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January 07, 2025
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WJAR) — On an average winter night, there are not enough shelter beds for everyone living outside in Rhode Island.
"This is the most urgent homelessness crisis that I've seen in my 30 plus years in this business," Michelle Wilcox, President & CEO of Crossroads Rhode Island, said. "We are in a crisis situation right now."
Running five shelters and a warming center, Wilcox sees the state's housing and homelessness crisis first hand.
There are warming centers for people in need open for walk-ins 24/7, like the one run by Crossroads on Providence's Broad Street.
However, getting a shelter bed isn't as simple as walking through the door.
"Rhode Island operates a coordinated entry system," she explained.
Mandated by the federal department of housing and urban development, the system dictates who gets into open shelter beds
It can be accessed over the phone, through an online chat, or at any of the state's outreach or service providers like Crossroads.
"We want to make sure that the system is responding to the people with the greatest needs," she said. "It's like if you think about when you go to the hospital emergency room, they're going to do a triage to make sure that if you're there for some chest pains or something that might be a heart attack, you're going to be served first. We don't want the ankle sprain to get served for the person who's having chest pains."
The system is run by the Rhode Island Coalition to End Homelessness.
They said calls to the help center have increased in recent years leading to long wait times.
In 2024, there were 103,911 calls.
The coalition claims they haven't received enough funding to add additional staff and keep up with the growing demand
"Many of the individuals who call our CES call center are in crisis, and long wait times can have serious consequences," said Kim Simons, Executive Director at the RI Coalition to End Homelessness said in a statement. "We need more low -barrier shelter beds, more winter warming centers and more staff to ensure that people experiencing homelessness can quickly connect to the services they need. Without sufficient funding, we simply cannot keep up with the increasing demand."
Crossroads is also seeing the increase.
"We're definitely seeing more people coming in, and I'm glad to see people coming in," Wilcox said. "Obviously, we don't want folks to be staying outdoors in weather like this. But when you have this, this additional demand, you know, it really strains the systems."
In recent years, the state's spent million to help.
Gabrielle: "Where is that money going? Why is the problem getting worse, if we're spending all of this money?"
"There's been a 400% increase in the number of people experiencing homelessness in Rhode Island since before the pandemic," Wilcox said when asked by NBC 10 why despite millions in funding the problem is getting worse. "Rising cost of everything, inflation, has had a dramatic impact. There is a shortage of affordable housing, and you know, wages just haven't kept up with inflation."
House SpeakerJoe Shekarchi agrees more needs to be done.
"We need to be effective," he said. "Homelessness is a very complicated issue. There are some people who do not want to go into a shelter because they don't want to be able to follow the rules. They want to be able they have substance abuse issues, they have mental health issues, those all have to be taken into consideration."
The real solution, Wilcox and Shekarchi concur, is building more housing which the state is doing.
"There have been pretty significant investments in the development of new affordable and supportive housing," Wilcox said. " But construction takes time, and so it's really important that we're looking at kind of both roads at the same time. Planning for the long term solution, development of more housing, but recognizing that there's an urgent crisis right now and we have to respond to the citizens in need."