The occupation of the Welcome Arnold shelter by Brown students, homeless and their advocates - protesting the facility's planned closure by the state - officially ended Friday morning, but the building continues to be occupied by several homeless and their advocates.
"We felt we made our statement to the government," said Geoff Gusoff '07.5, one of the first students to occupy the shelter in Cranston and among the last to leave on Friday. Gusoff, a member of Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere, said students had two objectives when occupying the shelter - to let state officials know "that either the shelter needs to remain open or you need to provide alternate housing, and to monitor the situation as it unfolds," he said.
Ten students joined the occupation Thursday, entering the facility in the early morning on the day it was slated to be closed in preparation for demolition to make way for a state police barracks. The sit-in officially ended at 7:30 a.m. Friday.
Gusoff said 20 homeless individuals came to Welcome Arnold on Thursday evening, not knowing where else to go. He said those occupying the building let them stay there. People also came in during the snowstorm Friday night, Gusoff said, describing one man who came stumbling in half-frozen. If someone had not been at the shelter to call an ambulance, the man would have likely died, Gusoff said.
At Crossroads Rhode Island on Broad Street in Providence, 48 homeless stayed in the community room on Thursday night, and 28 people slept in the community room on Friday, according to information compiled by People to End Homelessness. The community room is normally not used for sleeping and was filled with people sleeping in chairs and leaning on tables, said Bill Woicki, who has been staying at Crossroads since the closure of Welcome Arnold.
But not everyone was able to obtain temporary shelter on Thursday and Friday nights, said David "Doc" St. Germain, a former resident of Welcome Arnold and chair of the homeless input committee, a state committee.
"There are a lot of people that I think are slipping through the cracks. It's a health and safety concern," he said to the circle of eight students and 18 homeless individuals bundled in coats Sunday in Beneficent Congregational Church for the weekly meeting of People to End Homelessness.
Wojcki said he was told he was on the list to stay at Crossroads as a replacement for Welcome Arnold and spent Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights there. Wojcik said he was told Saturday that it was his last night at the shelter. "They wanted to send me out with bus tickets and no destination," he said.
Wojcik is employed by Labor Ready, a temp agency, and had been staying at Welcome Arnold, getting up early to commute to work. "Things were picking up at work, then it closed, and now I have nowhere to go again," he said.
Craig Samson, a regular at Welcome Arnold until Thursday, said he waited outside of Harrington Hall for over an hour on Friday night before the doors opened at 5:30 p.m. to let men in. "It was sleeting, it was snowing and a man in line had low blood pressure - and he was outside for an hour," Samson said. He said one of the men in line called 911 from his phone, and the man was taken to the hospital by ambulance.
"It's just policy," said Mark Fielder, another man who said he spent many nights sleeping at the overflow shelter. "A lot of good guys work out there (at Harrington Hall)."
Speaking through a representative, Anne Nolan, the president of Crossroads, said she would not be able to comment until today, when more individuals would be placed.
Gusoff said the best hope for those displaced by the closure of Welcome Arnold is a contingency plan in which the Red Cross will open an emergency shelter. He said that he thinks the earliest that this plan could go into effect would be today.
"I'm still outside of the glass looking in, still out in the cold," Wojcik said.
