Lowell has...I wanna say the estimates are 200 to 300 homeless people on any given night depending on how you categorize it

that seems like...a lot

And some people I see a lot and are kind and friendly and some are that one asshole who broke into my basement.

And got aggressive with the ten year old kid. But now things are getting really bad because surprise surprise the city says you can’t sleep outside anymore.

So where are you supposed to go when the shelter beds are full?

Not my problem says city manager

We have a group of about ten or so tents outside the park across the street. Theyre mostly grouped around the Eliot Presbyterian church because they help feed a lot of people there. Estimate about 200 every day

City says no no no there was gun violence there. Was it violence concerning homeless people? No idea! But you can’t do that anymore

So they pass two things that are really altogether shitty

First the south common park is an interesting layout. On one side is my house. On the next border is the train station and highway. And the next border, across from the park from us is the church

And in the park there is also an elementary school

So the city goes “no tents within x yards of a school” which is extra shitty when you realize the church the park and the train were all here before they put a school there. And they used to have cops there but now I guess they’re doing other shit like not helping my neighbors when his car gets broken into

And the really shitty thing is that they started fining the church $300 a day for not keeping their part of the street clean

Which is HARD TO DO when you’re feeding 200 propped a day!

*people

Anyway all this to say that I wanna rejoin the Lowell litter crew and get their people over to the church to make that sidewalk spotless as a fuck you back to the city

skipthedemon: there were reports of other towns bussing people in but idk how much of that was hearsay. Lowell has 110,000 people in it all spread out

It’s a complicated problem but this is like the worst way to do anything about it. Worse than “nothing” because at least people were getting fed

For some reason I thought Lowell was a little smaller than that.

from what I can see googling, Lowell is the 5th biggest city in MA

Today I learned

From the LowellMA community on Redditoh good it’s the same horseshit I heard at town hall.

“New shelters are being built!” Yeah by a private charity, not by the city.

Gonna be ready in 2026 :/