I have never felt prouder of the neighborhood I live in on the West End of Providence than I did this winter, when the Armory Warming Center opened up. As the Co-Executive Director of OpenDoors, I’ve spent the last three years looking for ways to provide shelter to the unhoused community as the homelessness crisis has become worse and worse. Currently OpenDoors operates a 25-bed shelter in Providence and a new 24-hour warming station in Pawtucket, and so I’ve seen first-hand how these programs are vital last lines of protection for vulnerable communities and how they can be run responsibly and effectively. Last November, Rhode Island badly needed an emergency winter shelter, and my neighborhood had a good option to share.

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If you are a resident of Providence’s west end, please sign the Petition to Support Limited, Reasonable Uses of the Cranston Street Armory to Fight Homelessness here.

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The Armory Warming Center is now filled with close to two hundred people that have been evicted from everywhere else in the state–their homes, homes of any friends or family, emergency rooms, treatment centers, tent encampments, and the numerous temporary hotel shelters set up and then closed down over the last several years. They are sleeping at the Armory because they have no place else to go. Over 700 different people have resided in the Armory since it opened.

Last November, there was a state of emergency, with hundreds of people on the verge of being frozen on the streets and tent encampments alternately spreading and being destroyed from Providence, to Woonsocket, to the State House. The Armory was not the solution homeless service providers or the unhoused community would have planned, but it was, at that late juncture, the solution Rhode Island needed. And I believe it should continue to be part of this solution, as a site for a smaller, permanent homeless shelter. This is possible – the Park Avenue Armory in New York City is home to both a world-renowned performance space and a shelter for women struggling with mental illness. 

A few weeks ago, as my neighbors gathered to demand that the unhoused community leave the Armory as soon as possible, the pride I had previously felt turned to embarrassment. The West End community, not surprisingly, is no different than the communities across the state, from Cranston, to Warwick, to South Providence that have wanted neither homeless encampments nor homeless shelters nearby. Neighborhood after neighborhood has come together to demand that homeless individuals live anywhere else but near them.

From what I saw first-hand regarding planning for shelter expansion state-wide, I do think there were some missed opportunities to prepare sufficiently. And I understand the lack of trust from the neighborhood given the State’s lack of communication prior to and after opening the Warming Station. But, unfortunately, with the scale of the problem, the challenges of siting a shelter, and the expense of providing adequate shelter to over fifteen hundred people in need, there were not any ideal solutions. The State struggled to site shelters over and over again before landing at the Armory. I agree wholeheartedly that the Armory Warming Center, as it currently exists, should not be a long-term plan. Housing upwards of two hundred people in one mass congregate shelter is not good for the neighborhood or a recommended way to run a shelter for those living inside.

Amos House and the National Guard have done an incredible job making the best of an impossible situation. Amos House CEO Eileen Hayes and the entire staff of the Armory Warming Center deserve our praise and gratitude for stepping up last minute and doing a job no one else wanted, a job that saved countless lives this winter. I have heard some neighbors say that the Armory shelter has been a disaster and that it is an inhumane way to treat the unhoused. To the contrary, had the Armory Warming Center not opened, there would truly have been a disaster statewide. 

Several times I have walked through the Armory, talking to those staying there. I saw a man I have known for over ten years who ended up there after his Dad died of Covid. I talked to several senior citizens who, after years of hard work, are living on social security checks and were recently evicted from their homes. Most were not exactly happy to be there, but they were all glad they had been let in.

On the far side of Dexter Park, opposite from the Armory, there is a statue of the park’s patron, inscribed with the words ‘IN HONOR OF EBENEEZER KNIGHT DEXTER FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE PUBLIC AND THE HOMELESS.’ The park and the Armory do not belong to the current home-owners of the West End. The park was bequeathed by Dexter for the public, and it belongs to all citizens of Providence. The Armory building, which has benefited from millions of taxpayer revitalization dollars, belongs to the state. We, the neighbors of the Armory, have been drawn by the attractiveness of living next to such a beautiful greenspace, but those benefits also come with shared responsibility.

At the same time, as someone who walks frequently through Armory Park, I agree that the West End neighborhood should not be asked to be responsible for so much of the state’s homeless solution long-term. Armory Park has always provided solace to those in need. Last summer, I would pass a group of men every morning that were waking up there. Now, on a cold day, you can walk past the Armory and barely know what is inside. But over the past month, on warmer days, groups of shelter residents spread through the park to the point that some of my friends understandably no longer feel comfortable going there, particularly with children. Come spring if the Armory is still full, its presence will likely transform the neighborhood. The state needs to come up with a better plan for the homeless crisis than what was done this winter. And we will need all Rhode Island communities to be willing to help.

Last fall, as OpenDoors prepared to open a homeless shelter in the basement of our main offices, we held a vote amongst the residents of the 19 apartments throughout the rest of the building. We gave them the opportunity to decide if the shelter should be allowed to open in their backyard. They were all people that already had to live with many challenges – low paying jobs, the stigmas of old criminal records, the stresses of living in a small apartment in a crowded public housing building. But many of them knew the difficulties of being homeless. They looked at people living on the streets and recognized them as real people. They voted to allow the shelter to open.

I would ask that residents of the West End, that residents of all communities of Rhode Island, show the same compassion. There is a Community Meeting at the West Broadway School about the Cranston Street Armory Warming Station on Thursday March 16 at 7:00PM. I hope people in the Armory neighborhood come to the meeting and show patience as the State struggles to find alternatives for the hundreds currently living in the Armory. I hope the West End community will be open-minded to the idea of a smaller, much more planned out long-term shelter being included in the development plan for the building. And I hope that, at the least, people do not say in one breath that they are advocating for the rights of those living in the Armory and in the next breath that the warming center needs to be shut down as soon as possible—that people need to be evicted for their own good. The Armory has been a saving grace to so many this winter, and it can continue to help those in need if we are willing to share.