“Bobby C” Campbell, a local DJ, was among the several dozen people who this week gathered in Greenfield High School on a cold night to lament the plight of the area’s homeless – especially in dangerously cold weather. We salute them all for coming together to discuss the issue of homelessness and possible remedies.
But in the face of an Arctic blast like the one that probably killed two people who were tenting in a homeless encampment near the rotary in January, something concrete needs doing.
“We can all sit here amongst people and talk and talk all night long,” Campbell told the assemblage of concerned residents and civic leaders. “If we don’t take action right now, then these folks won’t have a place for the next 72 hours.”
Campbell, a popular DJ also known for providing hundreds of Christmas and Thanksgiving meals for the needy, then and there took up a collection, raising $655 that the Salvation Army is using today to provide emergency warming shelter and motel rooms for the destitute who are literally out in the cold.
That’s not to say that other people’s ideas for longer-term aid to the homeless aren’t appreciated or needed. Finding solutions to such problems do have to begin with discussion. We hope that City Council President Rudy Renaud marshals all the ideas and offers of help prresented at the meeting and puts together a city action plan to provide emergency shelter and other aid in cases of extreme cold. The city can take the lead in establishing a standard protocol for providing such emergency aid, a system that would tap the help, expertise and good will of local social service agencies, churches and others, like Hampden County Deputy Sheriff Bob Charland, who has distributed about 50 backpacks of supplies to help the homeless cope this winter. The many groups represented at the meeting – like ServiceNet, the fire and police departments, Community Action, the regional Opioid Task Force – want to help, but seemed to feel hamstrung. But there may be a way.
Already some municipal leaders apparently have discovered the city can declare emergencies that allow it to suspend certain zoning and health codes that have previously blocked creation of emergency overnight sheltering in church halls or city buildings.
That would be great news to those eager to help with short-term common sense solutions like putting people up overnight in a church basement.
Then, the city, perhaps under Renaud’s continued leadership, needs to consider how to address homelessness overall. There’s no panacea. The homeless have been “living in the woods” of Greenfield for decades. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to be done. It will take determination, doggedness and a commitment to work on this for a long time. The Opioid Task Force has learned that.
The root causes of homelessness are varied and complicated and may never be eradicated at the local level. But if we decide to live with it, more people may die from it.
We need more than a forum or two, more than a temporary fix to an immediate crisis. And history has shown us that we can’t subcontract the entire problem to state-funded shelters. If the good people of Greenfield and Franklin County aren’t willing to settle for the status quo, then we need to do something more, as Bobby C would urge.