New youth shelter to open in Manchester
Borja Alvarez de Toledo, president and CEO of Waypoint, talked about the social service agency’s latest expansion project, which includes the state’s first shelter specifically for youth experiencing homelessness.
What is Waypoint and who does it serve?
Waypoint is a social service agency … with more than 20 programs across the state. We basically serve [people through] the whole lifespan, from early childhood all the way to seniors. Waypoint has been the main provider of services for runaway and homeless youth for the last 25 years. We’ve had a program in Manchester on Lincoln Street, [which was] a youth drop-in center … where youth can actually come, take a shower, work on their resume on a computer, get food, get clothing, engage with case management. … We’ve also had a mobile team that works on the Seacoast, which is basically a van driving around to the different towns, and some housing and transitional living programs where youth can stay.
How many youth are experiencing homelessness in New Hampshire?
There was research done by Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago that was the first real national study on the issue of youth homelessness. It became clear that, across the United States — and it’s the same in urban settings and in more rural settings in parts of New Hampshire — that one in 15 young adults ages 18 to 25, and one in 30 ages 14 to 17, experienced some level of homelessness every single year. … When you extrapolate that and look at how many youth of those ages are living in New Hampshire, we’re talking about 15,000 youths.
How has the pandemic affected youth homelessness?
‘Homelessness’ doesn’t always mean sleeping on the streets every day. It may mean housing instability. Sometimes, [the youth] are couchsurfing and are able to get a [place to stay] for a couple of weeks at a friend’s house or by staying with a family member. The pandemic made things much more complicated, because those houses that were hosting those youths closed [their doors] because of the fear and risk of Covid. We’ve found that, now, there are more youths who are sleeping in cars, in tents, in abandoned buildings.
What is involved in Waypoint’s expansion project?
Two years ago we had some internal focus meetings … and we realized that there was an increasing [number of] youth experiencing homelessness in Concord; that we really wanted to build a center in Rochester that was similar to the one we have in Manchester; and that we were the only state in New England without a shelter [exclusively] for youth. We decided to expand our services … and buy two buildings: one for a center in Rochester, and one on Hanover Street in Manchester, where we can actually have that first shelter for youth experiencing homelessness in New Hampshire. It’s a huge expansion. … Those three centers won’t cover the whole need — there are also homeless youth in the North Country and in more rural areas of the state — but we felt like we needed to continue to grow our services in these three areas for now.
What will the youth shelter be like?
The shelter is what’s really going to make a difference. The youth we have engaged in Manchester keep asking us every day, ‘When is that [shelter] going to be open?’ … It’s going to be housed in the same place where we’re going to have our youth resource drop-in center. It’s very possible that a youth is going to be receiving services during the day on one floor of the building, engaging with case management or groups or other activities, and then, [at the end of the day] when it’s time to transition, they’ll just go down to the floor where the shelter is and sleep there. There’s more continuity of services that way.
Why is it important for youth to have a youth-specific shelter?
Research has indicated that it’s not appropriate for youth to be actually housed in shelters for adults, especially shelters where there are some chronically homeless adults. The minute [the youth] walk into those spaces, there’s a sense of, ‘This is going to be the rest of my life. This is going to be me when I’m 50 or 60.’ They see that right in front of them, and it almost shatters any sense of hope or sense that [their circumstances] can change. There are also sometimes very rigid rules at those shelters that don’t always apply to the youth; it’s more complicated for youth.
What is the current status of the expansion project?
We’re in the process of renovating the buildings … and we are continuing to fundraise, because the cost to renovate these buildings is about three and a half million dollars. We’ve had a lot of support already for this specific project, from the city through HUD — Housing and Urban Development — funding and through congressionally directed funding by Sen. Shaheen. Many foundations and individual donors have contributed money. If people want to donate to help us get to the finish line on this project, that would be incredible. … My hope is that by the end of the summer [the facilities] will be ready to open and start [offering] services and serving youth.
Featured photo: Borja Alvarez de Toledo. Courtesy photo.
