O P I N I O N

PUBLISHER’S CORNER

What a mess.

Three years ago the city hired a Director of Homeless Initiatives who stepped into a big pile of chaos. It was chaos created from more than six years of a heroin/fentanyl epidemic and the resulting explosion in the need for social services and affordable housing for a whole lot of sick and needy people, compounded by COVID.

That director, Schonna Green, came and left. There is a lengthy backstory as to why she ultimately left but the biggest reason is that, over time, she did not have support of the board and mayor after she was hired to fix the chaos caused by unmet needs for housing, addiction treatment and social services.

Based on what’s been happening over the past four years it seems clear: Elected officials say they want to fix the problem of homelessness while on the campaign trail, but once elected, they just want it to “go away.”

Enter Adrienne Beloin, hired as Green’s replacement in Nov. 2022. Within months she helped the fire department to equip and launch an emergency shelter in response to a large encampment that formed in the downtown. She then lobbied to create a new department of housing stability. Why? Because at the center of all of the chaos is the need for stable and permanent housing.

As Director of Housing Stability Beloin was prepared to tackle it head on. She’s trained in this and has succeeded in this. That is presumably why she was hired by Fire Chief Ryan Cashin.

Over all these years it has been nobody’s job in our city to figure out where to put all the people coming out of rehab, sober homes or prison; where to house families – with young children – doubled up with others, or living in their cars; where to house those who are too old, sick and disabled to live in a shelter or on their own.

Beloin proposed adding an engagement center to the new shelter as a place where some of these things could be sorted out. A place where the homeless could be during the day and, with time, regain their humanity.

That was approved in September on a shoestring operational budget. She mapped out a plan for making the engagement center something that hums on all cylinders – if it is the will of the board to do so.

But as of this moment the board has not even guaranteed future funding of the space. In fact, the mayor in his recent address to the city, said that his goal is to hand over the building to a non-profit and get out of the shelter business.

Beloin doesn’t want to be in the shelter business, either. But she does see a functioning engagement center as one way to move people forward. It works in other places, but it does take some investment and commitment to be successful.

So far your aldermen are not willing to invest another dime in progress.

And a few of your aldermen are still living in the past – you know, that time when Gatehouse Recovery promised to solve all our problems by scooping people off our streets for a price, and ship them to Massachusetts for rehab? Those few aldermen, seemingly under some sort of enchantment, didn’t care what happened to those people after they were scooped up. They were just giddy that lots of druggies were going to rehab.

Problem is, most of those people came back like bad boomerangs. We have the data on that. And they still had no place to live but the street. Too bad your elected officials seem unwilling or unable to analyze data.

Tuesday night several aldermen questioned why the people inside the engagement center on a Friday afternoon weren’t going off to work or being more “engaged.” Beloin tried to explain – as she has done many times before over the past 18 months – that people who have been living outside or in encampments, or who have deep mental and physical health issues, need time to make progress. Sitting inside and around other people is progress, for many.

From what I heard Tuesday night several of your elected officials seem to think most of the folks at the emergency shelter are just like their lazy cousin Johnny – they just need a kick in the pants in the direction of a minimum-wage job.

Vanna, I’d like to buy a clue – for each and every one of those aldermen who need one.

The majority of people in our emergency shelter are life-worn to the bone and in too many cases damaged beyond real repair, coming off the streets with no family in their corner, many of them elderly and disabled or with severe enough mental health issues that they are not going to find or hold down a regular job.

I have heard Beloin update the board repeatedly about what is working and what is not. She uses graphs and charts and video and visual aids. She sends out a newsletter. It’s complicated but not hard to understand. Yes, the city can reduce the visibility of homeless people by moving them into a shelter, but that does not eliminate homelessness; only having enough homes can do that.

Beloin told the board she continues to focus on her main duty – preventing homelessness and creating pathways to affordable and appropriate housing for those in desperate need of it.

A majority of your aldermen for some reason still think that Beloin’s job is to run the shelter; it’s not. Her job is oversight of it.

Before it was handed off to her, Fire Chief Cashin hired a guy to run it – Jake King, shelter manager. His name seemed fresh and new to some Tuesday night when Beloin reminded the board who he is – a contractor, who manages the shelter with his own staff.

On Tuesday night Police Chief Aldenberg sat next to Beloin and recommended several security improvements – better cameras, more secure locks, maybe a metal detector – all items that come with a price tag. Aldermen hold those purse strings, yet somehow Beloin was blamed for not running a tight enough ship?

On Tuesday night your aldermen then added insult to injury. The Special Committee on Alcohol, Other Drugs, and Youth Services during the final six minutes of their last meeting voted on a non-agenda item that came up out of nowhere under new business to move Beloin’s office from a conference room at the Health Department to what Alderman Goonan later described as “a storage closet.”

The board voted 9-5 in favor of this.

No matter how they frame it, this is obviously another way of putting Beloin in her place and, perhaps, closer to the exit door – just like Green. As someone in the know told me off the record, it’s not business, it’s personal.

But don’t take my word for it. Just listen to this interview on WFEA. Drew Cline, host of The Morning Update and former editorial writer for the Union Leader, on his radio show Thursday morning asked Beloin what the heck happened Tuesday night.  Drew’s a smart guy and no stranger to politics. But even he was having trouble wrapping his head around the actions of the board.

Beloin, with little left to lose, said the part out loud that many other department heads at City Hall are afraid to say for fear of repercussion.

Our professional staff at City Hall work in a political stranglehold. They fear if they don’t toe the line they might lose their jobs or, worse, that the chairman of the Board of Alderman, Joe Levasseur, might make them the subject of his personal disdain by scolding them during a meeting, as he did Tuesday night to Human Resources Director Lisa Drabik and Finance Director Sharon Wickens, over an insurance issue.

Or worse yet, by mocking them, their appearance, intelligence and family members, on his city-produced weekly cable TV sideshow.

I assume that Beloin is in hot water with the mayor for speaking up about what’s wrong at City Hall on the radio, while Levasseur will continue to do and say whatever he wants – at meetings and on his TV show, unchecked – including sway the board and mayor to his own will.

On Tuesday night our mayor and board of aldermen – with the exception of only a few – treated Beloin like she alone has failed at something. I would say it is they who are failing to provide what voters elected them to do, which is to use our tax money to solve our city’s problems and make it better – and that includes making sure every city department has the resources and support needed to succeed.

Maybe what we don’t need anymore is a board of politicians running the show; maybe then we’d actually solve our homeless problems.

Carol Robidoux is a longtime journalist and publisher of Ink Link News. She is a founding member of the Granite State News Collaborative and serves on the board of the NH Press Association. She was 2021 New Hampshire Journalist of the Year. She can be reached at publisher@manchesterinklink.com