at the Homeless Prevention Council in Provincetown, Maggie Flanagan works with staff at Duffy Health Center to get people into shelters when cold weather threatens. The cold weather response program aims to get people sheltered when temperatures are at or below 32 degrees, or if wind chill, precipitation, gale force winds, storms or power outages are in the forecast. But the program, which makes use of shelters and hotels, only offers temporary housing for those in need of it, a short-term solution for what homeless advocates on the Cape say is a much bigger problem.

The Rev. Deacon Richard Murphy is president and treasurer of Homeless Not Helpless, a nonprofit whose mission is to get homeless men and women off the streets. 

“The world does not understand what’s going on,” Murphy said. “There are not enough services for people out there.”

Homeless Not Helpless provides temporary shelter for 31 men and 19 women in four separate houses while they learn to deal with a host of issues that have kept them homeless. Many have substance abuse problems and/or mental health issues. However, it’s impossible to find long-term care for some of the people who desperately need it, Murphy said.

Murphy can find temporary treatment or detox programs that last for several days or weeks or months. But there are no long-term treatment options that could help a someone overcome an addiction or a mental health issue. Most of the residents have Mass Health or Social Security, but that only gets them so far. 

“There are lots of agencies out there, but no one really gets at the real issue of what’s going on with a particular person,” Murphy said. 

One of Murphy's residents is a 50-year-old man with a serious alcohol problem. “He’s a really nice man who is a chronic relapser,” Murphy said. “He’s deteriorating. There’s no place to get this guy help. He’s going to die.”

Because so many of the residents at Homeless Not Helpless are dealing with substance abuse issues, staff can’t take any chances when someone relapses. 

"When you have someone using, it affects everyone in the house,” he said. “We can’t allow it.”

COVID-19 has put more pressure on house managers to enforce cleaning protocols and house rules. All of the residents at Homeless Not Helpless were tested for COVID-19 in the spring, and Murphy would like to have that happen again. But the paperwork has been frustrating, he said. With one paid staff member, getting all the insurance information together to resume testing is daunting. Meanwhile in New Bedford, he said, there is a site where people can get free testing.

Finn said during the pandemic, there is a broader community benefit to providing shelter for those who need it.  Providing adequate shelter, he said, is an important measure to help slow the rate of COVID-19 infection. While most people are able to stay at home to lower the risk of infection, many people experiencing homelessness do not have that luxury.

“This is a highly asymptomatic population,” Finn said. “They're quite transitory and they are out and about and could very easily be spreading that virus.” 

Kane has witnessed the ways the homeless are mistreated in the community. She has seen drivers aim for puddles of water as they make their way on Winter Street, a practice the homeless call walling. 

“I’d really like our community to look at what we are willing to call affordable housing,” she said. Those numbers don’t add up for folks at real low incomes. It’s affordable for who? It really does impact all of us even if we think it doesn’t.”

Eleanor Ho of the Boston University Statehouse Program contributed to this report. Contact Denise Coffey at dcoffey@capecodonline.com. Follow her on Twitter: @DeniseCoffeyCCT.