Cape Cod can’t ignore homelessness—this shelter Is a start | OPINION

As seen in the Cape Cod Times, June 14, 2026

by Lawrence Brown

 

As the summer of 2015 drew to a close, I noticed a flood of letters to the editor, mostly by tourists, who complained that they had come to Cape Cod to escape the realities of urban life and found the presence of homeless people almost an affront.  There was a uniform nastiness about it that frankly shocked me at the time.

I was still feeling the shock when school opened at Cape Cod Academy. I was teaching an eighth-grade photography seminar that fall. When I offered, the kids jumped at the chance to visit homeless shelters and create a gallery: Faces of the Homeless.

It seemed then and it seems now that people comfortably housed see homeless people as some kind of abstraction… not an “us” but a “them.”

St. Joseph’s House was called the Noah Shelter then. When we arrived on the appointed day, the director pulled my kids aside and told them that no one really wanted to have their photograph taken. The residents, he pointed out, were at difficult points in their lives and didn’t feel terribly photogenic. But pizza was being served and if the kids would like to have lunch with some of the residents, that would be just fine.

As the pizzas disappeared, I noticed each of my eighth graders was deep in conversation with at least one of the residents. Finally, and this happened with each one of the conversations, the homeless residents told my students they didn’t want their stories attached to their photographs.  But they’d like it if the kid they were talking to took their portraits.

Here’s what happened, and it would happen again when the kids visited Champ Homes and again with Homeless not Hopeless. The residents started off expecting a bunch of private school students fulfilling some school requirement.  They found instead five kids whose hearts were opening rapidly, who had come in with one set of expectations about homeless people and were rapidly changing their minds, conversation after conversation.

“At first,” young Dylan wrote, “I thought they were homeless because of bad decisions they had made.  I didn’t know that you could become homeless without being able to stop it. I realize that anyone can become homeless, even if they didn’t make any bad decisions.”

Here’s what happened, and it would happen again when the kids visited Champ Homes and again with Homeless not Hopeless. The residents started off expecting a bunch of private school students fulfilling some school requirement.  They found instead five kids whose hearts were opening rapidly, who had come in with one set of expectations about homeless people and were rapidly changing their minds, conversation after conversation.

“At first,” young Dylan wrote, “I thought they were homeless because of bad decisions they had made.  I didn’t know that you could become homeless without being able to stop it. I realize that anyone can become homeless, even if they didn’t make any bad decisions.”

Eventually, the gallery got made. Matt Pitta interviewed the kids on the radio and a local TV station turned their gallery into a video, displayed on various websites around the Cape. Cape Cinema put it up on their big screen before a movie.  My five young photographers have long graduated from college and might be starting families of their own.

Years before I did the homeless gallery with my kids, I had a senior student from Osterville whose family situation had become so painful that he was sleeping in other people’s sheds, under their porches, even in unlocked cars parked in people’s driveways. He was a good kid who hadn’t done anything wrong, whose parents had lots of money, and yet, there he was, curled up shivering on the floor of somebody’s shed with the rakes and the lawnmower.

I’m telling you this story now because the first shelter we ever visited has an opportunity to move into bigger quarters on West Main.  Let’s be clear about one thing; if people are unhoused, they’re going to be somewhere. If St. Joseph’s can move to bigger quarters, there will be room for the Duffy Health Center to set up a satellite primary care hub right there in the building so people who need treatment can get it. That’s what the Duffy Health Center does.

The old shelter on Winter Street was never designed for the purpose it has served all these years.  At 460 West Main St. there is finally room for daytime programs in the building, finding long-term housing, job placement, medical care.

Understandably, some people in the neighborhood are concerned. Property values might go down. There are schools nearby and they worry some of the new neighbors might not be safe company.  Signs are up on people’s lawns.

My family lived for years within 100 yards of the old Noah Shelter with no problems at all.  The Cape Cod synagogue was right next door and their congregation cooked Christmas meals for the shelter residents so the regular staff could enjoy the holidays with their families.

There is no question that homeless people are going through possibly the worst times of their lives, but that doesn’t make them criminals. It doesn’t make them morally depraved any more than having a home makes the rest of us saints.

This is an opinion page, and I’m just offering you an opinion. I see the St. Joseph’s move as an opportunity for the rest of us to participate in something good. There is so much anger in the air these days.

There will always be people down on their luck. Are we to imagine that the rest of us will be better off if they have no housing?  If they have no ready access to counseling and medical care?  If they have no daytime programming to give them somewhere useful to be, and to assist them in taking their next steps into more permanent housing?

Catholic Charities, Duffy Health Center, and the Housing Assistance Corporation are part of the beating heart of Cape Cod… knowledgeable, charitable and good. I hope this move happens. I hope local parishes reach out. I hope local people come visit.

“After this project,” wrote 13-year-old Maeve, “I recognized that the people we interviewed and photographed were not just “the homeless.” They were real people with real stories to share, deserving of love and acceptance.”  I hope the rest of us can see it that way too.

Lawrence Brown is a columnist for the Cape Cod Times.  Email him at columnresponse@gmail.com.