For months, the question of how to address unhoused community members has dominated local conversation in Pittsfield. At the latest city council meeting, some of those struggling to find permanent housing put faces, names, and experiences to the often anecdotal discussion.
Cynthia Taggart said she lives in a city shelter.
“Once I'm in an apartment, I can be hired to work as a legal secretary, which is my profession, but I can't go on a job and have them ask me where I live right now, and I tell them, in a shelter," said Taggart. "I won't get the job.”
She told the council that her life feels largely out of her control, subsisting on government disability benefits too low to secure stable housing.
“These are things that measure people by their disposable income and what kind of people they are, and they're separating people from ever possibly getting into some kind of room arrangement or anything," Taggart said. "And this sets off a dissolution among the homeless, believe it or not. If you're worried about all the drugs they do and all the shenanigans, it's because they really feel they'll never be accepted. They'll never be accepted by their community. They don't like us, is what they say. And this is, you know, government has a hand in this, in creating that feeling of being trapped.”
Randy Ruusukallio is also unhoused and living in a Pittsfield shelter.
“We need more resources for people that's going through what I'm going through," he told the council. "I feel like we should be treated with way more compassion, sympathy, respect, less hypocrisy and contradictory. It's like a steady basis, we deal with that every day. We need something done, like, as soon as possible. For example, they kicked us out yesterday, whether it's an international holiday, national holiday, federal holiday, I don't know how you want to call it, but literally not many places to go.”
Pittsfielder Kathy Austin said she’s been working with the city’s unhoused community for years.
“Our homeless are getting trespassed. They were scared to come tonight because they get targeted when they stand up and say something," she told the council. "So, we have a severe problem on the streets. People are sleeping on the streets every night. It's already cold out. We have to come up with a solution. Where are they going to go in the daytime? We've taken the warming shelter away. So, now what is it going to be? They have no place to go, but yet they get arrested for urinating outside. Where are they going to go when they've been trespassed all down North Street? There's not an open restroom for them. They don't have a residence to go. The shelter kicks them out at 8:30, they can't go back until 4:30 in the afternoon.”
A neighbor to Springside Park, Austin said her involvement was spurred by the encampments that sprung up in the public space during the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak in 2020 and still remain.
“I've lost five people out here already. I don't want to lose another one to the freezing cold because we can't get housing for them," she continued. "We have to come up with some kind of shelter for them. The other day, I take care of one of the homeless and I had nowhere to take him. He had bad clothes on. What I had to do was go to the back of Walgreens, put my car in between two cars and open the doors. Is that really how we want to be seen treating our homeless? I don't- I think Pittsfield is better than that.”
Austin presented a message to Pittsfield’s leaders from the unhoused.
“I am homeless but I'm still human," she read. "I am homeless, but I still need a bathroom. I am homeless, but I still need to be inside where I feel safe. I am homeless, and I get frustrated when you tell me I scare you when I ask for help. Sometimes my addiction and mental status gets in the way. I am homeless, I am not dumb. It may take a moment for me to answer your questions. Have patience with me. I am homeless, I am human. I deserve the same rights as you have. I am homeless. My question to you is will you help me find a place inside that is warm, safe, a dry place I can call my own? Will you put a porta-potty outside until you can house me so I don't catch charges just trying to go to the restroom? Will you help me, for I have given up, restore my faith? Because right now I have none. I am homeless. Do you see me as a solution or a problem? I am homeless. Will you help me help myself? For I'm homeless and cannot wait for the day when I am housed.”
Pittsfield Mayor Linda Tyer announced this year that $8.6 million in federal COVID-19 relief money would support housing efforts in the city, including new permanent supportive housing units for unhoused community members.
