NH advocates call for resources and support for people experiencing homelessness

By MICHAELA TOWFIGHI, Concord Monitor Staff

If Freeman Toth had a wishlist to address homelessness, he’d ask for more permanent supportive housing, rent control, better access to voucher programs and outreach from community mental health centers.

To solve homelessness in the state, New Hampshire needs more than just housing – the state and local communities need to provide different types of shelter that allow people to transition out of homelessness with flexibility, he said.

“It’s not just about creating housing, it’s about making sure we create the right housing,” said Toth, the street outreach and housing stabilization manager for the Community Action Program for Merrimack and Belknap Counties. “I’d like to see a variety of different housing become available, housing for people that need supervision, housing for people that are in recovery.”

In the wake of the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling Grants Pass vs. Johnson – which allows for municipalities to penalize people for camping outside despite a lack of shelter beds available – advocates here and around the country are calling for more resources and support to assist people who are experiencing homelessness.

In New Hampshire, over a dozen leaders and service providers signed a letter asking elected officials to invest in solutions in the state.

“If we are going to say that a person is not lawful by camping on state or city property, then an alternative needs to be provided,” said Toth. “My real wish list is for an alternative to be provided, a place a person can lawfully exist while experiencing homelessness.”

Even with the funding and resources, building adequate shelter to house the 340 people Toth and other street outreach workers have identified in Merrimack County, would not come to fruition overnight.

Currently, available shelter is sparse, which is painfully obvious to Toth. He calls the state’s resource hotline almost daily, asking about options for his clients.

“When you consider how many people are experiencing homelessness, the availability is nil,” he said.

Toth refers to his clients as “silent suffers” in the community. Yet that hasn’t been the case as of late.

“These silent suffers are not so silent anymore in the sense that now they’re visible,” he said.

When Toth gets a call from a community member about an increase in the number of people experiencing homelessness in the area, he can directly correlate it to a recent encampment sweep.

Last month an encampment was dispersed behind Storrs Street. This week, another was cleared along the train tracks behind North Main Street.

“It’s not a coincidence that if you clear an encampment one month, a month later you see a whole bunch of people on Main Street,” he said. “People will go wherever the resources are and sometimes that means a corner, flying cardboard just to get your basic needs met.”

When these camps are dispersed and residents are told to leave or risk no-trespassing orders, the city of Concord gives them nowhere to go.

For outreach workers like Toth, this process also means they risk losing touch of people who may be eligible for services, like housing voucher waitlists.

Advocates, lawmakers and city leaders can agree that the state’s housing shortage is exacerbating homelessness in the state. The crisis needs to be met with resources and support though, rather than criminal punishment, advocates say.

For Susan Stearns, the executive director of NAMI-NH, supporting just a few programs can provide a degree of relief.

The bridge program is a state-funded housing subsidy for independent living within their community. Investing in transitional housing or step up, step down programs that can help support people while sheltered would also alleviate the problem.

“These are things we know how to do and we’ve done successfully,” she said.

Expanding congregate living options and continuing to invest in the state’s mental health centers would also help support people with mental illnesses, who are experiencing homelessness, as well.

With a budget year looming in 2025, Stearns would like to see these investments from state government.

In the interim, providing people an area to shelter would help with connections to services, said Toth.

“Outreach is there, the community mental health center is there, treatment providers are there, housing specialists are there, most importantly, to help people move forward,” he said.

Doing so – as a temporary solution – would also alleviate the strain on police and EMS because people would be in an identified, consolidated area. To him, it’s managing the issue in place.

“We waste a lot of man-hours looking for people to tell them about housing opportunities and that’s very expensive for all of us,” he said. “We also see a lot more indirect costs when we don’t manage in place.”

Clearing campsites and increasing law enforcement presence can have unidentified consequences that minimize solutions, he said.

“There are more overdoses when you sweep campsites. There are more of every undesirable type of out come you can imagine when people are constantly being pushed from one place to the other,” he said.

It also places more pressure on local welfare offices, who have a responsibility to provide relief if shelter is unavailable, he said.

“It basically says if a person is living outside and has made their best attempt to locate shelter, then they have the right to apply for temporary help. It’s going to be, and already is, very expensive,” he said.

During the pandemic, emergency rental assistance programs allowed for the Community Action Program and other agencies to help people find temporary shelter. To Toth, this funding gave them, “a parachute for the last 10 feet” and slowed the impact of the pandemic on the state’s housing crisis.

Without these supports in place, service providers are left with few options to assist people who are experiencing homelessness when an encampment is cleared.

To Toth, this predicament presents a choice.

“Do we want to support the population and give them a positive venue to receive services and a place to stay while they’re waiting for either shelter or housing to become available?” he said. “Or do we want to see all of our local welfare offices burdened with in almost immeasurable number of applications for assistance?”

Signatories of the letter included the ACLU of New Hampshire, the American Friends Service Committee, the Community Action Program, the Concord Coalition to End Homelessness, Disability Rights Center, Karless Home Team, NAMI-NH, New Futures, the New Hampshire Youth Movement, NH Coalition to End Homelessness, NH Community Behavioral Health Association, NH Legal Assistance, NH Public Health Association, NH Youth Success Project and Waypoint.

With this broad-based support, Stearns expects advocates to be vocal in finding solutions at the state and local level. Investing in support for housing and homelessness will only strengthen the state, she said.

“We will see the real results in New Hampshire, where we will see more families being able to live here, raise their children here,” she said. “It’s such a challenge and this has benefits beyond. People who are currently unhoused should be able to access the treatment they need and everyone should be able to have a safe place to lay their head at night in terms of shelter.”

Photo credit GEOFF FORESTER, Concord Monitor Staff