City Council Passes Resolution On Homelessness

The national housing and financial crises were brought home to Cambridge at last night’s City Council meeting, during which the body passed two resolutions to investigate homelessness in the city.

Mayor E. Denise Simmons introduced a measure to assess how prepared the city is for a potential increase in the number of homeless people on the streets.

Proposed by Councillor Kenneth E. Reeves ’72, another resolution—which calls for a report on whether arrests of homeless people have increased recently—indicated that the city is already feeling the effects of a statewide spike in the number of people living on the street.

“The Combat Zone has been closed down,” Reeves said, referring to an area of Boston that in the 1960s and ’70s was known for being dangerous and full of adult entertainment venues. “People need somewhere else to go, and that cannot be Central Square.”

Reeves described seeing unfamiliar people pushing shopping carts full of blankets around Central Square recently and congregating around city benches for hours at a time. He also recounted reports of illegal behavior, specifically from store owners who have told him there is prostitution in the area.

In April, the city announced that the 2008 homelessness census showed a 10 percent increase in the number of people without homes in Cambridge.

The upswing in local homelessness coincides with a wider state trend.

The Associated Press reports that there are about 1,800 families currently in Massachussetts homeless shelters and that the number of homeless families living in motels in the state jumped from 17 last September to 588 at the beginning of this month.

Beginning in 1999, the state’s Department of Transitional Assistance has placed families without homes in motels. The program was phased out in 2004 but reinstated in 2007 as demand for shelters exceeded supply due to the nationwide economic downturn.

The Council’s consideration of homelessness follows an effort by Mass. Governor Deval Patrick to end family homelessness and cut the state’s costs by using a preventive approach.

But councillors said they thought the problem would only get worse in the near future, citing the state’s budgetary woes and Question 1, a ballot initiative that could abolish the income tax in Massachusetts, which voters will decide on this Election Day.

“With the social service cuts we’re seeing coming out of the Patrick administration, we’re going to see people losing services and becoming homeless,” Councillor Craig A. Kelley said.

—Staff writer Sarah J. Howland can be reached at showland@fas.harvard.edu.