The council chambers at Providence City Hall transformed into an impromptu overnight warming center on Tuesday night. Volunteers dropped off hot pizza, fresh fruit, bottled water, and winter coats as unhoused people filtered in off the streets.
“I’ve got to stay here because I have nowhere else to stay. I’ve been sleeping outside,” 62-year-old Bill Bailey said. “I’m here because I could freeze to death tonight. It’s too cold.”
As they watched the forecast drop into the low teens, City Councilors Miguel Sanchez and Justin Roias decided to try a new tactic: mobilizing community resources to help fill gaps in the homeless response system.
“What we’re doing is opening up the people’s house, the council chambers, to be an overnight gathering space where folks you know, will be able to come here, put their feet up, get connected [to resources],” Sanchez said.
Sanchez said they decided to use the council chambers because it was a space they had some control over. At other facilities, like community centers or churches, they would have faced permitting issues.
“We were thinking about many different ways to fill the void and gap that has been left behind by the city’s and state’s response,” Roias said. “It’s mind-boggling because winter arrives every year and we’re always chasing emergency shelter infrastructure.”
Roias, Sanchez and other organizers said they hope that Providence Mayor Brett Smiley and Gov. Dan McKee take notice and mobilize more resources to help homeless people.
“I’m hopeful that it’s a good way to show the politicians we need something more,” said Amy Santiago, a street outreach worker with Better Lives Rhode Island, a nonprofit that helps homeless people. “We do need something more than this.”
By 8:30pm, 16 unhoused people planned to spend the night in the makeshift shelter. Organizers said they expected more people to arrive after warming centers closed.
Durell Parker said he has been sleeping in a tent off Branch Avenue in Providence. An outreach worker suggested he come to City Hall on Tuesday night. While he was happy to have a warm place to be, and warm pizza to eat, he’s not hopeful that the makeshift shelter will address the larger problems facing the homelessness response system.
“We’re hoping that it’s not for show,” he said. “But they just keep us in loop and keep us going and going and going.”
“We have the houses that was built for us last year,” he added, referring to ECHO Village, where several-dozen pallet shelters have been sitting empty for months. Still [doesn’t] even have an open date yet.”
Last May, Parker was one of dozens of people displaced when Providence shuttered two encampments. According to the Rhode Island Coalition to End Homelessness, unsheltered homelessness increased by 60% in Rhode Island last year. New data from the federal government show the state has the sixth-highest per capita rate of homelessness in the country.
There are not enough shelter beds in the state to accommodate those in need. The state opened two additional emergency warming centers and extended the hours of some others this week, due to the cold.
Eric Hirsch, a professor at Providence College and advocate for homeless people, said he would like to see the state declare a public health emergency. He said that could expedite bureaucratic processes like the ones holding up the pallet shelters at ECHO Village, which have been sitting unoccupied for months.
Politicians, Hirsch said, “could have done more to deal with this before the wind chills went below zero. They could have opened more warming centers. They could have opened more shelter beds.”
