Housing for the homeless
Given the opportunity, Richard Ring has a message he would like to deliver to Deval Patrick.
"Governor Patrick could end homelessness in this Commonwealth," Ring said. "The money is there, but it's being spent on shelters. It would take incredible political skill to convert $100 million we spend on shelters into a housing program."
Ring is executive director of Travelers Aid Family Services, and he has as much experience dealing with homelessness as anyone in Boston. Now in his ninth year in his current post, he spent 25 years at the Pine Street Inn before that.
Travelers is about to embark on an audacious test of Ring's theory that there is a better way to tackle the problems of homeless families. The organization will soon take ownership of a three-family home in Dorchester that will become permanent housing for some of the families the agency serves. Ideally, this will not be a one-shot deal. If it succeeds, Ring says, the group will buy more properties, with the idea of helping families solve their housing problems permanently, rather than temporarily.
"Most of the people in shelters don't need to be in shelters," he says. "What they need is help getting back on their feet."
Ring's view is not unique in the housing community. While the state spends its millions on short-term housing, many believe that money could be better spent in ways that would lead to long-term solutions.
Travelers Aid is the first line of response for many homeless families in the city. If a family comes into City Hall, or a police station, or Boston Medical Center seeking help, Travelers Aid gets the call to place them in temporary shelter.
That's important, but it has made Ring think a lot about ways to get at the root causes of the problem, one that he says has become broader and more complex over the years.
"When I got started in this business in 1970, the only homeless people, for all intents and purposes, were hard-core alcoholics," he recalls. "Now people are homeless for a wide variety of reasons. It's not necessary for many of these people to end up in shelter. The money is there to help them, the knowledge is there."
So Travelers is purchasing, for $276,000, a building on Columbia Road. The idea is that families will live there for perhaps three or four years and stabilize their lives.
"They'll get job training, we'll provide case management and help them," Ring said. "Our ideal hope is to provide ample time and support for them to become contributing members of society." The target date for families to move in is March 1. The city and state have both contributed to the purchase of the house, along with some private corporations and trusts.
As one of the nation's most expensive housing markets, Greater Boston will be the most difficult area in the state in which to replace shelters with permanent housing. Still, Ring believes it can be done, with no more money than the state spends now for temporary housing.
Ring's zeal for addressing the housing problem is nothing new. It was almost by chance that he began working as a caseworker at the Pine Street Inn -- back when it was actually located on Pine Street in Chinatown. He left in 1995 after 12 years as executive director.
When he began at Travelers Aid, that agency was making an uncertain transition into housing. Its focus was on homeless families whose challenges were significantly different from those facing the single adults who make up the majority of the Pine Street clientele.
The question now, for homeless advocates as a group, is how to move past the goal of providing shelter beds to helping people avoid life in the streets altogether. If Ring has his way, Travelers Aid will spend most of its energy on preventing homelessness, instead of sheltering the homeless.
"I wouldn't want to see the agency go away, but I'd like to see the sheltering go away."
Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at walker@globe.com. 
