“When I went to the doctor, he said I was like an old car,” the 57-year-old Benjamin said with a scowl. “He said I needed some jumper cables to get me running again.”
He was given the jolt he needed when he found a room at the Mulhern House on Creighton Street, which officially opened June 11. The three-acre site is run by the Pine Street Inn, a non-profit agency providing emergency shelter, job training and outreach, in addition to permanent housing, for the vagrant population of Greater Boston.
Perched above the corner of Creighton and Sunnyside streets, the square, four-story brick building gleams with a freshness that belies its 115-year-old age. On the inside, the off-white walls are trimmed with baseboards of dark wood. Residents prepare meals in clean and modern communal kitchens and socialize in light and airy living rooms.
Benjamin is one of 28 chronically homeless men and women to find permanent housing here at this converted nunnery. Residents received a room in the house after being chosen in a lottery and interviewed by Pine Street. Some were referred by the emergency shelters in which they periodically lived.
Tenants at Mulhern range in age from the mid-30s to late-60s. Some residents work; others are in the process of job training; and others are still recovering from life on the streets. However, all able residents are expected to contribute to rent, paying about 30 percent of their annual income.
According to the city’s 2009 census, there are more than 7,000 people in various stages of homelessness in Boston. While the number of homeless families and children has risen in recent years, rates of individuals who are homeless have actually dropped 30 percent, statistics show.
Barbara Trevisan, director of communications for Pine Street Inn, thinks the drop is a result of efforts to re-direct resources away from emergency shelters and toward permanent housing and homelessness prevention.
