After celebrating Christmas with their youngsters and grandchildren the night time earlier than, Newton residents Buzz and Margie Birnbaum awakened Wednesday morning and headed to St. Francis Home in downtown Boston.
Serving to serve festive plates of stuffed hen breast, butternut squash, and extra to roughly 350 homeless women and men, the Birnbaums felt the Christmas spirit.
“It’s so good to give back,” Margie Birnbaum advised the Herald, as vacation songs performed within the background. “It’s what Christmas is all about, giving and caring. What’s nice here is connecting to these folks, the nicest group of people.”
It marked the couple’s first Christmas spent volunteering at Boston’s largest day shelter, and subsequent yr, they hope to return with their three grandchildren, ages 19, 17 and 12.
“We are so lucky,” Margie Birnbaum added.
Each Christmas Day, St. Francis Home opens its doorways for a festive celebration that includes a restaurant-style vacation meal with desk service in a heat and welcoming ambiance adorned with vacation colours and a big adorned tree.
This yr, the shelter needed to shift its celebration throughout the road because it’s within the strategy of being renovated. The challenge began in August, with companies and staffers being relocated into what had been St. Francis Home workplace house – 18-foot-high cubicles and all.
Edwin James, 33, of Boston, visits the shelter about three to 4 occasions every week. He receives restoration companies for a consuming downside, which he mentioned he developed by means of melancholy from being homeless.
The shelter additionally presents meals, showers and garments. James mentioned he feels a “whole lot of love” each time he stops by.
Wednesday, he celebrated his first Christmas at St. Francis Home.
“Look at the smile on my face,” James advised the Herald, his pleasure palpable. “I’m just so happy. It’s indescribable.”
James has been completely homeless since 2017 as he battles dependancy and psychological well being points. Working with a case supervisor at St. Francis Home, he mentioned he’s hopeful he’ll safe housing in 2025.
“I believe in God, man,” James mentioned. “I leave everything in God’s hands. I’m a firm believer in the serenity prayer. I’ve been through my battles, I try to make the right decisions and leave it in God’s hands.”
Within the eyes of St. Francis Home President and CEO Karen LaFrazia, Christmas is a “special” and “bittersweet” day.
“As I walked around here today, just sitting and chatting with people, any number of these people would make a wonderful tenant or neighbor,” she advised the Herald. “The sense of gratitude and appreciation for what some of us take for granted, it’s really deep.”
LaFrazia’s shelter continues to grapple with an “unprecedented” variety of folks in want of its companies.
Final yr round this time, almost 600 folks experiencing homelessness turned out to St. Francis Home day-after-day in search of meals, garments, a spot to bathe, help to find everlasting housing and different assets.
The day by day attendance rely marked the most important it had ever been as the price of dwelling and lease escalated whereas inexpensive housing manufacturing lagged.
These elements have exacerbated much more inside the previous yr, LaFrazia mentioned.
From July 2023 by means of June 2024, the shelter served 9,719 folks – a roughly 23% enhance within the variety of friends from the earlier fiscal yr. Of that, about 30% are newcomers to the nation.
St. Francis Home broke floor in September on a 19-story, 126-unit inexpensive housing constructing on Lagrange Road, on the crossroads of Chinatown and Downtown Crossing. It hopes to finish the challenge someday in 2026, aimed toward not too long ago homeless folks and single households.
“The most significant difference we can make as a community, as a country, is making deep investments in affordable housing,” LaFrazia mentioned. “Once somebody is housed, they are in a much better place to address whatever the issues are that may have led them into a homeless situation.”
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