Foes of shelter laud closing
However, where homeless will go is uncertain
Critics of a downtown Framingham homeless shelter welcomed the announcement last week that it would soon shut down, saying the town is overburdened with social service facilities.
``I'm just delighted," Selectwoman Ginger Esty said of the decision by the South Middlesex Opportunity Council to close its Common Ground overflow shelter on Oct. 16.
It remains unclear, however, just where the 20 to 40 people who use the shelter each night will go, Esty said.
``They really haven't answered that," she said.
Agency officials portrayed the closure as the first phase of their new plan to end homelessness for single adults, calling it a ``moral imperative." Under the plan, a resource center will evaluate people and direct them to rehabilitation programs and housing.
``We are confident that with community support we can achieve the goal of ending homelessness in Metrowest," the South Middlesex Opportunity Council's executive director, James Cuddy, said in a letter to Town Manager Julian Suso.
There are 20 residential facilities with 500 housing units available in the region, Cuddy's letter said. People under the influence of drugs and alcohol who cannot be immediately placed in a detox program probably would be placed at the Turning Point shelter, adjacent to the MCI-Framingham women's prison, said Jerry Desilets, the council's director of planning.
``Our intent is to get people into supported programs as quickly as possible," Desilets said.
He estimated that it would cost about $200,000 a year to hire new staff and provide housing subsidies to implement the plan. The agency will seek funding from local, state and private sources, he said.
Esty said that based on what she has seen when similar facilities have closed, the people who have used Framingham's shelter will migrate to another community. ``There's a network of wet shelters around the state, and that was one of our concerns," she said.
Common Ground was a ``wet shelter," which means that people under the influence of drugs and alcohol were allowed to stay there.
Framingham and South Middlesex Opportunity Council officials had been in negotiations for months to close the shelter, which some town officials and residents said was responsible for a significant portion of the crime downtown.
Pressure on the agency increased when several avowed opponents of the shelter's place in Framingham were elected to the Board of Selectmen.
``What I think happened here, what's great in my eyes, is we finally have Framingham coming first," said Jason A. Smith, a recently elected selectman.
The next step, Esty and Smith said, is to use the closure of the shelter as an opportunity to move forward with plans to revitalize downtown Framingham.
``As much as people have hated to say so in the past, if we want to do something about restoring our downtown we have to do something about this basic problem and the proliferation of drunks sleeping in parks and on the doorsteps of shops," Esty said. 