Program that kept 200 people off the streets headed for the scrap heap
And while an
'We're really scrambling here,' said Ken Bates, CEO of Open Sky, a community services organization serving Central Massachusetts. 'We have a governor who has talked extensively about supporting people in reentry and getting people housed. And we've found a model for doing just that. We can't understand why she isn't funding this.'
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But Governor Maura Healey isn't alone in turning her back on the program. She was aided and abetted by the Legislature.
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Community Compass at Open Sky began as a pilot program. But isn't the point of pilot programs to find out what works and then replicate it — not consign it to oblivion?
It was allowed to draw not just from men and women recently released from state or county correctional facilities but also anyone who had ever been incarcerated — a population that, Bates said, numbers well into the thousands in Worcester County.
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Its totally voluntary nature and the wrap-around services it offered — nutrition (including a food pantry), employment assistance, education, and health care referrals (including mental health and substance use treatment) — attracted more than 1,400 people to its door, who logged more than 14,000 visits during that less than two-year span.
It drew its staff from those with 'learned experience,' including the formerly incarcerated who are all too familiar with what it takes to find housing when your last residence had 'MCI' as part of its address or find a job without a proper shirt or jacket in your closet.
The program was not without friends in the Legislature, like Senator Jamie Eldridge of Acton and Representative Mary Keefe of Worcester, who were both unsuccessful in their attempts to win an amendment to the state budget for the $1.5 million it would take to keep the center open for another year.
Now keep in mind the Massachusetts Senate added 540 local earmarks to its budget during debate this year, according to the
But the formerly incarcerated don't have much of a lobby on Beacon Hill. And this year the governor's budget allocated
This is going to be a tough budgetary year all around — with Washington providing the great unknown and unknowable at the moment. But when it comes to the 'frills' that lawmakers like to pass out to local causes like so many bonbons (what,
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Lost in that shuffle are worthy programs like Community Compass at Open Sky, which deserves a second lease on life from the governor who once supported it and lawmakers who have managed to find money for far less critical causes.
Rachelle G. Cohen is a Globe opinion writer. She can be reached at
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