So far, I've had some mixed experiences hanging out around the Pine Street Inn. 

I've talked to some great people working their way through the system.  "There are some good guys here," one of them told me, and I've found it to be true.  I'm working on putting their voices together in a radio broadcast. 

I've also been harassed by a shelter worker who had the idea that I wasn't allowed to take pictures of the building from the street.  I tried to politely disabuse him of the notion, but he wasn't having any of it.  "You're telling me I'm not allowed to stand on this public street and take pictures of this building?" I asked.  No, he said, I was not allowed, it was private property, I would have to speak to someone inside. 

Here is a picture of the building (which I obviously took anyway).

The weather has been bitter lately, and you can see the snow piled up all inside the fence.

Hello again! The blog is back up and running now - so let me tell you a little about the project I've been working on this past month.  

Pine Street Inn is an emergency shelter in downtown Boston.  More than seven hundred homeless men and women go there for shelter each night.  Almost a thousand more are scattered across the area in the system's housing programs, working their way back into independent life.

I've been talking to people who live at Pine Street, and listening to their stories. I've been finding out what they think about the shelter system, the mental health resources available to them, their lives and prospects and histories.  Some of their stories are very sad.  Some are frightening; some don't make much sense.  But they're all worth telling, so I'm working on doing just that.  More to come in the next few days ... keep reading.

Alisa 

The New Orleans Street Exchange is launching a street newspaper tomorrow.  Listening in on this Twitter discussion and others like it, I'm interested in the ways homeless individuals use and engage with social media, and how that may help them succeed in becoming housed and on track.