Women’s Lunch Place Joins City of Boston for the 2020 Homeless Census
On January 29th, 2020, Bostonians came together to help assess homelessness and its impact on our community.
Several weeks ago, on an icy January night, WLP Executive Director Jennifer Hanlon Wigon joined hundreds of Boston volunteers to count the homeless living on the streets of Boston. Each year, volunteers work with city and state officials and comb through streets, alleyways, MBTA stations, and more to record how many people are sleeping outside. This data is then combined with overnight shelter and other transitional housing headcounts to get a better picture of homelessness and its impact in our city.
At Women’s Lunch Place, we see the effects of this issue first-hand: each morning at 7:00am, there is a line of women waiting to come in to warm up, get some rest, and eat a meal. Many of our guests haven’t eaten since they left us at 2:00pm the day before. The brutal winter weather isn’t the only thing our guests have to battle – women who spend their nights on the streets are at much higher risk of being physically harmed. One of the most comprehensive studies on this topic “found that 92% of a racially diverse sample of homeless mothers had experienced severe physical and/or sexual violence at some point in their lives” (VAWnet, 2006).
Due to the dangerous realities faced by woman sleeping on the streets or in crowded overnight shelters, many of the women who come to WLP for help get inadequate rest and are dealing with the negative effects of sleep deprivation. Declared by the CDC to be a public health epidemic, lack of sleep not only affects overall health, but can also make it difficult for someone to hold down a job and can perpetuate homelessness.
Women’s Lunch Place provides a safe nap room for guests to use during the day. After this basic need is fulfilled, our guests are better able to work with our advocacy team towards solving longer-term challenges. Helping our guests find and maintain safe and secure housing is a major focus of our programming at WLP. Last year, we helped 182 women find and keep permanent housing. When a woman has a living space that is safe and her own, she is better able to focus on her nutrition, health, and employment opportunities.