Point-in-time counts nearly 300 unhoused people
Almost 200 are sheltered; Council explores housing options
LOWELL >> In January, the city conducted its annual, federally mandated point-in-time count of the number of people experiencing homelessness, and found there are 189 sheltered and 97 unsheltered individuals in Lowell.
The total count of 286 people shows an improvement on September’s quarterly count, where the total 165 unsheltered people far outstripped the 128 sheltered individuals in the city, which Councilor John Leahy recognized in his remarks during
Tuesday’s City Council meeting.
“It’s a very difficult situation,” Leahy said. “You have a lot of good people working very hard on this. People who want to be housed, seem to be housed. It’s trying to convince that last hundred people to come inside.”
The citywide effort was led by the Director of Homelessness Initiatives Maura Fitzpatrick, Lowell Police Department resource officers, members of the city’s Community Opioid Outreach Program and syringe collection team, as well as community partners from Community Teamwork, Pridestar Trinity
EMS and staff from the Lowell Transitional Living Center, a client-centered emergency shelter for adults on Middlesex Street.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development defines individuals and families as homeless if they lack a fixed, regular and adequate nighttime residence.
The PIT count captured people in congregate-style housing such as shelters, in temporary subsidized motels and in doorways and other outdoor locations like encampments, including the sprawling and well-defined camp along the Merrimack River off
Pawtucket Street.
Councilor Vesna Nuon said that collaboration was working to address the unhoused population in the city.
“We’re not going to eliminate homelessness,” he said. “We need to work with our partners to address it. If we can do more, we should do more.”
Mayor Daniel Rourke asked Director of Health and Human Services Lisa Golden, “In the time that you’ve been doing this with Ms. Fitzpatrick, have you turned down anybody that asked for help?”
posed and the Superior Court judge blessed, the meeting that could result in O’brien’s firing cannot take place until at least 15 business days after a second investigatory report, this one related O’brien’s conduct towards former CCC Executive Director Shawn Collins, is shared with O’brien’s side along with an updated rationale for her suspension and potential termination. That exchange had not happened as of Tuesday night.
“We are grateful that the Appeals Court has made a decision that allows the process to go forward,” Andrew Napolitano, a spokesman for Goldberg, said.
Goldberg suspended O’brien, a former state treasurer herself and the Democratic Party’s 2002 nominee for governor, with pay in September after having appointed her to chair the CCC a year prior. Goldberg
has given two justifications for O’brien’s suspension and possible firing: that the chairwoman is alleged to have made racially insensitive remarks and that she mistreated Collins, a former Goldberg deputy. O’brien has denied the allegations against her.
Similar to Superior Court Judge Debra Squires-lee, the Appeals Court judge on Tuesday suggested that O’brien’s next course of legal action may be to contest the validity of the rationale Goldberg relies on if she does fire O’brien after the eventual meeting takes place. Squireslee wrote in December that it would be premature for the court to resolve “whether the bases for removal … satisfy the statute as the Treasurer has yet to take final action.”
“To the extent that the plaintiff challenges the adequacy of the bases claimed for her removal, I echo the conclusion of the Superior Court judge, following Levy I, that consideration of that issue would be premature,” Hershfang wrote Tuesday.