Board of Aldermen 11-26-2019 Page 27
Alderman Lopez
| will not be rushed. | would like to express for all the people who helped organize the Thanksgiving
and all the people who attended it as well today. | think it meant a lot to the people who got to come
and feel fellowship. But also who had the opportunity to see their elected officials and representatives.
The celebration took place at 45 High Street. | know that Alderwoman Klee and her husband were there
all day helping set up. Alderman Jette was there as well even though he refused to anywhere near
potatoes and Mayor Donchess as well | think was a very welcome presence as usual.
| also wanted to comment on one of the slides that went by regarding that the Boys & Girls Club
Students wrote, it is my impression and | would like to hear from the students directly, but it is my
impression that they were calling attention to homelessness as something that they were willing to help
address. The homeless state, not the concept that we just shouldn’t have people in the City who
happen to be homeless. | think they are as aware as anybody is who has experienced it or has had
family members who have. We have a shortage of shelter capacity and | think what they were drawing
attention to when they said, “We don’t think we should have homeless people” because they could be
harassed in their sleep, was that people who are unsheltered are particularly vulnerable, not just to the
elements but to their fellow citizens who might dehumanize them in some ways and see them as a
barrier, an obstacle or a difficulty wnen they are people and they need more supports. | think our City
has an obligation, once a problem gets to a certain size, to take it on and say, “Look we can’t just pass
this off to non-profits or charities, we need to get involved”.
To that affect, we have been working on getting updates made to the City Welfare Guidelines. The
Mayor has met with several community groups and organizations to try to identify wno would be able to
support a cold weather warming station. We've made efforts to try to reach out to members of the
community that are focusing on emergency shelter supports and to bolster existing programs. So we
are working on it, there are a lot of people who are putting their best foot forward in trying to consolidate
the resources. At the same time, we are not really reaching the point. We did a City-wide evaluation,
we went out into the woods, we went looking for every camp site that we could find; we found over a
dozen and over 20 people that were unsheltered in a course of one night. We believe that we
scratched the surface, we didn’t find the deeper sites, we didn’t meet the people who were floating in-
between and we are aware that that changes night to night.
So there is still a lot more work to do; | think our students are well aware of that. Students like Alexis
who has since, for the last 10 years at least | believe, has worked her Holidays to try to generate what
good she could and what support she can for people when they are most in need and they are most
vulnerable. | know Kendra Soucy one of the volunteers who made food through Soul Sisters, has a son
who also for his birthday, is organizing toiletry kids. There is a lot of kids that are doing a lot of work
and | think we should be joining them; we should be engaging them. This is a bigger problem than
we’ve been able to solve, we just have to keep working on it.
President Wilshire
True Alderman Lopez, thank you for that.
Alderman Laws
I’d just like to say Happy Thanksgiving to everybody and remind anybody listening that if you know that
this is a big week for drinking and having fun with your friends and family, the Nashua Police know that
as well so it is 2019, download an app and get home safely.
