City officials in Boston held their second public meeting Tuesday night as they grapple with the sudden closure of the Long Island shelter. But for all the urgency to address the surge in Boston’s homelessness, finding how best to do that is proving difficult.
Cleve Rea spends most mornings at the Farmer Horse coffee shop. He’s 58, sports glasses and a white beard, and wears a button down shirt. He looks like he might be retired, perhaps a writer, until you notice his large, frame backpack. Rea is homeless.
“I’ve applied for social security/disability because of my mental state," Rea said. "So I’m waiting on that process to run its course. I just applied last month. It could take up to a year.”
Rea grew up in Oklahoma and moved to Massachusetts in 1990. He had a career as a software developer, but has struggled with severe depression most of his life.
“Since 2008 or so, I’ve just been doing manual labor jobs," he said. "And I found it very difficult to hold those as well, my mood kept getting in the way. I’m bipolar, so I would have angry outbursts.”
Two months ago, Rea moved from Fitchburg to the Long Island shelter in Boston Harbor.
“I came here specifically to go to Long Island because they had all of the services that I needed, all under one roof and I wouldn’t have to chase all over town trying to find out how to do who, what, when, where,” he said.
Those services include psychiatric counseling and medical care. Rea says he’s now staying at the South End Fitness Center, packed in with 250 other men displaced from Long Island. Inside, there are just two toilets and six showers. Each morning the residents have to leave, so Rea goes to Farmer Horse for a few hours.
“And then I’ll get up and walk to City Place, which is across from the Boston Common," Rea said. "I’ll meet some friends there. I’ll use my EBT card to buy lunch at 7-11 and I’ll stay there depending on the day until roughly 2.”
That’s when Rea has to head back to the shelter to line up for the security check.
“I try to do that early, because if you wait too long you run the risk of not getting a cot," he said. "If you wait too long you run the risk of not getting a mat on the floor.”
But even if Rea seems like a sympathetic character, there was little compassion at a public meeting Tuesday night to address the homeless crisis. City health officials presented plans to relocate services displaced from Long Island to two buildings in Mattapan.
“We will not have a detox program in this building," said city health director Huy Nguyen.
"That’s the problem," an audience member replied.
"These are two programs that are recovery, transitional housing," Nguyen continued. "The clients in these programs have to be drug free and remain drug free.”
The meeting was tense. Most of the audience spoke against bringing more homeless people to Mattapan.
“I can tell you you’re going to have issues with security around this building or with these two programs," another audience member said. "Because I just know it’s gonna happen. Drug addiction is a powerful thing. Rest assured, a lot of people do relapse.”
Audience members asked why the homeless can’t be ferried back to Long Island, but city officials say the state won’t license services that rely on ferries. It was unclear if any homeless people even attended the meeting. As for Rea, he said he couldn’t go because he had to wait in line to get into a shelter.
“I didn’t want to run the risk of being left out," he said. "I don’t have an alternative place to go if I’m out late — with the meeting starting at 6, and I think last time it went till 9, 9:30."
The city is holding another meeting Thursday in Dorchester. It also starts at 6 p.m.
