MANCHESTER, NH – It was three years ago this week that a sprawling homeless encampment of tents was swept from the Hillsborough County Courthouse lawn.
Three years later and little has changed. In some ways, things are even more complicated.
New Hampshire is in the midst of a housing crisis that extends beyond the shortage of market-rate units, past the working poor to include the state’s homeless population, a problem that has been accelerated by a lapse in statewide emergency housing funding and an increasing number of people being evicted after the COVID-19 eviction moratorium expired in early October.
Three years later there are still people living on the streets of the city, a majority of them known to police and outreach workers who remain chronically homeless because they’re caught up in addiction or are dealing with symptoms of untreated mental illness.
On Nov. 4 the city sent a truck to Veterans Park and offered storage bins for people who increasingly are seen pushing and pulling their belongings around in shopping carts, wagons and baby carriages for lack of a permanent address. Since then, the tribe of homeless who nightly were filling up the sidewalk and parking spots along the periphery of Veterans Park have moved on.
Their latest open-air commune is located around the property of the Families in Transition emergency shelter on Manchester Street which, according to FIT’s Chief External Relations Officer Stephanie Savard, is running at capacity – most nights all 138 beds are filled.
“Families in Transition is experiencing a number of people living unhoused along the sidewalk outside the adult emergency shelter since people living unsheltered were transitioned out of the parks,” Savard said. “Families in Transition has provided outreach services to these individuals, and, to date, most have not been interested in services or shelter.”
Having so many people congregated outside the shelter is a concern, she says.
“Families in Transition is concerned with this public health situation and its impact on daily operations of the emergency shelter for its shelter participants, staff, and volunteers. Recognizing that the shelter is near or at capacity nightly, we continue to work with city leaders and our non-profit partners to address the issues of unsheltered homelessness in Manchester.”
While a majority of these folks will tell you they don’t want to be in the shelter for a laundry list of reasons, they are running out of places to go as the city continues to enforce various ordinances that keep them out of parks.
“Little Bit,” is one of them.
At 31, she’s a diminutive woman who lives up to her street name. On Nov. 4 she was among several people who took advantage of the bins provided by the city. When asked, she said she was grateful to unload some of her belongings, which will make it easier for her to navigate the streets.
And when asked how she ended up living out of a shopping cart in Manchester, she acknowledged it’s the last place she ever thought she’d be.
“Somewhere along the way I lost motivation,” she says.
A 2009 Memorial High School graduate, Little Bit says she didn’t have a focused plan for her life after graduation.
“I had a job cooking at a bowling alley from the time I was 15,” she says.
She knows just about everyone is hiring kitchen help right now, a skill she has. And she would be willing to work but without stability, there’s really no way to maintain a job.
She has been out on the streets for about 18 months. Before that, she says she was living with her dad until her brother came up from a rehab in Florida because he needed a place. Things fell apart after he died.
“He OD’d in the apartment. After that, my dad was freaked out. He didn’t want to stay there,” she said. So they left. It was her last stable living arrangement.
She also struggles with drug addiction.
“I’ve tried to get clean. My cousin and I are actually in the same boat right now and she’s doing good in rehab and she wants me to try,” she says.
She’s tried before.
Most recently, she had a respite bed and was going to be transferred to a rehab in Concord, but she left before that happened. “I guess I wasn’t ready,” she says.
“I never shoot. I choose to smoke it. Smoking is a less potent way of doing it. I’ve seen people go out smoking it, but I’d rather not think of it as a possibility. I’m a big advocate of it starts with you. I can’t do it for anyone else; I need to do it for myself.”
Being homeless makes her feel like a criminal, although she says she is really just trying to stay alive.
“It’s nuts the way they treat us. And I get that a few people ruin it for the rest of us. They give us a bad name. But everywhere we go, they move us.”
One thing that would help would be more programs that provide a real opportunity to hit the reset button. Other than that, she said she just wishes to be treated more like a human being. That would be a welcome first step.
“There are people who do come out and deal with us. They’re awesome, and they try to understand it. It’s not easy, you know? There is the shelter but from what I hear it has bed bugs and the beds fill up fast in the winter. I’ve tried tenting, but unfortunately, once they get one phone call they have to come and move us, and with trees thinning out now, it’s hard to hide.”
No immediate solutions
Manchester Police Sgt. Emmett Macken says bringing the bins to the park on Nov. 4 seemed like a good idea after hearing over and over from people living on the street that they were afraid to leave their things unattended. It doesn’t solve the deeper problems, but it provided some relief.
He relayed a conversation he had with one person who he was trying to refer to Southern New Hampshire Services.
“He said ‘If I leave someone is going to steal my stuff.’ We know that there’s a lot of homeless-on-homeless crime from those out on the street. We get it. That’s the normal course of events. And while their stuff may not look valuable to you or me, it is all they have. So I asked him what if we had a secure place for your stuff so you can go to Southern NH Services? And he said that would help. I don’t want to say it’s that simple, but on some level, it is.”
In total, 15 storage bins were filled and labeled with names so they could be locked and secured. The city gives a timeframe of 30 days for storage, according to Macken, with the hope that the person accepting storage will take the next step forward, toward recovery and more permanent housing.
“One gentleman there today told us he’s able to get in with his brother-in-law, and his stuff is in the totes now and is safe until he’s ready to retrieve it,” Macken said. “I’m not sure what changed for him but something changed,” Macken says.
From the outside looking in, the homeless “problem” is an eyesore. It burdens the downtown business community which are the ones who have to deal with public urination and defecation on their doorsteps; with trash, with needles. And while it’s unsightly and, in some cases, illegal behaviors, police can only enforce the law. Even when they make an arrest, it’s likely the person arrested will be back once processed.
What’s missing are immediate solutions, acknowledges Macken – transitional and affordable housing options are supposed to be in the works, but there’s nothing right now to bridge the gap. There are no day programs, and limited treatment beds with too many unfilled positions for mental health counselors and social workers.
“I know what the public perception is; I’ve seen people shaking their heads and looking at us, like, ‘Why don’t you just arrest them or throw away their junk?” We know these people well. We know their names, their stories, their families. We tell them every time we talk with them that we can make a phone call for them, to try to get them into rehab or contact a family member. Every now and again, somebody bites.”
Macken says sometimes a person who claims they’re ready to get help will say ‘just let me go back and get my stuff.’ He’s learned to strike while the iron is hot.
“In that moment, if they say they’re ready, then we tell them let’s go now. We’ll get your stuff and drop it off, just don’t go back to where your stuff is or you may be tempted to stay. And once we drop them off, we don’t know where it will go. Sometimes we see them back, but sometimes we don’t, and so we count that as a win.”
Mark E. Yphantis was among a group of people perched at the corner of Manchester and Chestnut streets while others packed up some of their belongings in the city-provided bins.
Yphantis said he recently completed a 28-day program at Farnum. Police records show that a month ago he was arrested in Concord on felony stolen property and forgery charges in connection with an incident at Ledyard National Bank on South Main Street. He doesn’t mention that detail.
But with a Natty Daddy malt liquor tucked in his pocket Yphantis talks about getting a cell phone any day “from one of my connections in the government.” He shows off his rings, one of them with Masonic symbols, and winks. “You know what that is, right? I’ve got protection,” he says. Yphantis then implied that he has to wait until the end of December to return to the Terrell House again, where he said he spent six months earlier this year.
“You know what we really need? Portapotties,” said Yphantis. “Where do they expect us to do our business?”
Robert Cain, 60, who is also hanging on the corner but seated in a rolling office chair someone scored, reminds Yphantis why the bathrooms the city had placed on Elm Street were removed.
“People were doing drugs in there, having sex, sleeping. So they took them away,” Cain said. He mentions he isn’t really worried about the impending winter; he will probably head out West soon, where it’s warmer.
Andrew Smith is sitting next to Cain on the curb. Unlike his friend, he doesn’t have a way out of the city, he says. Originally from the Seacoast, he ended up in Manchester after being released from Valley Street jail, arrested for some kind of domestic incident.
Since being released he is stuck in the city, and struggles for lack of money.
“I’m on Social Security but it got shut down when I went to jail eight months ago,” he said.
The Landlady and a Pod Pilot
Norri Gasser Oberlander calls herself “The Landlady.” She owns and operates North End Properties, a family business established 20 years ago that she has taken over since her father, Bernie Gasser, developed health issues.
Among the properties she manages is the Pembroke Building which houses the Thirsty Moose as well as several luxury apartments on the upper floors at the corner of Elm and Manchester streets, right next to Veterans Park.
Oberlander – and her tenants – have a front-row seat for the persistent issues and repercussions of homelessness and drug addiction. She says she feels frustrated that there has been little progress in the past five or six years. Now she’s looking for support from other like-minded landlords or business owners in the city to consider a pilot program that would be a private/public partnership working toward a solution.
Although preliminary, Oberlander is researching an idea she first heard about from Ward 3 Alderman Pat Long involving small but secure housing “pods, which are being used in other states to address the exact same issues that Manchester is dealing with.
In Boston, a pod community known as The Cottages at Shattuck, consists of about 18 structures. It was established in December 2021 and continues to help move people into transitional housing. Burlington, Vermont, is about to launch a $1.5 million 30 to 35-unit low-barrier “pod village.” The Burlington project, as with the Shattuck community, has on-site services for drug and mental health treatment and is staffed around the clock.
Above: Two-page overview of the Cottages at Shattuck in Boston.
Oberlander says she decided to take action after increased complaints from her tenants reporting people urinating and defecating in the alleys next to the Public Defenders building and behind the Pembroke, or people shooting drugs on sidewalks and tucked in door stoops in broad daylight, and even some theft from vehicles.
She says she’s already got at least 10 landlords on board to contribute $4,000 each, the cost of constructing one pod. To avoid the inevitable bureaucracy of such a project, and to maintain some control over how the pods are managed, Oberlander believes it’s best for the pods to be placed on private property or city or state property “away from businesses and residential neighborhoods” so that they do not become a “magnet” but rather help alleviate the existing problem.
Then she gets emotional as she tries to complete her thought.