ROCKINGHAM — January saw temperatures dip below zero for the first time in what had been a moderate winter. When that happens, the people at most risk for freezing to death are the homeless.
While most of the local homeless people - a “handful” of five to 10 - will seek shelter at the Greater Falls Warming Shelter in North Walpole, N.H., Lisa Pitcher, director of Our Place Drop-In Center in Bellows Falls, said there are those who refuse to go and continue to live - outdoors - in the most marginal and scary conditions you can imagine.
Such is the case with at least one local homeless person, who refused to go to the shelter and was sleeping outside in the remnants of a shack that was open to the elements, on rags frozen to the ground, as the temperatures crept lower and lower.
When the fail-safes to prevent humans from freezing fail, and when a person will not accept help, what can a community do?
* * *
I became aware of just such a person on the very day temperatures were forecast to get to –20 overnight this year. I overheard a conversation at the Flat Iron Exchange, the local coffeehouse where I often go for a break, to listen to music, or to work.
My ears perked up because I was homeless once many years ago (albeit in a much warmer climate), and, honestly, I never want to have to write about anyone freezing to death.
The co-owner, Mark Kenney, was voicing concerns about the chances of survival that night for this person, whom I'm calling Pete out of respect for his privacy.
Kenney said he had been going down to Pete's camp every morning to check on him. But the temperatures were dipping that night.
“I know I am going to go down there tomorrow morning and he's going to be dead,” Kenney said, frustration in his voice. “But he won't accept any help. He's gonna die. I just know it.”
Kenney, a former funeral home director, is familiar with death. “But [freezing to death] is not the way to go,” he told me.
One of at least four local people who, unbeknownst to one another, have checked in on Pete daily, Kenney said he would come in to get a cup of coffee several times a day but was more likely to warm up between dozens of trips up the street to get beer at the other end of town.
What set Pete's downward spiral in motion is not certain, but people acquainted with him - people who knew him when he was still functioning in society and who have tried to help him after his downward spiral - say that the loss of a family member may have been a triggering event.
Pete's friends, acquaintances, and support network use words like “intelligent,” “educated,” “smart” to describe him. They also use words like “troubled” and “hopeless.”
They say he “refuses help,” that “he spends what money he gets on alcohol,” and wonder if he has declined to take his medications.
They say these words not with derision, but in frustration.
Pitcher confirmed that Pete was, in fact, welcome at the Greater Falls Warming Shelter, but that he had made some other shelter guests uncomfortable - not particularly with his drinking, though that was a problem, but more because of his personal hygiene.
Ron Ramos, his friend and a staff member of Our Place, recalled that Pete had let himself go so far that he was not showering.
Ramos said he had to “tell people they had no right to judge” Pete when he heard them being mean to him.
“They shamed him out of the shelter,” he said.
Pete's friend Cynthia Haskell, who knew him from the year before when she, too, was homeless, had made it her mission to get him cleaned up - or at least to shower at Our Place, where she also volunteers frequently.
No longer homeless, Haskell wanted to help him.
She felt that urging Pete to take care of himself was something she “could do in return” for her friend, who looked out for her the year before. He would follow her to her destinations “to make sure I got there safe,” Haskell recalled.
“I didn't know he was there,” she said. “Someone else told me.”
But Pitcher said that even when Pete could be convinced to go into the shower at Our Place, “you'd hear the water running,” but it would be apparent when he came out that he had not actually showered.
“What can I do?” Pitcher asked rhetorically. “I can't go in there with him and make sure he showers,” she quipped, with a sense of humor but clearly frustrated.
Haskell does give Pete a change of clothes.
“At least that's something,” she said.
At the heart of these issues is free will and a person's right to live and behave as he pleases, Pitcher said.
“You can't make anyone do anything they don't want to do” without a court order, she said. “You can only offer someone a shower, or a stay in a shelter,” Pitcher said, admitting her frustration.
* * *
Bellows Falls Police Chief Ron Lake said his hands are tied as well when it comes to Pete's well-being.
“There is nothing we can do for him. We can't take him into custody,” said Lake.
He said he makes sure that his on-duty officers go down to check on Pete, “especially on the very cold nights.”
Lake said that Christine Bullard, Health Care and Rehabilitation Services (HCRS) community support specialist for the Police Social Work (PSW) program in the Springfield and Bellows Falls Police Departments, has also tried unsuccessfully to get Pete to come in and get evaluated.
But “there is nothing we can force him to do unless he chooses to do it,” Lake said.
He said that Pete can be “very articulate” in refusing help.
“But we still check on him and do everything we can for him.”
Lake said the building he had been hunkering down and camping in was privately owned, and “as soon as somebody complains, there will be a problem.” He said he did not want that to happen and asked that the location not be disclosed.
Everyone I spoke with was very protective of Pete's privacy and his vulnerability. No one wants to see a bad situation made worse.
Lake mentioned that Pete could qualify for an Emergency Housing Cold Weather Exception (EHCWE) voucher (administered through Department of Children and Families Economic Services Division), but at the time we spoke, the weather had not been severe enough.
Pitcher said that the federally funded vouchers cover three nights in a motel if certain weather conditions exist or are predicted within 12 hours for the Vermont zip code where the homeless applicant is applying:
• Temperatures or wind chill less than 20 degrees Fahrenheit.
• Temperatures less than 32 degrees Fahrenheit with snow and/or freezing rain.
Lake said that community response has come in the form of “How come you haven't done something?”
Business owners have complained to Lake about Pete coming into their stores, mainly because of his hygiene.
When Pete was sleeping in hallways in buildings, the police chief had to ask him to move along.
But “I don't want to arrest him,” Lake said. “He is troubled.”
* * *
Doing something was the only option for Kenney and Jim Davis, a friend and customer.
Kenney said he spoke with Bullard at the BFPD to see if it would be okay if someone went to where he was staying and enclosed the space to at least keep it dry.
With what sounded like a “hell, yeah,” response, Kenney said he and Davis, from Saxtons River, made plans. The next afternoon found them both at Pete's shack.
When Kenney checked early that morning as usual, he found Pete under a messy, skinny pile of torn sleeping bags and blankets.
Kenney asked if he and Davis could help him in the form of putting up something to at least keep the wind, rain and snow out.
“I wasn't even sure he was [under] there, but he answered and said, 'Okay,'” Kenney said.
When they arrived later that afternoon, Kenney told Pete to go back to the coffeehouse to get a warm drink while he and Davis did what they could to enclose the tiny space with a tarp and some plastic sheets.
Davis said he gave him a sheet of hard foam with foil that would reflect his body heat, though he has no idea whether Pete ended up using it.
Pete had been sleeping on some dirty rags that were “frozen to the cement beneath him,” Davis.
Kenney and Davis left. Beer cans and trash piled around Pete's bed were covered with a thin layer of snow, as they left with the plastic and the tarp in place.
* * *
After surviving another few days of nighttime temperatures at or below zero, Pete finally acquiesced to apply to the EHCWE through the Springfield DCF offices.
I've written about Ron Ramos, who himself was homeless [“A volunteer and a patron,” Dec. 4, 2013]; he has known Pete for years. Ramos said that the first night they got Pete to stay in a motel, he drove to the camp a couple of times, calling out to him, to no avail. Ramos - truly worried his friend had died - finally scaled the fence and got close enough so Pete could finally hear him and came out of the shack.
Ramos, who described himself as Pete's primary point of contact in the community, said this winter he has often enticed Pete back to his apartment with an offer of a haircut, beard trim, and shower.
Ramos tells his friend that he needs “help with some chores - something that makes him feel he's needed.” He said he'll promise to pay Pete a few dollars, and a pack of cigarettes.
Ramos said he got Pete to come with him that day by telling him there was a “security issue” at Our Place. Because “he used to be in the military and anything to do with security” interests him, he went along with Ramos. “It made him feel like he was needed.”
And the next hurdle had to be jumped: getting him to indoor shelter.
Once at Our Place, Ramos told Pete straight: he “was going to freeze to death” if he stayed outside that night. “I don't want to have to worry about you,” he told Pete. “You're one of my few friends. I don't want you to die.”
Ramos said it was that part about being friends and caring that seemed to matter to Pete. He agreed to go with Ramos.
It was 4 p.m. on Friday, and they had to be in Springfield before the Economic Services office closed to apply for the emergency voucher for Pete to stay in a motel. They got there in time, but without all the necessary paperwork.
Pete got the voucher, but with the caveat, Pitcher said, that he would have to come back with all the paperwork on Tuesday. But he had three nights to be safe and warm over the weekend, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief that they did not have to worry about him out in the frigid temperatures overnight.
Pitcher said that she provided a phone verification and got other verbal authorizations to help Pete qualify for the initial stay. But by Tuesday, Pete would have to return to Springfield - and do all the paperwork this time. Without a car.
Pete would have to show up at Our Place to get a ride to the appointments to get the the paperwork completed to qualify for another three-night voucher. I talked to Pitcher at this juncture. She said it was a “big if,” whether he would show up.
Pitcher said she had to explain why Pete could not make use of the Warming Shelter, why “he won't go there” and why “he would rather sleep outside.” She had to tell the shaming story. And a doctor needed to confirm that he would not survive staying outside and that his refusal to go to the shelter was not a whim.
In the end, Ramos drove Pete to the doctors appointments and sat with him throughout. Then, finally, the two returned to Springfield, where he signed up for another three nights.
And while a recently purchased Our Place van was also used at some point in all these trips, Ramos provided his own car and his own gas for most of the transportation. He works five hours a week at Our Place. But he had been where Pete was, and he is his friend.
“That's what you do for friends,” Ramos said.
* * *
Ramos said, now - after two weeks of being able to stay indoors, and perhaps starting to feel better about himself, helping him to stay reasonably clean and kempt - Pete finally and “for the first time ever,” agreed to fill out a Pathways to Housing application to be housed for six months.
Pathways Vermont, a nonprofit organization operating throughout Vermont, first opened in 2010 with funding from the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).
The organization puts into action the principle of Housing First, a social-policy model of combatting homelessness by providing people who are homeless with housing as quickly as possible. Pathways Vermont has partnered with both the state departments of corrections and mental health to create a statewide system of Housing First services.
Ramos said “the list is long and it will be a while,” but he's “got him signed up.”
He recalled listening to Pete converse with the woman who processed his application.
“I just want something small with a bed, a bathroom, and a kitchen,” Ramos overhead Pete say. “I don't want anything more. You save that for someone else who really needs it.”
But the wait could be a long one with the shortage of available housing.
And Ramos said, “Who knows what will happen if it warms up again and he has to leave the motel?”
* * *
Ramos said that at Our Place, “We get calls about [Pete] all the time. People care, but they don't want to have to deal with him themselves.”
But what made the difference this time in getting Pete to sign up with Pathways, Ramos feels, was that so many people showed him by their actions that they cared about what might happen to him.
From closing in his shelter, giving him free coffee and food, going out of their way to check on him daily, making sure he has a change of clothing and the opportunity to shower, a home-cooked meal now and then, a haircut and beard trim, cigarettes, and even a few bucks for a couple of cans of beer, people showed Pete that he matters enough to be cared about.
Ramos defended giving Pete cash for chores that Pete would then buy a couple of beers with.
“Whatever works to get him to come in,” he said. “Then I can get him to take another step to help himself.”
And, he has. And he did. Whatever works.
“God willing and the sun don't shine,” literally - and the temperatures stay cold a few more weeks - Ramos thinks this time could be the difference for Pete to hold onto housing, perhaps with a couple of weeks in the hospital so that he can “get him stabilized and back on his meds again.”
Ramos said that if that happened, the old Pete would have a chance and could finally stop the cycle of homelessness and alcoholism.
“He's a kind soul,” Ramos said of Pete, who had lived in the village and worked for the then-local ambulance service.
Ramos recalled the free clothes store for people in need.
“Whenever he got his paycheck, he would go and stick a dollar in every pants and shirt pocket so someone would have a dollar for a cup of coffee,” Ramos said, his story bringing tears to my eyes as I listened.
* * *
In the meantime, Ramos knows that even though he and others want to see Pete back on his feet again, there are a lot of ifs.
If Pete can stay in the motel, if the weather stays within the criteria of the program that pays for the shelter.
If he keeps showing up every third day to get his ride to Springfield. (Ramos will probably go find him if he does not.)
If Pete will admit himself to get medically stabilized.
Under all these conditions, Pete might have a chance at maintaining housing. If it becomes available.
When people in a community take compassionate action and show that they care, when they never forget to ask permission to help, when they ask Pete for his help to make him feel valued, when they do small things - favors and outreach that likely saved his life - it is helping Pete change how he feels about himself.
When they do all that, they might seed a willingness to go beyond surviving, and live again.
Perhaps, in this one case, one homeless person will not fall through the gaps between reality and community care and social services. Perhaps he will return to a life that brings back his pride and will to live.
Ultimately, the outcome rests with Pete and - there can be no question - the people of the community where he lives.