‘It’s important to respond to the suffering of our neighbors’
Eliot Day Center ministers to homeless population
LOWELL >> Each morning, they rise from heating grates, doorways, park benches and shelters and make their way to the bluepainted entrance off Favor Street, to line up before the doors open at 8 a.m., when breakfast is served in the fellowship hall of Eliot Presbyterian Church.
The homeless of Lowell know the Eliot Day Center as a place for a hot meal, to escape the weather and the streets, as a stop in their day for a cup of coffee, companionship or solitude.
Most of all, they find a place of compassion and care.
“I think it’s important to respond to the suffering of our neighbors,” said the Rev. Heather Prince Doss of Eliot Presbyterian Church. She has led the multicultural congregation since 2015.
The road from preaching the word to practicing it started before the COVID shutdowns in March 2020, Doss said, but took on added urgency when area shelters like Lowell Transitional Living Center were forced to operate at half capacity due to social distancing protocols.
Unhoused residents pivoted to appropriating available space in lots and parks, including the small green space flanking the church’s entrance off Summer Street, which overlooks South Common Park.
“The pandemic started in March, and we didn’t reopen (the church) until May,” Doss recalled. “In those two months, people started sleeping outside on the church property. There were like six tents on the front area. I think the conversation went something like, ‘What can we do to take care of the people making use of our property?’”
The answer started off small, and was managed by Doss and a few other members of the church — offering coffee during the day in the large fellowship hall behind the sanctuary.
“We were just figuring it out,” Doss said. “Before the pandemic, the church didn’t do anything to relate to our neighbors during the week. But as we got access to more funding, and with my experience working in homeless services before I came to Eliot, as well as with the support of other partner agencies, we were able to say, ‘What do we need to be able to do this really well?’”
From that question grew an entire ecosystem of support that now includes breakfast and lunch, support services like secur
ing identification papers, poetry readings, medical care, pastoral services and weekly nondenominational services. The program does not offer nighttime shelter, which Doss said felt like “more than we could bite off.”
The church’s expanded outreach supplements the long-term work of St. Paul’s Soup Kitchen, which has served prepared dinners at Eliot Church for many years to anyone who walks through the door. Board member Tracy Arvanitis remembers the soup kitchen’s beginnings nearly 30 years ago.
“We started in 1995, at St. Paul’s Church down on Hurd Street, by some members who saw the need in the community for a hot, free meal,” she said by phone from her Wilmington home. “It snowballed once they got started. The Methodist Conference sold the church, shut down St. Paul’s and sold the building. And the soup kitchen needed to find a new home. That’s when we moved to Eliot.”
Both the day center and the soup kitchen offer food outreach all year long, Monday through Friday, from the Eliot fellowship hall. The day center operates from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.; the soup kitchen takes over the space from 3 to 6 p.m. It’s a seamless continuum of care for what Arvanitis calls “our unhoused guests.” The two programs feed three meals to between 60 and 80 people.
“Our mission,” Avranitis said, “is to provide a meal to anyone in need of a meal.”
On a busy Friday morning, day center volunteer Kim Gee, of Waltham, was serving pancakes from the walk-up kitchen window in the hall while volunteer Laurae Richards, of Westford, cooked on the grill. Guests had their choice of plain or chocolate-chip pancakes served with butter or syrup.
Working in another part of the kitchen was Director of Operations Charly
Ott, who was preparing a 10-gallon pot of chicken soup for lunch. Almost all of the food distributed in both programs is donated.
“We try to get creative with the food that gets donated,” Ott said, as he stirred the steaming pot.
Staffer Donnie Bouphavongsa, of Lowell, was emptying trash and tidying up. He said he enjoys helping people.
“Our purpose in this world is to be better people,” he said, while sweeping the church’s front walk. “This work gives me appreciation that I can help somebody.”
Director of Social Services Garrett Casey was checking in with some familiar faces in line.
“I help people get birth certificates, state IDS, apply for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Plan benefits, replacement Social Security cards, Masshealth,” Casey said as he ticked off the benefits on his fingers. “I help with any type of socialservice need.”
Later that morning, the harm-reduction counselors
department can add more sessions to accommodate demand, Driscoll said.
Campbell, whose office provided training guidance for the course, said she looks forward to continuing to work with the Healey administration to ensure gun sale laws are enforced.
“Despite our Commonwealth’s strong gun laws, illegal gun trafficking remains a threat to public safety,” Healey said in a statement. “This new initiative will provide local authorities with the tools and training required to conduct timely and comprehensive compliance inspections to ensure
judge rules, then we’ll set a sentence date,” Guthinger said.
Attempts by The Sun to reach Johnson were unsuccessful. Jennifer Miksch, of Amherst, N.H., and Derek Sampson, of Dracut, set up in a room adjacent to the fellowship hall.
Miksch, who is also a nurse, has been with Lowell House Addiction Treatment and Recovery since 2021. Among other health care services, she provides wound care to the unhoused clients.
“We do whatever we can,” she said while setting out Narcan boxes on the table. The nasal spray can counter the effects of an opioid overdose. “I do basic wound care, and we do Narcan training and distribution, teach about harm reduction. We’ve been working here at Eliot for a year and a half, so we know the people.”
The outreach is not without cost, and Doss said funding always remains a struggle to support a program that serves the needs of a large, diverse population with multifaceted and complex needs.
“We think the annual census at the day center is around 175 to 200 people,”
all dealers meet their legal obligations.”
In addition to talking about her incoming gun enforcement unit, Campbell responded to a question on eliminating cash bail in the state with a noncommittal response — though she didn’t rebuff the idea.
“That’s on the list to discuss and I will say it’s an issue I care deeply about and I’ve paid attention to for years,” she said.
The attorney general often talked about her own family’s experience with the criminal justice system on the campaign trail, and on Friday night said when she
News of the sentencing date’s cancelation was painful for Thyne’s family.
Her aunt, Cassie Thynefenlon, of Lowell, said the family was set to fly to Virginia to attend what was supposed to be Green’s final court appearance. Approximately three weeks ago, they were instead notified by a victim advocate about the postponement.
“It was terrible,” Thynefenlon said. “It’s very hard on Katie’s mother. We just want this to be done.”
Thyne-fenlon said Green is “playing the game” by delaying his sentencing.
“He has no regard to anyone’s feelings,” she said. “He’s guilty and it just prolongs the hurt for all of us.”
Thyne was born in Lowell, but moved to Hudson, N.H., a short time later. She graduated from Alvirne High School in Hudson in 2013, before joining the U.S. Navy. With two weeks left in boot camp, Thyne
Doss said. “The membership of the church is only 160 people, and the budget of the day center is about equal to that of the church. So the church has taken on a ministry that is actually bigger than the church itself.”
The future of both the day center and the soup kitchen is clouded by financial concerns. COVID-ERA funding that supported both outreach efforts is expiring, and supportive programs — like housing and supplemental nutrition services put in place to support the community they serve — are also expiring.
“Some homeless people were housed in hotels during COVID through COVID money, and that’s going to run out next month, so we’re bracing ourselves,” Arvanitis. “The other thing that runs out next month is the COVID SNAP money, so I think we’re going to see an uptick in our numbers again.”
Some of those numbers may include more families seeking food. The soup
was younger she couldn’t afford a high cash bail for her twin brother Andre, who later died in custody.
“I talk openly about loved ones being incarcerated and my twin brother dying while in the custody of the Department of Correction. Part of the issue was a high cash bail that I, as next of kin, could not afford to pay, even though he had severe health concerns and health care issues,” she said. “very difficult to get him out into a setting where he was provided adequate health care. And as a result of not receiving adequate health care, would pass away while in that system.”
lost her father, Joseph, to a sudden heart attack. Despite the tragedy, she completed boot camp and went on to serve in the Navy for five years.
From there, Thyne was sworn in as a Newport News Police officer after graduating from the academy in June 2019. She was assigned as a patrol officer in the South Precinct of the coastal city of about 180,000 people.
Approximately seven months into her career as a police officer, Green drove off as officers, including Thyne, were attempting to pull him out of his car during a marijuana investigation. Green dragged Thyne with the vehicle, eventually pinning her between the car and a tree.
The Daily Press reported that Thyne’s handgun pressed into her side upon impact, causing a fatal injury to her pelvis.
Hundreds of police officers from across the country kitchen has a designated area for families who come in for the weekly meals.
Doss said the day center has enough funding to get through until July, but after that, combined with pending cuts next month, it’s likely the trajectory of the unhoused crisis will sharply rise.
Meeting the immediate needs of the unhoused is the church’s mission for now, she said, but the issue needs a larger vision with leadership that looks to more permanent versus patchwork solutions.
“Part of the dilemma for us is meeting the needs of homelessness and ending homelessness” Doss reflected. “It feels futile to keep meeting the needs of homelessness if nobody is working to end homelessness. I don’t know if there’s a driving vision or strategy for how we end homelessness in Lowell.”
For now, both Doss and Arvanitis said their programs intend to keep the doors open, serving up food and fellowship to the least of those in the most need in the community.
She said an “internal government accountability working group” that her office is setting up will look at the issue of cash bail, in addition to prison reform, police accountability, wrongful convictions, misappropriation of funds and pushing for transparency and accountability in the Department of Corrections.
“Once we develop that agenda we will be transparent about what it is and be really bold in going after critical solutions,” she said.
Illinois became the first state to completely abolish its cash bail system on Jan. 1.
came to Lowell to pay their respects during Thyne’s funeral. She was buried in Lowell Cemetery, next to her father.
Green’s trial took place in November, where it took a jury approximately two hours of deliberation to find him guilty of both second-degree murder and of leaving the scene of an accident.
“Yes, we’re happy, but it doesn’t bring Katie back,” Thyne-fenlon said on behalf of Thyne’s family after the verdict was reached. “We still have to deal with that every day for the rest of our lives.”
Katie Thyne is survived by her daughter, Raegan, who turned 5 in January. Thyne’s extensive family lives in the Lowell and Nashua, N.H. area, including her mother, Tracy Maher, and brothers Tim, Jon and Braedyn Thyne.
Follow Aaron Curtis on Twitter @aselahcurtis
to handle Murphy’s Farm. The regional system in Lowell already has capacity issues.
Attempts to reach O’brien Homes and owner Kevin O’brien were not returned by press time.
maximum penalty for the false claims and false records charges, which are both Class B felonies, are three and a half to seven years in prison.
Senior Assistant Attorney General Thomas Worboys and Attorney Andrew Yourell, of the Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, are prosecuting Hayes’s case.
The release states Investigator Eric Shirley, also of the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, investigated the case after receiving a referral from the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services’ Program Integrity Unit and Amerihealth Caritas New Hampshire’s Special Investigations Unit.
Those who would like to report a case of possible provider fraud should contact the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit at 603-2711246.
Follow Aaron Curtis on Twitter @aselahcurtis