BELLOWS FALLS — There is nothing about Ronald Ramos, a handsome man of Puerto Rican descent who exudes Old World charm and gentleness, that obviously reads as “homeless” or “food insecure,” other than the place he happens to be standing.
Ramos, 51, stands in the parking lot of Our Place Drop-In Center, whose mission is simple: “Connecting people to food and each other.” Ramos is one of those people. He is homeless, as he has been on and off for a year.
The New Jersey native is out smoking with his buddy and apologizes for the smoke, but not his action. He volunteers that they are “necessary” to him as a “pacifier” to take the edge off the stress of his everyday situation.
“Some people might not see it that way, but if I didn't have these...,” he says, as his voice trails off.
Ramos is on probation, and part of his conditions of release is that he not drink alcohol. Our Place Executive Director Lisa Pitcher says that prohibition is customary for anyone on parole, but that for people in situations like Ramos, it's not uncommon to slip.
“They may do great with their sobriety while things are good, but when things turn bad they turn to alcohol, maybe to take the edge off,” she says.
So Ramos says he and his buddy often walk “the loop” together for a cigarette break, along Island Street down past the train depot, then back along the trail beside the railroad tracks to Bridge Street, and back up to Our Place.
“Some days, we just keep walking around and around and around,” he says.
Walking loops on the Island helps relieve the stress, he points out. But in the winter, the days can be brutal and, occasionally, when the Waypoint Center is open, they will stop, use the bathrooms, and get warm inside.
Ramos last worked as a railroad inspector, and he says it was his favorite job. He says he loved looking at a jigsaw puzzle of a disaster and putting it back together again to determine what happened.
He also is a licensed home renovator, has performed as a musician, and has done restaurant work. And he says he would welcome work if he could find it.
According to Ramos, he is on Social Security “very, very slightly.”
“I tell ya, if I was able to go back to the railroad, I would give it up in a heartbeat.”
He says if someone offered, he could do interior house painting and house inspections, as he is federally certified to do so.
“I also do lead safe homes,” thanks to training he got through Parks Place a few years ago, he said.
But Ramos is not well. He has liver cancer.
When asked how long he has been given, he answers with optimism that he hopes to be part of a medical trial in 14 months. He says his doctor is “very, very optimistic” about the promise of the medication.
Will he last that long?
He does not answer that question directly.
“I am trying to sustain myself,” he says.
He has to stay away from high-protein foods and nutritional supplement drinks like Ensure because it feeds the liver cancer. But, he says, at the Drop-In Center, there is always food that he can eat.
“So,” he says, patting his belly, “I'm not starving.”
Despite his healthy appearance, he says, “Actually, I've been sick for days - really, really down.”
He laughs, finding a sort of morbid humor in the irony that today he is looking so well compared to how he was just the day before.
Ramos says he has had a Pathways to Housing voucher for more than a year, but the nonprofit, which combats homelessness, has not found a place for him yet. He says that Pathways seemed optimistic that he will have a place for the winter.
Ramos says that last winter, he had to use the Warming Shelter in Walpole, N.H., almost every night. When the Warming Shelter opens, “hopefully I'll be housed by then,” he says. He plans to volunteer there.
Now, he said, each day begins with walking.
“Every day,” Ramos said, even though he adds that doing so is not easy for him.
“You do what you gotta do,” he says, rubbing his knees.
But some days, he just wants to stay in bed.
“Like this morning,” he says, smiling. “I was so warm and comfortable.”
Our Place provides showers for their clients, and he takes one nearly every day.
He says that when he and his classmates were in school and would feel depressed or overwhelmed, his teacher would advise them to take a shower.
“I have always remembered that. I feel like a new man,” after a hot shower, he says.
He talks about the basic human need to feel safe and comfortable.
Comfort is fleeting in his world, he notes, and - quite naturally - he would prefer to stay comfortable for a while when he finds that space.
“But you need to get up and get out and do things,” he says.
The daily routine
Ramos is on probation as a consequence of a plea bargain to a handful of domestic charges that stem from what he describes as “an ugly divorce is what it is.”
Court records confirm that Ramos is appealing his plea.
“These things happen,” he says. “I'm not a super-duper criminal.”
Ramos says that he has to check in with the local police daily, and he has done so for over a year.
“I check in with them every morning first thing,” he says.
After checking at the police station at 7 a.m., he and his buddy “get a cup of coffee at Cumberland Farms, warm up, and walk through here [Our Place Drop-In Center] and make sure everything is okay, 'cause sometimes people are where they shouldn't be.”
Where he spends the night varies.
Over the past year, he has alternated living outdoors and “couch surfing” with friends. He says a friend lets him stay with him now and then, but “living in someone's house, you gotta give them their privacy as well.”
But Ramos also volunteers at the food shelf at the Drop-In Center, as well as at the Greater Falls Warming Shelter in North Walpole, N.H.
As a volunteer and a client at both places, he “sees both sides.” He says that he has volunteered at the same time he had stayed there.
Ramos talks about the people he has met at the warming shelter, and what the place means to them.
“If you're out here in the cold all day - and you really don't have anything to look forward to - at the end of the day, the place closes and you gotta have some place to go,” he says.
A warm place
Ramos says that it means a lot for people to have a warm place, a cot for the night, and a hot meal. He said the socialization of sharing the family-style meal and having others (clients and volunteers) to talk to who “understand” really helps.
Both volunteers and fellow shelter users fall into this category, according to Deborah Clark, manager of the Greater Falls Warming Shelter.
Clark says she sees mostly single males, a few of them single dads; once in a while, a single mom with a child will come by. Over the past few years, she and her colleagues have seen a significant increase in people needing shelter, but the shelter has only 10 cots, its legal limit.
She says that due to the outsourcing of dispatch services to the Windham County Sheriff's Department earlier this year, the police station lobby will not be open around the clock as a last-resort place in the area for people to go.
A conversation in the office of Drop-In Center Executive Director Lisa Pitcher's office confirms that the Walpole Police Department is not open around the clock, either.
A new shelter that might open this year in Springfield will be the overflow shelter. Otherwise, Keene, N.H., will be the closest place with a shelter.
Clark expects the shelter to fill to capacity regularly again this year, and she anticipates needing to find alternative shelter most nights for the overflow.
“Either way, they need to be transported,” Clark says. Those services are performed by people who sign up for the on-call list, such as herself and the trustees of the Warming Shelter.
A small corner of the open-floor-plan room is closed off for parents with kids, or for single women. The common area includes a kitchen with a sink and warming plate, where volunteers can reheat meals they have brought in that evening.
Ramos and Clark both remark on how clients are eager to help with clean-up of the meals, tackle the laundry, and straighten the shelter.
“It makes them feel useful,” Ramos says. “It preserves their sense of dignity.”
A volunteer and a patron
Ramos reflects on one cold night he spent beneath the railroad trestle with just a blanket.
“You don't get much sleep if you want to wake up in the morning,” he says. “It would be so easy to fall asleep and never wake up.”
There is nothing about Ramos that says opportunist, or ingratitude. In fact, just the opposite. Ramos first spoke of the stereotype of alcoholics and drug abusers as people who are homeless or food insecure.
“That's not fair,” he says.
As a volunteer for the Food Shelf, he says he is seeing a lot more people who have kids, and who have both jobs and a place to live. Nonetheless, they have to come in to the food shelf toward the end of the month to make ends meet.
“They might drive up in a nice car, and you know they had to decide whether to make the car payment or come here for food,” Ramos said. They might only come once, he said, but he knows they have to face some hard realities.
Standing alone “at the end of the line” by the tracks at the railroad depot on the Island, Ramos reflects.
“At one time, I really, really enjoyed jobs like this, and I had a real nice place to stay. Now it seems like this is the end of the road; but hopefully things will change, and I am optimistic about my future.”
The need keeps growing
In 2009-10, the Drop-In Center served 7,246 meals each month to 86 children and 4,059 adults (1,967 were seniors). In 2011-12, that count shot up to 17,193, and through this past September the meal count has escalated to 15,928.
Of those served so far this year, 310 are children and 9,223 are adults, of which 2,994 are seniors.
Pitcher says that food resources are continuing to dwindle as demand continues to grow. As a result, the amount of food distributed per person or family has been reduced to deal with these shortages.
Vermont similarly reflects the national statistics in 2012, where one in four Americans between 25 and 54 filed unemployment insurance claims. Of that number, 56 percent were male and 44 percent female.
In Vermont, for the same time period, the split was 62 percent male and 38 percent female.
“We are about to send out a fundraising letter,” says Greater Falls Warming Shelter board member Louise Luring, who said the agency has received an Emergency Services Grant of $10,000 from the Office of Economic Opportunity.
“We received the same last year through SEVCA,” Luring says.
Now that the organization has been approved by the Internal Revenue Service as a tax-deductible, tax-exempt nonprofit, “we can make requests directly,” she says.
“We will be looking for funding to help Our Place open on Sundays during the day when there is nowhere else to go,” Luring adds.
The police station's partial unavailability will create “a hole” that “can only be covered by more funding for putting up people in motels,” she says. Town Service Officer Ann DiBernardo is responsible for disbursing those municipal funds.
Luring noted the potential new shelter in North Springfield, “but getting people up there would be another matter,” she says.
Still, “We are looking at options, few as they are,” Luring says.