Volunteers fan out across Boston for annual homeless count
Beckie Tachik, a nurse on the street team with the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, has joined the homeless count for the past 10 years. On Wednesday, she knelt on the pavement and calmly engaged Jonatán in Spanish. Did he need any more blankets or gloves? Did he have any medical concerns? Was he connected to any housing agencies? Would he accept a ride to a shelter that night? After Jonatán declined the shelter offer, Tachik gave the man a pair of gloves and hand warmers while a van was arranged to bring him extra blankets.
Tachik and other volunteers would politely encourage people to accept rides to shelters, but without pressuring them and only after they tried to determine if they were connected to other services.
“When I’m first meeting someone, I’m wondering about their immediate safety,” Tachik said, as she walked down Washington Street. “You want to ask, `Are you safe in this moment?‘ And when you can address that, then you can start asking about longer-term things. Are they connected to housing? Are they connected to medical care? If you can get the immediate needs taken care of, then you can start exploring solutions.”
The encounter with Jonatán resembles many others throughout the night, in which people shivering under store awnings and in alleyways accepted food or clothing but turned down shelter. At one point, Tachik and her team approached a man who identified himself as Patrick, who was slouched in a wheelchair near the turnstiles of the Downtown Crossing MBTA station. His fingers appeared blackened, which worried Tachik that he was suffering from frostbite. She asked him if she could hold his hands and then learned, to her relief, that the black marks were likely cigarette burns.
