Mayor Domenic J. Sarno joined city officials today to announce the City of Springfield’s comprehensive efforts to address panhandling, including the Project HOPE 2.0 initiative along with the A Better Way to Give and Housing & Mental Health Services for Unsheltered Individuals initiatives.
Today at City Hall, Mayor Sarno, Police Superintendent Lawrence Akers, Lt. Brian Elliot, Department of Public Works (DPW) Director Chris Cignoli, Chief Development Officer (CDO) Tim Sheehan, Housing Director Gerry McCafferty, Deputy Development Officer for Housing, Community Development & Neighborhoods Tina Quagliato Sullivan and members of the city’s street outreach team Jesus Arce and Tiana Green joined with multiple partners including the United Way of Pioneer Valley, Mercy Medical Center, Center for Human Development, and Behavioral Health Network to announce the city’s comprehensive response to the increased presence of homeless individuals on the streets.
The three initiatives announced today are (1) Project HOPE 2.0, (2) A Better Way to Give, and (3) Housing for Unsheltered Individuals. Each initiative involves multiple city departments including Police, Housing, Community Development, and Public Works along with neighborhood councils and agency partners like Behavioral Health Network (BHN) the Center for Human Development (CHD), United Way of Pioneer Valley (UWPV) and Mercy Medical Center. These initiatives will enhance support services for unsheltered individuals, encourage sustainable methods to support those in need in our community, connect those in need with meaningful support and comprehensive rehabilitation services, and aim to reduce panhandling on city streets.
- Project HOPE 2.0
The City is bringing back Project Hope, a multidisciplinary homeless outreach initiative that was active before the COVID pandemic. Project HOPE (Homeless Outreach Provider Engagement) began in January 2015 through funding to the Springfield Police Department from the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health for Crisis Intervention Training (CIT). Now, to support the return of Project Hope 2.0, Mayor Sarno with the city’s economic development and finance teams made a commitment to finance this program for the next 5 years.
Project HOPE involves teams of BHN clinical workers paired up with police officers to do evening and nighttime outreach to homeless individuals. The teams will go to the riverfront area, public parks, along the railroad tracks, behind commercial buildings, and other locations where unsheltered individuals stay. Clinicians are present to encourage people to get the help they need, while police are there to ensure safety. The work is supported by a full-time social worker on staff within the police department, who will provide follow-up support and referrals.
- A Better Way to Give
Springfield is launching a campaign to redirect people from giving to panhandlers, and instead encouraging them to give money to programs that help people get out of homelessness. With support from the City’s Neighborhood Enhancement Fund, the city is posting signs with the message: “Say No to panhandling, there’s a better way to give.”
The A Better Way to Give campaign received $49,500 in funding. The city, through the Department of Public Works, will post 180 signs at intersections identified by neighborhood councils and city staff at locations with significant panhandling activity. Neighborhood councils throughout the city were instrumental in this project.
The signs, which will start going up throughout the city this fall and winter, direct people to the website of the United Way of Pioneer Valley, where people can donate with a click. The money will go to meeting the needs of people who are homeless, and will ensure that the support combines basic supplies (warm clothes, food, and hygiene kits) with social work to help make connections to housing, healthcare and jobs.
The goal is to help people escape homelessness, rather than staying stuck in it. At the same time, the initiative responds to significant safety concerns raised by the police and local drivers. There has been an increase of panhandlers at busy intersections, and these include people coming directly into the streets and between cars. The risk of accidents is high. The City hopes that the signs will discourage panhandling and direct people to safer ways to get their needs met.
- Housing for Unsheltered Individuals
The City is also announcing a new program focused on providing housing opportunities for people who are homeless and unsheltered. The City is funding the Center for Human Development (CHD) to provide rental assistance and intensive services to people moving off the streets and into housing. CHD will work closely with Project HOPE and the Mercy Medical Center outreach team to identify people in need of housing and connect them to this resource.
The new CHD Rapid Rehousing program will provide up to two years’ rental assistance to people leaving homelessness. Once in stable housing, some individuals are able to return to employment and earn enough money to pay rent. There are others, with mental health or other challenges, who will need more long-term support. The goal for these individuals is to support them until they are able to move into permanent supportive housing units. This type of housing offers affordable rent as well as services for as long as a person needs the assistance. The City is also currently working with developers to bring an additional 90 units of housing to the community.
The City is funding CHD’s Rapid Rehousing program with $1.5 million in HOME-ARP funds, a special federal allocation that is meant to respond to the homelessness crisis. The same federal grant is providing $2.7 million toward the development costs of new housing units.
Major Sarno states, “We are all coming together to try and reach more people, more effectively. We know that there is a national housing crisis and we have also had increased need for mental health support. As I have said before, if you need help, I want to help. If you’re on the hustle, I want you off my street corners. We have certainly seen an increase and many new faces. For people who are struggling or down on their luck, we want to help, we have services in place to help with many compassionate and caring people who will work with you. That’s where we want to encourage generous motorists to look to help. Offering cash on the street may just be further enabling someone down a bad path – and I know intentions are good – but if there’s not supply, they’ll be no demand. We have to consider that more comprehensive help is readily available and steer people toward a sustainable path.”
Mayor Sarno further explained, “Now with these three initiatives we will have additional tools in place to provide sustainable options. I am grateful to our Finance and Economic Development teams for their efforts to fund these needed programs and to our city team with SPD, Housing, and DPW as well as outside partners who will administer these initiatives. Thank you to all of our neighborhood councils for their involvement – especially East Springfield Neighborhood Council President Kathy Brown who was instrumental in creating and moving this initiative forward. We have many great people doing great work and I am proud to support them.”
Superintendent Lawrence Akers states, “The Springfield Police is a dedicated and caring department, besides public safety and contributing to the quality of life for the citizens of Springfield, our men and women in blue are dedicated to helping people in need find a positive way forward. Since Project Hope paused during the pandemic, SPD has seen growing demands of police response to homelessness, those dealing with addiction, and those with behavioral health issues. Even though Police receives and responds to the call, many calls are not a criminal matter. We at the Springfield Police Department refuse to criminalize homelessness. We refuse to criminalize mental health issues. The return of Project Hope 2.0 is a step in the right direction. Hope is rising from the ashes and we are returning bigger and better than before with an updated street outreach and engagement initiative. We are very grateful to work with other city departments and private/nonprofit stakeholders to provide this comprehensive outreach and assistance. The goal is to reach folks before it becomes a criminal matter and that’s where the partnerships come in.”
Superintendent Akers continued, “I commend Mayor Sarno for bringing this much needed service back to the city. We look forward to working alongside our partners to provide multidisciplinary homeless outreach. The Department is also pleased to announce we’ve hired Stephanie Tonelli as a full-time social worker on staff within SPD. Ms. Tonelli has years of experience working with the homeless population, including at Friends of the Homeless and Tapestry, as well as previously serving in this role with the Springfield Police Department. She will serve as a liaison between all our service providers and the unhoused community were are working to better serve. The Springfield Police Department embraces these initiatives and will continue working together with our partners to comprehensively support the needs of our community.”
CDO Tim Sheehan states, “Building connections to care and stable housing is the ultimate goal of Project HOPE. Successful outreach, however, hinges on the slow work of client engagement and relationship building. This program seeks to provide our outreach teams with the capacity to make those critical connections once trust is established with the individual. The trust and engagement built over sustained outreach efforts places law enforcement and the community outreach team members in a unique position to assess and respond to immediate care needs and make key connections to services, including permanent housing.”
CDO Sheehan also explained the A Better Way to Give initiative, “Offering money to someone asking for help seems like the right thing to do in the moment. However, it is often this kind of support that keeps people on the streets. Providing a donation to the United Way ensures your support of services that directly assist the most vulnerable populations including homeless, addition dependent, and financially burdened. This is not an effort to say that you cannot give directly to support an individual, but rather offering an alternative approach to give directly to an organization that supports people in need to address the root problems of why someone might be homeless, hungry, or financially burdened.”
Housing Director Gerry McCafferty“We have seen an increase here in Springfield in homelessness and an increased presence of homeless individuals on the streets. There are many reasons for this, including a spike in rents since the world-wide COVID-19 pandemic. We are in a national housing crisis, and the impact is hardest on our most vulnerable neighbors. So we are bringing folks from all parts of the city together to address this issue and provide meaningful help. We know that permanent housing is a better solution than emergency shelter and we working to provide more of that. We will continue with our own city outreach team and our contract with Mercy Medical Center for street outreach, but now we will also have the housing assistance and support services with CHD. This is a significant investment and will allow us to reach more people than ever before. We look forward to announcing additional housing programs in the future which will help support folks emerging from homelessness on a sustainable path.”
If you are interested in supporting the United Way of Pioneer Valley, please visit their website to learn more: https://www.unitedway.org/
