Bridge Over Troubled Waters celebrates opening of homeless shelter for youths

Robb Zarges, the organization’s executive director, said he and his staff were thankful for the opportunity to celebrate the shelter, which they say is the only one in the city dedicated to serving young people ages 18 – 24.

“We had a vision of really providing a full continuum of services for kids that are finding themselves in the worst part of their life,” Zarges said. “Alone, on the street, without resources. And that’s why Bridge exists.”

The organization provides services to homeless and runaway youth from 14 – 24 to help them get off the streets and into jobs and safe housing.

“The one piece that was missing was a temporary emergency shelter,” Zarges said. To create the shelter, the organization cleared out offices on the third floor of the building, with several staff members agreeing to double up to make room. So far, Zarges said, more than 50 young people have used the shelter.

“We’re full every night,” he said. “We’re getting great reports from kids saying that they feel safe, and it really allows them to access the other services to really launch them into independence.”

Four youth from the shelter, including James, have moved on to permanent or transitional housing, Zarges said, and all the current residents have jobs and are able to save money to help secure a home.

Menino lauded the group’s efforts, both in the shelter and in its other services.

“As I stand here today, I just simply want to say this is what we should be doing, it’s what we must be doing in these difficult times,” Menino said. “A lot of these young people need a place like this. They’re not bad kids. They just need a little help. A helping hand to help them get straightened away in life.”

Menino said many of the youth Bridge serves weren’t as fortunate as he was when he was young, to have “a mother and father that, if I did something wrong, you got a whack behind the head and some other things happened to you.”

The ceremony’s most dramatic moment came when 21-year-old Luis Rodriguez took the podium to share his personal story. Rodriguez told of being forced from his home, along with his father and two of his brothers, when he was only four. They stayed in a shelter before moving into the home of his father’s girlfriend, who fought with his father and allowed her own children to bully Rodriguez and his brothers.

Rodriguez wound up in Puerto Rico with his kind grandmother and strict, sometimes violent grandfather. At 11, he was diagnosed with leukemia and began a two-year course of treatment that led to his remission. At 14, he was reunited with his youngest brother, an event that gained significance when his leukemia returned and that brother was the only match for the bone marrow transplant necessary to keep Rodriguez alive.

He later moved to Boston, where he lived with an uncle, went to college, and received the medical care he needed. But when his younger half-siblings came to stay with the uncle, Rodriguez had to give up his room and went with his father to an adult shelter, despite his doctor’s warnings that his compromised immune system made it an unsafe environment for him.

After a month, he came to the youth shelter, which he said “changed my life dramatically.” Rodriguez now works two jobs and has qualified for subsidized housing. He is looking for a home, where he hopes to raise his younger siblings, now 13 and 7. He hopes, too, to return to college and pursue his goal of becoming a microbiologist.

“I am 21 years old,” Rodriguez said. “I have survived cancer and hard times. I know I can do this, too.”

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(Jeremy C. Fox for Boston.com)

Darrius James visited the room that he left last week for a new home.