Harvard Students Will Staff Cambridge Homeless Shelters

Phillips Brooks House (PBH), in conjunction with the Episcopal Divinity Schools, will open two shelters for the homeless this winter in order to provide temporary housing for the thousands of street people who live in Boston and Cambridge.

About 60 Harvard students gathered last night at PBH to discuss staffing the shelters.

Statistics compiled by Boston area shelters reveal that about 8000 people make their homes in the Boston streets, said Mari S. Miller '84, co-chairman of the Harvard Committee for the Homeless.

The committee plans to open two shelters, one at the University Lutheran Church on Winthrop St. and one at St. Mary's Orthodox Church in Central Square. Last winter, Harvard Divinity student Stewart Guernsey opened a shelter at the University Lutheran Church. The Committee for the Homeless plans to re-open that shelter this January.

If current negotiations are successful, the St. Mary's shelter will be open as a women's shelter in November, said committee chairman Richard W. Painter '84. Both shelters will remain open through the winter, he added.

"We hope to get the congregations involved in being volunteers, especially during Christmas and exam time when the student volunteers are occupied," said Painter, adding. "We need to bring people from the community in so we can make up for each other's deficiencies."

Some funding for the project has come from federal and state agencies, but most of the committee's budget comes from a $10,000 donation by a Harvard undergraduates who wishes to remain anonymous, according to Painter. The Cambridge Department of Human Relations has been responsible for securing other funds and supplies for the project.

There are several other homeless shelters in the Boston area. Shelter, Incorporated, a private organization, operates a shelter in Boston and one in Cambridge and plans on opening a third in Cambridge. Two other shelters are open in Boston, according to Pastor Fred Reese of the University Lutheran Church. These are frequented by street alcoholics and drug users, making them undesirable to many street people.

Reese added that Massachusetts is planning on opening two more state-funded shelters in Dorchester and Roxbury.

According to statistics compiled at Rosie's Place, a soup kitchen and overnight shelter for women in Boston, approximately 40 percent of all vagrants are alcoholics, 40 percent have been in mental institutions, 10 percent are elderly and 10 percent are young children.

"The fastest growing group is the young unemployed kids," said Miller. "The typical picture of the homeless as a skid row alcoholic is really changing."