Armory warming center closes in a month, Providence City Council is reminded in grim report
PROVIDENECE – Winter's end will begin a new challenge for Rhode Island's unhoused population: Where to go when warming centers and seasonal beds disappear.
As of the last two weeks, nearly 1,400 people in the state are without a home. They spend their days living in emergency shelters, transitional housing, in their cars or outside. But with fewer than 950 shelter beds, not counting warming sites, the state doesn't have enough to provide for them all.
That's according to the bleak presentation offered by the Rhode Island Coalition to End Homelessness to Providence City Council members Monday night.
More:Rhode Island homeless programs get $11M in federal grants. Here's where it's going.
A slideshow of numbers offered math that didn't add up to a solution. The average cost of a two-bedroom apartment in Rhode Island is more than $1,700 a month, requiring that a tenant make more than $70,000 a year. But the average homeless person in the state can only afford $220 a month in rent. Nearly half of the population in shelters isn't making any income, while some are making $12,000 per year or less.
"We have so little housing stock, such high costs," said the coalition's executive director, Caitlin Frumerie. "People cannot double up or couch surf. You can only do that for so long, particularly [if] the household you’re trying to stay with is in subsidized housing themselves."
Those who find themselves on the street aren't a stereotype. Most don't deal with substance abuse. Instead, many are facing mental-health issues and other chronic health conditions and, according to Frumerie, they face a lack of help from the very resources that should intervene.
"In Rhode Island, show me someone experiencing homelessness and I will show you a system that has failed that person," she said.
More:Crossroads RI opens four apartments for the unhoused in former family shelter
Providence has been hit particularly hard, with an estimated 600 people without housing, Frumerie said. In total, the city has 374 shelter beds, not counting warming centers.
Yet, as Councilwoman Shelley Peterson pointed out, the long-term solutions are not exactly a city-level job. Instead, the proposed solutions, some very familiar – boosting low-income affordable housing, increasing crisis housing, and reconvening the state's Interagency Council on Homelessness – are things the state would need to do.
More:The Cranston Street Armory shelter closes at the end of April, and the state is scrambling
Meanwhile the closing date for the Cranston Armory shelter is drawing near. By the end of April, the warming station capable of supporting some 200 people at any given time is set to transition back to an empty space. Initially, the closing date was April 15, but it was delayed.
The state has said it's trying to open new shelters, and ones with air conditioning for the summer.
In the meantime, the same problems persist, along with the same calls for action.
"It’s depressing, to be honest," said Councilman Miguel Sanchez. "It’s hard to continue this work, but it’s important that we reach different community agencies … different branches of government – just keep the fight moving forward."
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Providence City Council gets grim report on Rhode Island homelessness
