From Sybil Newell, RISE Housing and Support Services
For the past three and a half years, the Adelphi Street Shelter has provided much more than a place to sleep. It has given people a safe place to go, a hot meal, a shower, and someone to talk to. For some, it has also been the first step toward getting their lives back on track.
The shelter didn’t come about in a vacuum. It was established as a temporary response to a very visible and very real problem in our community, with the understanding that a longer-term solution would be developed. RISE stepped up because people needed somewhere to go, and leaving people to live in parking garages and wooded areas was not an acceptable solution. We knew from the beginning that a temporary shelter was not going to solve homelessness, but we believed it was a necessary first step while the community worked toward something more sustainable.
When the city administration changed, the momentum toward that longer-term solution faded. RISE continued to operate the shelter and serve the people who depended on it, but the broader plan never came together. We have now reached the end of this chapter without the permanent plan that was supposed to follow.
Over the past three and a half years, we’ve seen people move into housing, reconnect with family, enter treatment, find jobs, and start building a different future for themselves. We’ve also been there when things didn’t go as planned, when people were struggling, and when life was especially hard. This work isn’t always easy, and progress rarely happens in a straight line. But every person who came through our doors matters, and we never lost sight of that.
One thing the shelter demonstrated very clearly is that when people have somewhere to go, the visible crisis of homelessness can change almost overnight. People who had been sleeping in public spaces had an alternative. The encampments and the struggles that had become so visible in our community were no longer as visible. But managing the visible signs of homelessness is not the same as solving homelessness. People don’t stop needing shelter just because we no longer see them sleeping outside.
That is why it is so difficult to see the shelter close. The need has not gone away, and a low-barrier, year-round shelter is not currently part of the solution being pursued by our local leadership. I believe that is a serious gap in our community’s response to homelessness. There are people who cannot access or sustain traditional shelter options, and we need to be honest about what happens when there is nowhere else for them to go. The question isn’t whether homelessness will continue to exist. The question is how we, as a community, choose to respond to it.
Homelessness is not something any one organization can solve. It takes government, service providers, businesses, and community members working together, making difficult decisions, and committing the resources necessary to make a difference. We had an opportunity to use these past three and a half years to build toward a lasting solution. I hope we haven’t lost sight of the fact that this work still needs to be done.
I am incredibly proud of our RISE staff, who showed up day after day to do this work, often under difficult circumstances. I’m grateful to the volunteers, donors, partners, and community members who supported the shelter and understood why it mattered. And I’m grateful to the people who walked through our doors and trusted us to be there for them.
RISE did what we set out to do; we provided a safe place for people who needed one, and we managed a crisis that our community could no longer ignore. But we were never meant to be the entire solution, and a temporary shelter was never meant to be the end of the conversation.
Closing the shelter does not close the issue. The people who needed it are still part of our community, and the responsibility to address homelessness belongs to all of us. I hope our community will take an honest look at what these past three and a half years have taught us and recognize that we cannot move forward simply by returning to the way things were before.