Cardinal Sean O’Malley talks with members of the Ripples of Hope carolers on Sunday at the Pine Street Inn in Boston.
Nancy Lane/Boston Herald/TNS
While millions of Americans travel to gather with family and friends or wait for relatives to arrive in order to ring in the Christmas holiday, there are thousands of Bostonians who spent Christmas Eve away from loved ones and in a homeless shelter.
It’s the exact same position into which Jesus Christ was born, Cardinal Seán Patrick O’Malley said Sunday before he went into the Pine Street Inn’s Harrison Avenue location to feed the hundreds of men and women without anywhere else to go on Christmas.
“Christmas time, of course, is a very symbolic time. Our savior was born in homelessness: there was no room at the inn in Bethlehem. Thank God, there is always room at the Pine Street Inn,” O’Malley said.
According to volunteers at the Inn, they will provide more than 1,000 meals to their various properties this holiday season. For many, this year’s dinner of lasagna al forno, Caesar salad, fresh baked garlic bread and assorted pies may be the only meal they will get to enjoy in a warm place this Christmas.
Those arriving at the Inn shortly after 11 a.m. on Christmas Eve were greeted with songs performed by caroling group Ripples of Hope. O’Malley, clad in the brown robes of his Franciscan order, joined the group almost immediately after he arrived, singing and clapping along as Pine Street residents filed through the building’s security systems.
The shelter system is not just full, Pine Street VP of Communications Barbara Trevisan told the Herald — it’s downright overfilled. The staff at the Inn’s properties are putting cots in the hallways, she said, and some people are forced to sleep in chairs.
“We are seeing that there is a great need this year,” she said. “It’s a combination of things.”
Part of the problem is the cost and limited supply of housing in the state, Trevisan said. Many of the shelter’s residents are working, sometimes with more than one job, but still not making enough to afford even modest living conditions in Boston.
“They have jobs!” she declared. “It’s just a perfect storm. We always see an increase in need with the coming of the cold weather.”
Another part of the problem, she said, is the influx of migrants into the state. Many of them want to work, she said, but are prevented by law from doing so legally.
All of them need a place to sleep as winter arrives, Trevisan said.
“We never turn anyone away,” she said.
The goal of the Pine Street Inn, shelter Director Josh O’Brien said, is to have all of the 1,000 people who showed up for Christmas Eve dinner in permanent housing by this time next year.
“We know that housing is the solution to homelessness,” he said. “We know we can’t stop, we have to keep going.”
According to O’Malley, it’s not a problem we can afford to lose sight of.
“Homelessness is one of the greatest scourges of our society and I know that Christmas is a time when people pay attention to it, but homelessness is not just on Dec. 25th, it’s every day of the year, and during the winters it can be very, very brutal,” O’Malley said.
