Concord’s emergency winter shelter closed its doors for the spring on Thursday, marking the end of a year with high occupancy rates and continuing COVID-19 complications.
The shelter served more than 4,000 people between December and April, about 500 more than last year. Mark Fagan, the chief operating officer of the Concord Coalition to End Homelessness said there isn’t a single explanation for the high numbers but suspects frigid February temperatures could have contributed.
He also noted that last year the shelter had a lower capacity for 12 days before they moved into the First Congregational Church of Concord.
The shelter had 40 beds available for adults to stay out of cold weather every night from 6:30 p.m. to 7 a.m. This year, the shelter was full for more than 40 nights, compared to the year before, when it reached capacity only a handful of times.
On average, 33 people came to the shelter each night, compared to 29 in 2021.
This is the second year CCEH has operated during a global pandemic. Fagan said many of the health precautions they instituted in 2020 carried into this year — clients still abided by mask-wearing requirements and regular temperature checks.
Even so, most of the shelter’s staff tested positive for COVID-19 during the height of the Omicron surge. All the case managers had the virus at some point this year, he said. The shelter had only a small number of clients who tested positive for the virus.
He said the shelter has held multiple COVID-19 vaccination clinics and was able to administer more than 100 shots using monetary incentives.
Even with COVID-19 cases settling down, people experiencing homelessness are facing unique challenges, he said.
People living in their cars are faced with exorbitant gas prices.
“We used to give out $10 gas cards — that really doesn’t do much good when gas is $5 a gallon,” Fagan said.
Furthermore, many of the popular encampments were cleared out.
One near the old Concord Drive-In was cleared in September 2021, after the landowners decided to develop the land. That was the fourth encampment the Concord Police Department cleared in 2021. Earlier that year in April, a homeless encampment sandwiched on a slice of private land between the highway and Storrs Street in Concord was cleared out.
The last time the CCEH counted the number of unhoused people in the state, in January 2020, more than 1,600 people were on the streets, about 20% more than in 2019.
Six of seven regions in New Hampshire reported a surge in their unhoused population since the pandemic began, according to a report from the coalition.
The pandemic created several challenges in the daily lives of the unhoused. During the first year of the pandemic, the public library stopped accepting guests, Dunkin’ Donuts stacked up its tables and chairs and Concord’s soup kitchen transitioned to meals to-go.
Fagan said many of those buildings have gone back to business as usual.