Joint Senate Committees on Oversight and Housing almost hold the Department of Housing accountable

"I can honestly say that in my 30-plus years in homelessness services, I have never seen the level of people experiencing homelessness that we are experiencing in Rhode Island today."

On Tuesday afternoon, the Senate Oversight Committee and the Committee on Housing and Municipal Government held a joint hearing. Chaired by Senators Mark McKenney (Democrat, District 30, Warwick) and Jake Bissaillon (Democrat, District 1, Providence), the meeting probed Rhode Island’s Department of Housing’s response to homelessness in Rhode Island.

You can watch the joint committee hearing here:

You can read the Dan McGowan interview with Senator Jake Bissalion, conducted before the joint committee hearing here.

The following transcription has been edited for clarity and substance and is not complete, but it shows highlights from the joint committee hearing:

Senator Bissalion: This is an issue that’s important to members of both these committees. Everyone has signed on to one letter or another relating to homelessness as it has played out and been laid bare in the State of Rhode Island. I work at an agency called Justice Assistance, where we deal with several different issues, including the rehousing of individuals involved in the criminal justice system. Every morning, we start our day with an affirmation to center ourselves. And I thought of no better way to start this hearing, the day after MLK Day, than with a quote from Robert Kennedy the day after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, “But perhaps we can remember only for a day that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life.”

That is the spirit that guides many of the folks who do the work day in and day out, who will testify before us today, and I thank you for that work. But the sad reality is that decades of policymaking and under-investment have led to a true housing crisis in Rhode Island. During this crisis, there’s been, year over year, a 35% increase in the number of individuals experiencing homelessness. A crisis where we need 24,000 units of affordable housing and 150,000 households suffer the burden of housing costs, 72,000 of those being renters.

As individuals who represent the Capital City, that is a particular concern for me and my colleagues in the Providence delegation. We are in this situation because a number of things have gone wrong year after year, not the least of which is that our per capita development of new units has been last in the nation.

We’re expected to add about 2000 units a year just to keep pace with natural housing growth. That doesn’t account for the housing crisis that I briefly illustrated in those facts above. So, I want to thank everyone for starting this session on the right foot, beginning with a discussion on housing, which I believe, along with our healthcare crisis, is an issue that is front and center for us to deal with in this session.

Senator McKinney: Several folks have questioned why we need to have a hearing of this type - and that this is somewhat of an adversarial proceeding [instead] of something that could have been done quietly without a hearing. The Senate must oversee, and we do it publicly because there are questions out there, many of which come from our colleagues and constituents. Frankly, people are entitled to answers, and this doesn’t have to be adversarial, and we’re not looking to make it adversarial.

I was a trial lawyer for over 40 years. I know what adversarial is. We’re looking for answers to some questions that have to be asked, and I have suggested that this is an opportunity. The fact that people have questions indicates another fact - that, for whatever reason, they’re not fully aware of what’s happening in the housing world. This is an opportunity to give them a better understanding of that. And I will note this: Rhode Islanders are frustrated. They look at the government these days and consider it failing to move faster than a snail’s pace. Too often, that kind of criticism is warranted. I think people view things such as the Pallet shelter as emblematic of that, a government failure and a lengthy, dawdling inability to solve a problem facing a severe need.

When we look at other places that deal with similar projects and do it quickly in a hundred days or whatever, it begs the question: Why aren’t we doing better here? Our job is to look at that situation and hope it will be resolved as soon as possible, but also to find out what we can learn from it to ensure it doesn’t happen again. Similarly, Rhode Islanders are concerned, given the historic expenditure of funds and the fact that we’ve got another $120 million in the bond that was just approved, whether we are expending those funds in a way that’s appropriate again, doing it at a pace that unfortunately, the government is not always known for.

We look at reports coming out that talk in terms of 24,000 units needed to close Rhode Island’s gap of affordability and the increase in affordability problems and homelessness, especially since 2020, due in large part to the lack of housing production. That’s been a problem for many years. That high cost and the scarce availability of housing have also played a role in creating the tight and expensive rental market. We’re hoping to hear from you folks on all those things.

Michelle Wilcox, President and CEO of Crossroads Rhode Island: We’ll start with some context. According to HUD’s latest Point in Time (PIT) count, which is a year old, homelessness has more than doubled over the last five years, reaching a record high in Rhode Island. If you’re not familiar with it, the Point in Time count is a federally mandated census that occurs on a single night in January. Volunteers go out and count the number of people experiencing homelessness. This year’s Point in Time count will be conducted tonight.

The numbers you see here are probably conservative. The very nature of the count means that people get missed. The Point in Time count provides a reasonably accurate snapshot of homelessness in Rhode Island. I’d also like to point out that these numbers reflect just a single night over an entire year. The total number of people experiencing homelessness is probably two to three times that what the PIT count number is. I can honestly say that in my 30-plus years in homelessness services, I have never seen the level of people experiencing homelessness that we are experiencing in Rhode Island today. Homelessness has reached a crisis point in our State.

Why is this happening? What’s different now is a perfect storm of insufficient housing supply, rapidly escalating rents, and wages failing to keep up with inflation. More and more people are being priced out of stable homes, including people who have steady jobs and people who have never been homeless before. State and local governments have made significant investments in housing and homeless services, but they haven’t been able to keep pace with the rising demand. The result is that overall, homelessness increased 35% from 2023 to 2024. Even more concerning, the number of people sleeping outside has risen by about 400% over the last five years.

Let me put that into perspective for you. Before the pandemic, almost no one in Rhode Island was sleeping outside. We had one of the lowest unsheltered homeless rates in the country. Today, there are hundreds, about 650 people, who are sleeping outside in freezing temperatures and places not fit for human habitation. I think that we can all agree that that is not okay. Finally, because we don’t have enough housing, the length of time that people are experiencing homelessness is increasing, which is driving chronic homelessness. The 2024 point-in-time count identified Rhode Island as having the second-highest percentage increase of chronic homelessness in the country.

Today, hundreds, about 650 people, are sleeping outside in freezing temperatures and places unfit for human habitation.

It’s worth noting that the face of homelessness is also changing. When I first started in this business, the majority of people experiencing homelessness were white men. As you can see from this data, however, it’s changing. More than 500 children under the age of 18 experienced homelessness in Rhode Island last year. The number of men and women who are homeless is now almost equal. While whites still account for almost half of our homeless population, people of color make up a disproportionate percentage.

A little bit about Crossroads: as the State’s leading provider of housing and services for those experiencing homelessness, Crossroads is on the front lines of addressing Rhode Island’s homelessness crisis. Our mission is to help people experiencing homelessness secure, stable homes because we know that the only solution to homelessness is housing to meet the needs of the thousands of people who experience homelessness in our community.

Every year, Crossroads provides a range of housing-focused programs and services. We operate as a warming center during weather extremes like we’ve had lately. Our community room, located at our headquarters building on Broad Street in Providence, can provide up to 35 people with a place to stay warm. And when that room reaches capacity as it did last week, we can expand capacity to our dining room. We will not turn anyone away, but I will say that last night, we had 72 people in those two rooms, and we are getting close to our capacity as a short-term solution.

Crossroads operates five separate temporary emergency shelters with more than 250 beds across the State. These include Harrington Hall, the State’s largest shelter for men, a women’s shelter, a family shelter, a domestic violence shelter, and the Hartford Avenue Shelter, the State’s only shelter for adult couples without children because so many people are currently experiencing homelessness. However, all of our shelters are full.

As I said, housing is the only solution for ending homelessness, and our primary focus is helping our clients secure, safe, stable, and affordable housing To ensure our ability to do that. Crossroads owns and manages more than 375 permanent, supportive apartments statewide. We also maintain strong working relationships with private landlords for market-rate rentals to help people maintain their housing and work towards achieving financial independence. We also provide education and employment programs that help people earn their GED and gain new skills and employment.

As a result, Crossroads served nearly 5,600 men, women, and children last year. Of those we helped, more than 2,400 at-risk individuals and families either prevented or quickly ended their homelessness using Housing Problem Solving. About 1,530 found a safe place to stay at one of the five shelters I just described, and more importantly, we helped more than 2,500 people end their homelessness by finding a new place to call home or maintaining housing in one of our permanent supportive housing programs. Of those, 333 households received up to 24 months of rental assistance and case management support through our rapid rehousing program, which allowed them to move into market-rate units statewide. Another 743 households moved into permanent supportive housing, primarily properties that Crossroads owns and manages. These apartments are deeply subsidized, allowing for extremely low or no-income residents to live safely with the housing-based services and support they need for as long as they need.

To meet the growing need, Crossroads is creating nearly 300 permanent supportive apartments in Providence, including the Summer Street Apartments, which is currently well underway. When complete in the fall of 2025, later this year, more than 176 formerly homeless adults will be able to move into beautiful and affordable new one-bedroom apartments, each with their own beautiful kitchen, living area, and private bathroom. The Summer Street apartments will also feature community gathering space on every floor, outdoor green space for clients to enjoy, and easy access to healthcare, transportation, and employment.

As part of Crossroads’ ongoing commitment to sustainability, our new five-story apartment building will have a net zero impact. A diverse range of green building practices are being used during construction, and a combination of on- and off-site renewable energy will support 100% of the building’s energy needs.

Coming soon is 371 Pine Street. This is the first of its kind in Rhode Island, housing an apartment building for medically vulnerable adults experiencing homelessness. We’re planning to break ground on this innovative apartment building this spring, and it is expected to be completed in late 2026. In addition to 35 fully accessible apartments, 371 Pine Street will also feature a beautiful healing garden and ground-floor offices for Crossroads staff and healthcare provider partners.

Also in the pipeline is the much-needed renovation of our Travelers Aid Housing at 160 Broad Street, sometimes called the Tower. We hope to begin these renovations in 2026, and when complete in 2027, 81 new, much-needed one-bedroom and studio apartments ,each with a kitchen, bath, and living area, will be added to the state’s inventory of permanent supportive apartments. As part of this effort, we also recently repointed all of the brick on our more than 100-year-old building, and later this week, we hope to complete the installation of new exterior lighting and signage.

Later this spring, we’ll begin creating new outdoor green spaces to give our residents a safe and private place to spend time outside. In addition to these three development efforts, Crossroads continues to evaluate other properties continuously as part of our continued efforts to help those experiencing homelessness in our community secure, stable housing.

Before I close, I want to discuss some trends that we’ve been seeing. They may help inform how we handle homelessness in Rhode Island moving forward. We are seeing a significant increase in the number of people with incomes entering our programs. In many cases, these are people who are working one or two jobs but who still can’t afford rent. Our Housing Problem Solving team tells us that lack of sufficient income to afford rent is the number one reason why folks are finding themselves homeless.

Also, an increasing number of seniors are experiencing homelessness. Given the size of the Baby Boomer generation, we view this as an emerging trend and expect this number to continue to grow.

The number of families experiencing homelessness is also on the rise. Most of them are led by a single mom with multiple young children. When I first started in this business, people experiencing homelessness were almost always adults and predominantly male, and that is no longer the case.

The last trend that we’re seeing is complexity. The trauma and stress of poverty and homelessness lead to increased rates of chronic conditions such as heart disease, cancer, and diabetes and also contribute to mental health and substance use issues. Dealing with highly complex cases requires a different skillset than we often have on staff to meet the need. We have been piloting partnerships with local healthcare providers such as Lifespan and others, and we see significant benefits in expanding that type of partnership moving forward.

The Rhode Island Coalition to End Homelessness oversees the Point in Time count. It takes a large number of volunteers and staff from various providers. The count happens across the State, and a huge number of people will participate in counting every person experiencing homelessness, whether they are sheltered in one of our emergency temporary shelters or unsheltered. The count will happen tonight, but it will take place over this week beginning tonight so that when folks come to soup kitchens or other social service agencies in the next few days, they will be asked where they spent the night tonight so that we can get as accurate account as possible.

Laura Jaworski, Executive Director, House of Hope CDC: The Point in Time count is a requirement of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), so everyone across the country will be counting people experiencing homelessness this week. As Michelle mentioned, it counts folks who are accessing shelter beds right now and people who are outside. Then there is a process where that information gets de-duplicated to make sure that we’re not counting Laura twice and Michelle three times because we might see someone in the shelter tonight, and then they show up for lunch somewhere the next day. So that is all untangled.

That methodology is best practice with HUD. Then that information gets transmitted once it’s all collated and completed ,and HUD runs through it, and then typically, those numbers come out in the spring or early summer. The Point in Time count, or PIT, is so important because it informs what the need looks like - in a snapshot moment - as best as possible, given the transient nature of folks experiencing homelessness. It will inform grant funding opportunities on the housing side so that we can develop and support housing on an ongoing basis through Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) and other methods. It’s a really important moment.

Senator Tiara Mack (Democrat, District 6, Providence): I have done the Point in Time contact twice now on some of the coldest nights. It is a very hard count to do because you see just how cold it is when you are out in below-freezing temperatures. One of the questions I have is how the Point in Time contact information is used to inform how many shelter beds or emergency beds you have on nights like tonight when the temperatures will be dangerous for folks to be outside.

Michelle Wilcox: There’s a bit of a disconnect, I would say, between the Point in Time count and the number of shelter beds that exist in Rhode Island. The availability of shelter is, to a large extent, a function of the available funding and not necessarily a correlated response to the number of people experiencing homelessness.

Deborah Goddard, Acting Director of the Department of Housing: I have spent 40 years in the area of housing and homelessness largely, almost entirely, in the public sector, a little bit in the nonprofit sector. It’s a choice I’ve made. It’s something I knew I would do in high school, and I have felt fortunate to be able to do what my passion is for my work. I’m particularly interested in the issues of equity and opportunity in housing for every individual and every household, regardless of their income or other demographic factors. I hope I’ll have a chance to show you that my manner is generally very straightforward, sometimes too straightforward.

I believe in, work for, foster, and value collaboration and partnership. It’s the only way I get the work done. I’m open to debate, questions, discussion, and new ideas. It’s the only way we learn; it’s the only way we improve our systems.

I’m very excited about the opportunity to work in Rhode Island and for the Department. We have a good team in the Department, and I want the Department to succeed in its mission.

There’s the Rhode Island Continuum of Care, a creature of federal law. It’s a 17-member board that manages and implements over $17 million in federal Continuum of Care funds. By law, it is the entity that designates who manages the Coordinated Entry System (CES) and the Homeless Information Management System (HMIS). It conducts planning activities for the homelessness response.

Then there’s the Inter-Agency Council on Homelessness established by State Law. It had been dormant for about eight years. We resurrected it in December. We have a meeting next week and will continue them monthly for several months. This is an attempt to bring all of the State agencies together to speak to the role, capacity, and ability of these agencies, whether it’s the Department of Health, the Department of Elder Services, or the VA, to contribute to addressing the issues of homelessness.

Where are we losing people? Folks who are homeless generally have touched our system somewhere. Where have they touched the system? How often have they touched the system? Where did we lose them? Where could we have helped them avoid walking through the system? I think the Inter-Agency Council is extremely important.

Senator Alana DiMario (Democrat, District 36, Narragansett): I’ve been made aware of an issue when families come to the attention of DCYF and the agency’s only concern is their lack of single housing. DCYF is compelled to put them in emergency housing. At that point, it’s my understanding that they cannot participate in the Coordinated Entry System because they’re no longer considered homeless. My understanding is that over the last couple of years, we’ve gotten to the point where there’s a consistent census of about a hundred families, roughly 300 people, who are housed in hotels that DCYF is paying for.

This year’s current budget line item for that is estimated to be about $6 million for DCYF to pay those hotel costs. Because those families have been prevented from participating in CES, the offramp for them is that the individual case managers at DCYF have to try to navigate the system. It seems like another example of an inefficient system for getting those families to stable, long-term housing, which would benefit the families and would also be more cost-effective.

Is that part of the conversation about weaving together these different systems? Is there an opportunity to correct the policy of not allowing these families to be streamlined into CES because they’ve been put in emergency hotel housing?

Dan Connors, former Acting Director of the Department of Housing: It’s a serious issue for the families experiencing homelessness, DCYF, and the State. I think you mentioned that the department has been paying for hotels through various modes. And I know it’s come to the attention of OMB [Office of Management and Budget] because, in many ways, there were no funds specifically in the DCYF budget to address families experiencing homelessness. The state’s response is congruent with the Interagency Council on Homelessness concept, trying to solve problems across different departments. It was identified that the Department of Human Services has some flexibility with TANF funds. I don’t have the granular level of detail to get down into the weeds on it. However, when the TANF criteria were applied against the cohort of families being hoteled, there was a significant shift of that funding to TANF, which would be optimal, rather than using straight general revenue, which the Department had been using.

Senator Meghan Kallman (Democrat, District 15, Pawtucket): The General Assembly has put a bunch of money into housing over the last couple of years, and $10 million was dedicated to a public development project. I’d like to hear your take on that. We’ve been exploring this, and other parts of the country have been exploring it with great success - public development, public management, and public ownership of projects like this.

Deborah Goddard: Let’s start with identifying the various forms of public development and ownership we’re talking about because there are a variety of models. Let’s be clear about the pros and cons as we talk about each of them. I’m a huge fan of public housing. I spent two stints in Boston and New York City [working for] public housing authorities. I think they’ve been undervalued. We have an infrastructure of public owners and developers that I think should not be bypassed quickly in this discussion. We may want something else; I’m not sure. We’ve also created the Proactive Housing Corporation at Rhode Island Housing. Should we take a look at that? I met recently with Dan Denvir, and those conversations will continue. We’re also going to put out a request for an RFI. I don’t mean that in a strict procurement way, but a survey. Let’s get ideas. What do people think this is? Which of the models provides benefits and equity stakes? Does it have to be ownership? How much risk do we want to take on? We need to look at all of that, and as I said, let’s not forget the public developers we have and maybe we want to utilize.

Senator Bissalion: That $10 million public developer investment, which I was happy to sponsor, was part of the $120 million housing bond. Could you talk with committee members about how you anticipate the governance of that bond?

Deborah Goddard: I have not had final discussions with the Governor on that. I certainly expect the Department to have authority over how the money will be spent.

Senator Victoria Gu (Democrat, District 38, Westerly, Charlestown): I had a conversation with Wesley Warm Center, and I heard this is common with other organizations, that the backlog of payments is sometimes several months, on the order of $300,000. How are you going to make sure this basic function is getting done on time?

Deborah Goddard: Some people were out for 60 days regarding the payments. The contract started in October, so they were most out of 60 days. And I’m not saying that’s okay, and some operate on a shoestring, and we offered to triage and prioritize for folks that were suffering, and we did that. Two things. One, staffing up. That’s extremely critical in both the homeless and finance units. Secondly, we’re going to have a cycle of putting out our RFP promptly such that we’re on an appropriate, timely schedule so that we’re not rushing at the end to get contracts in place after one has expired, and we’re chasing our paper at that point. That’s my commitment. That won’t happen again.

Senator Mack: I look forward to your advice and consent hearing to learn more about your background and commitment to housing. Your success is the success of every Rhode Islander, including our most vulnerable. In addition to funding taking a long time, up to 90 days for many providers who don’t have the reserves on hand to afford invoicing, there’s also been a concern from many of my constituents. I represent some of the largest service providers for homelessness in my District, including Crossroads and Better Lives Rhode Island. Sojourner has one of their shelters in my District and House of Codec, with some of the most marginalized folks, including the LGBTQ+ community.

One of the concerns that has come to me from several of these organizations is that contracts have taken months. Many have been operating either without contracts or contracts that have not been executed, dating back to October. A letter circulated last January expressing outstanding contracts and upwards of $4 million in funds not dispersed to service providers. What are some of the lags in the process that prevent expediency with the disbursement of funds and contracts? How, in your experience, have you seen contracts executed in a timely fashion so that we can give some of our smaller service providers the ability to be operational?

Deborah Goddard: The Department did not have great contract templates. I’ve heard from my staff that they were working to create the contract template as they were trying to award contracts. The Department may have made some things more complicated than they needed to be. If a provider gets three awards and runs three different programs, that might be three contracts. I don’t think that’s necessary. I don’t want to blame, criticize, or rehash the past, and I don’t have all the facts. I can only say that it doesn’t have to be that way. It should not be that way, and fixing those problems is not rocket science.

Senator Mack: You mentioned earlier that the Department maintains the same bed level. I think there was one additional bed added this year, but we also know that there was over a 33% increase in homelessness from last year to this year. How do you explain keeping the level of shelter beds the same when we know the need has increased? Is there a plan or process for determining how we can increase the number of shelter beds and not warming shelters year over year? Because there’s a very big distinction between warming shelters, which are only designed to keep people warm - oftentimes folks are in a well-lit room during the day, sitting upright like we are now and not being provided a place to lay their head during some of the most brutal cold days and heat days. What is the process for the Department to determine that year over year? Rhode Island is on the list of states that have increased in need year over year due to the pandemic.

Deborah Goddard: There is not an easy answer to that question. Certainly, the Governor has clarified that folks need to be sheltered. Sheltered, not sitting, as our first-tier response to what’s happening. We are facing fiscal constraints. As a system, we can do a better job of diversion, of catching people before they fall into the system, and if they fall into the system, do the work to connect them with supports and services that get them back up. I’ve said this before, but if someone’s car breaks down and they can’t get to work, they could fall into homelessness if they can’t pay the money. We can fix that pretty easily. If someone has a medical bill that will break them, we can fix that easily. We must be strategic and knowledgeable about where these folks are and where they are touching our system. Where do we get them down before they become homeless?

Senator Mack: Thank you for mentioning some of the realities of homelessness. If anyone has not yet read Evicted by Matthew Desmond, who now runs The Eviction Lab through Princeton, a great database to understand some of these issues, you should. Has your Department considered supporting things like Just Cause Eviction, which will help stabilize rent? There is eviction defense funding. Folks who receive court support are more likely to avert evictions, are more likely to be stably housed, and are less likely to have an eviction prevent them from stable housing. Also, a commitment to other legislation, like Code Red and Code Blue, would create a statewide plan for events of cold weather or hot weather so that next winter and next summer, we don’t have a situation where we’re guessing at what is the protocol for having municipal warming shelters or municipal cooling shelters - so we’re not just thinking about what the homeless infrastructure is, but about how do we prevent homelessness through eviction diversion, stabilizing rents, and ensuring that we have things like the public developer model, which puts more money back into the homelessness and housing system.

Deborah Goddard: I have not participated in the debate here. I’m open to it. I think we need to be open to everything.

Senator Jonathan Acosta (Democrat, District 16, Central Falls): I think for a handful of my colleagues, we think about public development like people talk about Montgomery County.

You’re very excited about public housing authorities. They have a thriving one, but as a compliment to that, they have a public development arm that builds housing. If we give you $10 million, and if my experience in this space says anything, if you’re going to use 1 million for administration, that’s fine. If you have $9 million for public development in our State, how many units will you build, and at what cost?

Deborah Goddard: Regarding what nine or 10 million can build, I can’t give you a number. I’ve read the RIPEC report. The affordable housing community has been faced with the cost of housing as long as I’ve been in the business. It depends upon the number of bedrooms. Are we building family housing or elderly housing? How dense are we building? Will our communities allow for denser development, which lowers the per-unit cost? The RIPEC report says that there are supplemental aspects to the housing we’re building and affordable housing; by that, they mean the community center or the landscaping or maybe some of the sustainable elements of the housing. I’m not sure we want to give up on any of that.

Public development could save on land costs. That would be big. We should look at what the State owns and what is appropriate for housing. Taking the land cost out could be helpful. That’s not a function of a public developer, but it could be something they work on. Montgomery County has a very different housing economic context than we have, where the market rate does underwrite, to some extent, the lower income. They do not serve extremely low income in those units by their admission - they can’t afford to. I do like that Montgomery County gets an equity stake. They put money in, and they get something back for it. I’m open to all those conversations, but I can’t pretend in any reasonable manner to tell you how many units I’m going to get with nine or 10 million.

Senator Acosta: One of the things that came up is the way that various nonprofit and private developers have to braid various funding sources together. In your experience, have you worked with direct single sources of funding? And in a public developer model, would you expect that the Department of Housing or the State, via some form of bond, could provide single-source funding?

Deborah Goddard: I think we could simplify it for sure. If you use tax credits, for instance, you will braid it because tax credits will only cover a portion. I want to examine whether we’re doing smaller developments or supportive housing that can’t take on the weight of debt or tax credit; we just simply put that out with a single source of funds. We can reduce the layering of the funding.

Senator Samuel Zurier (Democrat, District 3, Providence): I was pleased to learn of the resumption of the Interagency Council on Homelessness. I’d like to hear more about the role municipalities play in solving the problem of homelessness. Your chart talks about coordinating services for several State agencies, but it doesn’t mention coordinating municipalities.

Last week, I went to a community meeting where a police officer said he felt he was on the front lines. He was getting complaints from neighbors about an encampment. He had compassion for the residents. They were giving heaters to the people living there and giving them food. But at various times, there were public health concerns. There were public safety concerns. He would ask them to move; they would say, yes, we understand we’ll move. They found another place. The question is, what can the State do to help municipalities address the issue?

Deborah Goddard: We haven’t provided technical assistance. We provided some assistance to help them do the warming centers or take care of transportation costs, whatever they’ve put in front of us in terms of assistance that they need. This issue has been debated across the country, in some places with more generosity than others. I don’t have a quick answer for you, but I empathize with what the officer is saying, and I am grateful that he has that human perspective on the folks living in that encampment. I think it’s a conversation we all need to be at the table about. We must be at the table with the municipalities in these housing conversations.

Senator Jessica de la Cruz (Republican, District 23, Burrillville, Glocester): The Governor was on Gene Valicenti recently and mentioned that approximately 33% of shelters aren’t being utilized. I’m assuming some of it is for family, and some of it is for individuals in addiction.

Deborah Goddard: There were a variety of reasons. Some attend to the question of CES. If you go through CES, your bed could be reserved for up to 48 hours. I question whether we need to stick with that policy. But again, we want to work with our partners. They could have a good reason that I don’t understand. Family shelters should be counted by unit - multiple beds are inside a unit. So if you have a three-person family in a four-bedroom unit, a bed is available, but that unit’s not available.

You could be in a shelter one night, leave the next day, and not come back, but you still have the right to come back the following night. There are all sorts of permutations. Then, some shelters provide specialized services, which may not be a match.

[Note: The simpler truth is that the Governor was lying.]

Senator Melissa Murray (Democrat, District 24, North Smithfield, Woonsocket): One last point I want to bring forward is that we know that not being housed affects health and behavioral health. You said we don’t want people to fall through the cracks. We need to create a plan across these systems so that doesn’t happen. I wonder if you know that hospitals and nursing homes are discharging folks without ensuring they have safe shelter. And if you are aware, how do we create a plan to ensure this doesn’t happen going forward?

Deborah Goddard: I am aware. That came up at the January Interagency meeting. I don’t want to sound rote, but it is these conversations that we have to have. It’s a whole government solution. You can’t look at housing and say, not mine anymore. We have to work together.