With nowhere to go, homeless seek shelter

LYNN – City officials and some members of the local homeless population expressed concern about safety and adequate shelter in encampments along the Lynnway as the first winter approaches since a popular day program was cancelled.”I had someplace to go during the day, had a place when I didn’t have anything to do, I could hang out with people I knew,” said Earl, 39. “I felt safer there than on the streets.”A $178,000 cut in federal funding led to the cancellation of a day program at the Willow Street shelter in March. The program offered some case management, help for clients who needed to apply for benefits, group support and motivational speakers. The program also offered a supervised place for members of the local homeless population to stay during the day.Without the program, about 60 people (both residents staying at the shelter and local homeless persons who stay elsewhere but participated in the day program) had no place to go during the day.”Unless you’re 22 and under or 60 and older, there’s nothing,” Lynn Shelter Association street advocate Patrick Byrne said. He explained that youth and senior programs in the city can accommodate homeless persons during the hours the overnight shelter closes. But, he said, “Aside from that, people are on the street from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.”Complaints about panhandling and loitering accumulated over the summer. Driving around the city with Byrne in mid-October, it was clear that the homeless population may not be at the shelter during the day, but they are still in the city.For some, they have no place else to go.Shanon, 61, said she has been homeless in Lynn – living either in the shelter for 30-day stints, or on the streets – since being released from jail two years ago after admitting to a sexual offense. Her record excludes her from many shelters, she has health problems treated by local doctors, attends a weekly group meeting and is familiar with the local police and court officials.”I’m pretty much situated here in Lynn with the police station, my parole officer and the group I attend,” Shanon said.Now she is living with Earl in what Byrne described as “the more alternative” of the three homeless camps on the Lynnway, a spot along the Saugus River where the homeless say they can be left alone and catch fish for dinner.”No one really (messes) with us over here,” Mike, 31, another resident of that camp, said.Mike was hosting his girlfriend in his four-person tent hooked up with electricity from a generator. He cooked over a propane stovetop with a griddle or over a barbeque pit. Water jugs were lined up, and a solar shower hung from a branch.Mike, who is from Nahant but also lived in Revere and Lynn recently, said he had been living in the tent for two months. He said he visits My Brother’s Table but decided to camp out because he “didn’t feel like dealing with all the people who go to the shelter.”He said he also doesn’t go to the other camps, including one directly across the street.”On the other side of the Lynnway, it’s a lot different,” Mike said. “There’s drugs and alcohol on that side. This side, you’re either clean or in treatment.”But just about 30 yards away from Mike and Shanon and Earl’s campsite, a dismantled and burned campground suggested all was not “live and let live.”Byrne said that some of the residents had said the camp was ransacked by other members of the homeless population. Others said it was dismantled by city officials, then scavenged by other homeless.Shanon also said a friend of Mike’s had robbed her and Earl a week earlier. She said she had her tent stolen by a homeless person who was camping at the third main homeless camp – the old Beacon Chevrolet site. She and Earl avoid that site because they said it is too dangerous.”You would think that with so many people sleeping in tents like us, we would work together rather than against each other,” Shanon said.The robbery also set back her plans for the winter.She and Earl were plan