AMHERST The line outside Craig’s Place at 434 North Pleasant St in Amherst, the only homeless shelter in Amherst, starts to form around 9:00 p.m.. Waiting in queue, the group of mostly men talk and smoke cigarettes as they wait, more people arrive in ones and twos, emerging out of the darkness to be painted by floodlights. The shelter houses a maximum of 28 people from November 1 to May 1. It is the first warm night of the season, and situated next to the University of Massachusetts where more than 30,000 students are enrolled, the people waiting to enter Craig’s Place can see and hear students walking in packs of three to what seems to be thirteen, yelling and laughing.
Walter Bermody Jr., 62 of Bath ME feels better today than yesterday when he was in a hospital bed. Having had 10 strokes, 11 heart attacks and been technically dead twice means that Bermody encounters medical trouble more often than he’d like. “I’ve had my moments.”
When the doors at Craig’s Place open guests make their way single file to a small folding table to be signed in. They are asked if there are any items they wish to surrender and then are checked with a metal detector wand. Many guests will eat before settling in, the food is supplied by UMass and Hampshire College and served by volunteers. Tonight’s menu includes Beef and Beats, Turkey and Spicy Sweet potatoes with carrots and bacon.
As people eat and talk there is a reduction in the collective anxiety. Cots are unfolded, wiped down and dressed with two sheets, a blanket and a pillow. Craig’s Place is called an Emergency shelter because all guests must be out by morning and there are few ways to be guaranteed a spot.
Bermody finds a cot for himself but will not sleep tonight.
Before the lights are turned off a police officer arrives. Amherst Police send an officer every night to Craig’s Place to meet the residents and shake hands, a civil show of force. According to Amherst PD six or seven of the guests of Craig’s Place consistently require police attention.
Lt. Brian Johnson, 51 from Boston Massachusetts is the ranking officer on duty tonight. Johnson works split shifts now, two nights and two days a week, but most of his career has been on duty at night. Tonight, like most nights Johnson is at the Amherst Police Department at 111 Main St.
Spring and Commencement for the Five College area is the busy season. “There is no typical night in police work,” says Johnson, whose main responsibility to ensure his officers have adequate time on each call. “Most police departments will tell you that man power is always the limiting factor.”
Johnson prefers the Night shift. “You get a little more variety of calls, you have more autonomy.” He also mentions there is also less traffic. “I used to think it was to get away from the brass, but now I’m the brass,” he jokes.
The Amherst Police department has had 20 officers, that is 1/2 the patrol force, certified by Behavior Health Network or BHN in Boston on approaching situations complicated by mental health issues. After a 40 hour course the officers come to be known as CIT or part of the Crisis Intervention Team. “The old model was to cuff someone for 24 hours. Not now. Guys are working hard at it. I am very proud of the work we do here.”
Johnson sees that issues related to homelessness have grown over the years. This includes issues relating to addiction, most specifically alcohol.
Outside the police station, droves of students dressed in their best are shuffling from event to event, clogging the main intersection of Amherst at Main and Pleasant streets. None of the drivers stuck for long minutes at a time seem too irritated, many of them are or were students at these same schools, as were Lt. Johnson and Walter Bermody.
Back inside Craig’s Place the lights are out and in the dark an Exit sign shines constant in the wide basement of the Baptist Church, fixed like a false, red moon above a door that no one enters. Its light spills across the linoleum, parting the cots on either side, 20 in all, filled with men anchoring to unmoor. Some twisting, some turning from time to time, snoring that is like boat motors, sputtering then falling silent drifting through uneasy sleep. The smell of human exhaust, sweat and exhaustion fill the room.
In the hallway facing the parking lot entrance of Craig’s Place, Bermody sits with two shelter volunteers recounting joining in 1967 his days as a Navy Corpsman in Vietnam. “I tagged and bagged, if you know what that means.” Bermody relates how when Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968 he wondered “oh my god what’s next?”
Bermody has two sons he has not heard from in 15 years, one who serves in Afghanistan. “He made me proud.” Bermody was 12 when he started working, cutting lawns with his brother with pruning shears until they could afford a push lawnmower. Then he worked fields in Hatfield, eventually harvesting tobacco and became a supervisor earning 60 cents an hour, his biggest paycheck was $240. Bermody first started drinking when he was 16, some time between working at Friendlies and the Wyckoff Country Club on Easthampton Rd in Holyoke.
As dawn’s early light breaks over UMass at 6:00 a.m., illuminating a heavy low hanging fog, Bermondy goes outside to smoke with a shelter staffer. He takes a cup of coffee with him and a broom he has been using as a walking stick. After a smoke and complaining about the V.A. he starts sweeping around the stairs, where many people, especially when waiting to get into the shelter, toss cigarette butts. “I love to meet people, talk to people. I like to help people. Bible says it will come back two fold.”
