Finding a place to go when the worst weather hits

LYNN – Public safety and political officials advised residents to stay home as a snowstorm bears down on the area Thursday and today.But what about people who don’t have a home?”On a day like today, the adult day program basically doesn’t turn anybody away,” Pat Byrne, a street outreach worker at the Lynn Shelter Association, said Thursday. “We kind of suspend the normal decorum; we would have people sleeping sitting up if that’s what we have to do.”A two-day storm was predicted to drop up to a foot of snow in Lynn and surrounding areas and cause flooding along the coast on Thursday and today. The storm closed schools, prompted parking bans, and unleashed public works departments onto the streets to sand and plow.Meanwhile, police advised residents to stay off the roads, and Gov. Deval Patrick asked people to stay inside as temperatures, with windchill, were expected to drop to 20 degrees below zero Thursday night.Byrne said that such conditions will typically triple the number of clients who come to the programs for the homeless at the Association’s Willow Street building. These programs include a day program where adults can get snacks, watch television or read magazines, chat and access the Internet; and an emergency overnight shelter.Inclement weather basically means the emergency shelter program remains open 24 hours. Daytime services – such as counseling and support services at other locations – are canceled so that everybody on Willow Street can “stay in place,” Byrne explained.But Byrne said it is not necessarily the snow that most impacts this increase.”We generally extend our policy whenever the temperature is life threatening – anything in the teens – we’re not going to turn anybody away,” Byrne said. “They have to be totally inappropriate, to level that they would endanger the rest of the group, in that they would not be allowed.”Even then, the person is not sent back into the cold; Byrne said the person is typically housed by police.When the temperature drops, it is not just the people who spend nights on the street who need shelter, Byrne explained. He said people who live in their vehicles, in an abandoned building or live in tents also visit the shelter in such times.About 20 people chatted and watched television at the shelter on Willow Street Thursday afternoon, crowding the room where the day program is held. Byrne said he expected about 68 people to arrive by Thursday night. Many people can find a relative or a friend to stay with during the day, Byrne said, but will need a place to stay at night.Others needed a place to stay during the day as well as for the night, their usual activities or jobs canceled due to the storm.”A lot of times people have stuff to do,” Reggie Brown, 55, said.He said that normally people who, like him, have a regular bed at the shelter will go out during the day to hunt for jobs or go to visit friends.But Brown said he has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which limits his mobility. The snowstorm made it even more difficult for him to walk.So his plans for the day included “chilling out and watching TV” until 4 p.m., when he said he went to set up chairs for the emergency shelter. Then he said he would visit My Brother’s Table at 5:30 p.m. and head to a bed in the overnight shelter.Joey Mazza, 45, said the weather gave him “nowhere to go” other than the shelter. “The cold really hurts my back ? normally I’d spend time with my fiancee.”On the other hand, shelter resident Mark Gleeson, 47, said the storm was not a big deal.”People here have bigger issues to deal with than the storm: drug addiction, mental illness, alcoholism, family issues ?” Gleeson said. “When I wanted to get high I would walk through a blizzard for drugs.”Gleeson said that, now sober, the best thing he could do during the storm was to help others with some of those problems. Gleeson said he had brought literature from his addiction-recovery group and a phone to call a sponsor in case he or others got