by Michaela A. Falls

The director of the Somerville Homeless Coalition, located in Davis Square, spoke at the contributors meeting of the Somerville News July 2.

“The story that I love to tell about the Somerville Homeless Coalition is that most people in Somerville didn’t even realize there was a problem with homeless people in the city until the 80s,” said Mark Alston-Follansbee, who has been the director for three-and-a-half years.

The extension of the red line into Davis Square drew Somerville residents’ attention to the strangers who were hanging around Davis Square, he said. “The reality is that there had been homeless people long before that in Somerville, but there were no support services here so folks would tend to go to some place in Cambridge where services had existed for a lot longer time.”

Alston-Follansbee, who has worked with homeless people for almost 20 years, said he became involved with the homeless after talking to people on the streets and discovering that most of the people asking him for money were veterans.

For Alston-Follansbee, a photojournalist in Vietnam who jumped out of helicopters with a camera, the emotional impact of war was disturbing enough without the thought of living on the streets.

“I became really upset that they were homeless, decided I wanted to do something about it, and called around to try to find volunteer opportunities,” he said.

Alston-Follansbee found Philip F. Mangano, currently the executive director of the Interagency Council on Homelessness, who at that time was the newly appointed director of homeless services for Cambridge. Mangano hired him to help with the opening of the first multi-service center for the homeless in Cambridge.

He also worked for Shelter Inc., a small non-profit based in Cambridge, as a social worker and then moved to program director, he said.

Alston-Follansbee credits the late Carmela Adario, who was a seamstress, artist and important member of the Davis Square Task Force, for convincing local churches to join together and fight homelessness—that union birthed the Somerville Homeless Coalition.

In 1985, the Coalition opened the Chapel Street Adult Shelter, Somerville’s first shelter for homeless adults, in what Alston-Follansbee said was once a four-lane bowling alley in the basement of a Methodist church in West Somerville. It had eight beds: four for women and four for men.

“After realizing that there was a need not only for a shelter for individuals, the Grace Baptist Church on Cross Street in East Somerville let the coalition take what had been a basketball court and transformed it into a family shelter in 1987,” said Alston-Follansbee.

The Cross Street shelter serves six families at one time and provides housing searches, referrals to community resources, case management and childcare activities.

“For a long time, that was the whole organization – these two shelters that received pretty much 100 percent of its funding from the state. Initially, it had one-and-a-half staff people along with a bunch of volunteers who were mostly students from Tufts,” he said.

Alston-Follansbee said the coalition received funds through Housing and Urban Development (HUD), a federal agency, in 1997, to help expand their homeless services and provide case management services.

“These are people who, for whatever reason, lost the support that most of us have to get us through a difficult time. The thing about being homeless is it takes all your energy just to get by. You’ve got to find some place safe to stay, something to eat, and think about how you’re going to improve your economic situation. The idea of case management is to assess where they’re at and support them.”

Project SOUP, New England’s first free supper program that began in 1969, joined the coalition in 1986.

“While they don’t deal with homelessness as much as with hunger, we thought it was a good fit for the coalition. The good thing about Project SOUP is that it’s a way for people who are isolated, not just homeless people, to get to come out and be with other people. It’s a real socialization process, as well as a necessity for people who don’t have enough food.”

In the last three years, Alston-Follansbee said, the organization has established a small permanent housing program for individuals and families.

“That’s the direction we’re going in,” he said. “One of the things we know is that this ton of money that’s been poured into homeless services over the last 30 years has not solved the problems, at all—they’re actually worse now. The biggest problem is that there is not enough affordable housing.”

Alston-Follansbee said it is difficult for landlords to take a chance on the homeless, who often carry the baggage of criminal histories and bad credit. The coalition leases the apartments directly from the landlords and then subleases the apartments. If there is a problem, the coalition steps in to intervene and mediate.

Different agencies in Somerville work closely together to provide a full range of services for people who need help, Alston-Follansbee said.

“CASPAR (Cambridge and Somerville Program for Alcohol Rehabilitation) does a wonderful job with people who have substance abuse problems in Somerville. RESPOND works with people who have domestic violence issues. The Catholic Charity is building a shelter for women on Washington Street. There are job training programs that we refer people to. And, in return, they all refer us for shelter, housing and case management help.

“The thing about homeless people is that it could happen to anybody—they had some family at some time, they’re somebody’s brother, somebody’s mother. What I hope for is that we as a society begin to change our values so that we feel like we have some responsibility for people who are not doing as well as we are,” Alston-Follansbee said.

“The federal government is only going to use the resources to do it if the people shift to make this a priority. Everyone needs to commit to the homeless. We want to put ourselves out of business.”