Nashua Plans to Close Homeless Camp

John Yates is a petite man with thinning hair. He says he’s fifty-two. But he looks more like seventy-two.

He currently lives in a shelter. But he used to sleep in Mine Falls.

:11 JohnYates: I’d build a little fire at night. I would heat up my soup. It was safer there than it was if I tried to sleep somewhere where I could get arrested. I knew I wouldn’t get arrested if I didn’t cause no problems.

Kathy Paquette, is a homeless advocate in Nashua.

ambi –feet on path

She leads me from the downtown’s Millyard towards the entrance of Mine Falls,

We trudge through some overgrown brush.

:09 Sheryl: So we’re going through a chain link fence? Kathy: Yeah. Sound of chain link. Sheryl: We have to crawl through. Sound of chains. Kathy: Hellooo…anybody here? It’s Kathy.

We arrive at a clearing shaded by giant maple trees.
Ambi –
A makeshift arrangement of fallen logs suggests a seating area.

In the center are ashes from an old campfire.

:03 Paquette: Geez. Nobody’s here. They must have been afraid.

Paquette’s been visiting the homeless down here for years.

But now, she says, the police are telling them to move on.

She worries about where they’ll go.

:14 Paquette: How are we going to help them? They’re just going to get worse, with whatever issues they have, whether it be mental health or substance abuse. And we can’t assist them if we can’t find them.

:03 Jerry: I’ll just give my name as Jerry.

The man drags on a cigarette outside the Nashua Soup Kitchen. He looks youthful, with smooth skin and coppery freckles.

He says he’s been homeless for the last four years.

For nine of those months, he camped at Mine Falls.

:05 It’s really comfortable down there. (Puffs) It’s just a place of peace, usually.

Sean Neary agrees.

:03 Neary: It’s a beautiful piece of nature out here.

Neary chairs the Mine Falls Park Advisory Committee.

Ambi – jogger runs by

He stands on a bridge overlooking the area where the homeless had been sleeping.

:19 Neary: The way that they treat the land, really, is upsetting the ecological balance. You walk through there and you will find piles and piles of beer cans all over the place. And you know, I have a heart for them, I really do, I feel for them, but they’re breaking the law.

The committee’s plan, says Neary, is to open up the footpath that leads to the encampment.

The idea is to make that section of the park more public. And in turn, less attractive to the homeless.

Keith Kuenning directs the New Hampshire Coalition to End Homelessness.

Kuenning says calls to the homeless hotline have nearly tripled in the last year and a half.

:16 Kuenning: If there were shelter beds available, and people were told you can’t camp here, I might be able to understand that. But when shelters are full, and these individuals have no alternatives, to come in and just roust people from a camp without saying to them here’s an area that we protect.

Nashua estimates about 300 residents don’t have permanent homes.

Some simply can’t afford the high rents.

But relief may be on its way.

The city received about three and a half million of federal dollars to buy abandoned properties and convert them into affordable housing.

That will get some people off the street.

But city officials say there will always be a handful who don’t want the help.

For NHPR News, I’m Sheryl Rich-Kern.