Jennifer Chisholm Addresses Homelessness in NH

Transcript (draft form) of her pre-show presentation to attendees in August 2025.

Rev Nathan Hall welcomes Jennifer Chisholm: I just want to say Jennifer, thank you for coming all the way up here. She is the executive director of the New Hampshire Coalition to End Homelessness. And her job seems to entail lots of figuring out the statistics behind everything. And so she's going to share with us some of her insights and help us understand some of the causes, maybe, and contributing factors to homelessness and how to work with things. welcome Jennifer.

Jennifer Chisholm, executive director of NH Coalition to End Homelessness

Jennifer Chisholm: Thank you. Thank you, to the way station for ... inviting me up. It was a beautiful drive. I came up from Manchester this afternoon. It was nice to get out of the city.

And so as Pastor Nathan said, I'm the executive director of New Hampshire Coalition to End Homelessness. and I'm also on adjct faculty for UNH in the Department of Social Work. So I've been working in the field for a little over 20 years, I was a direct service provider in Manchester, so a social worker, LCSWM LDAC, which is a licensed social worker, so mental health, and drug and alcohol counselor.... So for the last 10 years before this job, I was as the behavioral Health and Outreach coordinator for the Manchester's Healthcare for the Who program. So working with people literally on the streets in the encampments down in Manchester, just trying to do what we can to make a difference, right? And so I also have some experience with homeless young adults and doing mental health work in substance use disorder, work with families in their teen years as well. And so that's what kind of brings me to the work that I do now, which is that the coalition, we work -- instead of doing direct care, like the way station does, providing wonderful services to people -- we work from the systems level. So we take a look at kind of the broken systems and what can be done better, what we can be doing better to support providers so that they can do the really tough work of making a difference in people's lives. So I have a lot of slides, and I can talk about this forever. I'm very hopeful you'll take away thinking about our work for tonight. And so what I wanted to know actually is going to do a little brief poll, around like, what are people interested in hearing me talk about? Because there's a very complex issue. There's a lot of different directions we could go, and I do have a slide deck that I could go through, but I just wanted to see if there was any sort of like lingering questions that people had on their minds or topics that you'd be interested in learning about that.

Audience lists some questions:

• Two, one, people are very interested always in causes. Sure. Fundamental causes are contributors to why someone is homeless.

• So if you can talk ... about the difference between, like short-term or situational homelessness and chronic homelessness

• And then, if you can also ... address what you know to be the differences between rural homelessness, which is what we experience versus how people see it in the city?

Jennifer Chisholm: Sure. Okay. So, I'm hearing causes, like kind of root causes. How do people get to that situation? As well as some pieces about rural versus urban ...

Audience question:

• It seems to me that there's kind of like misconceptions about the role of drug use and homelessness, and I was wondering if you could speak to the drug use?

Jennifer Chisholm: I love that you asked that question. Thank you, and it is in my my slide, because you're absolutely right. So substance use disorder can be a piece of the story for people experiencing homelessness, but there's definitely some myth and some misunderunderstandings about that. So we'll cover that. Anything else before I jump in there?

Audience question: I'm curious, if you have any thoughts on the relationship between the increased homelessness of New Hampshire and the larger affordability prices that we're experiencing.

Jennifer Chisholm: Oh, we'll talk a lot about that, yeah. Absolutely ... I would list that as the number one key to to be the increase in homelessness. Okay, so I'm going to jump around, so get my slide deck. So just ignore me, sort of bouncing, because the slides that I have probably could take us, I don't know, a week to get through. So just to tell a little bit more about the coalition, so these are three pillers of work. So we work from research, education, and advocacy. Those are kind of our three things. So tonight is a wonderful opportunity for education. And so just if I haven't said it already, thank you all for making time. I know that there's like a great show coming and so that they figure it's willing to spend an extra hour with me, just like, I literally had goosebumps, like, literally. And so I think that that is going to be one of the biggest biggest things that we can do, when I think about what people can do to help address the issue is just learning more about it so that we can all then spread the word, you know, through our social networks. So, research. We put out the State of Homenesses in New Hampshire report every year. It takes a look at trends. You'll see lots of charts from that in a minute.

2024 Edition

And then advocacy. So we do do a lot of advocacy, whether it's sort of more informal advocacy or being at the state house, literally in front of a committee testifying about bills that we either love or really don't like. And so we ... touch federal advocacy as well. So I'm the state coordinator for the National Alliance and Homelessness is their Capitol Hill Day. So we can let our national delegate know kind of what's going on.

But I will say, in New Hampshire we're blessed that they are well informed. And supportive, so just to put that out there, there are other states that have a lot harder ask when it comes to that. So I'm going to start with something that seems like really basic, which is just starting with what is homelessness, because it's really important when we talk about numbers to understand who's being measured and more importantly, who's not in the counts. And so really, the answer is that it depends on who you ask, because there's different definitions of homelessness, even within the federal government, right? So there's two main ones, and I'm going to touch really briefly on.

1. One is through federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), so they fund a lot of the housing programs for people experiencing homelessness

2. And then there's the McKinney Bento definition that they use in schools.

And there's a kind of major difference between the two. And so when I do this presentation for providers, I always like to let them know, like, I know we're not going to read all the slides, but I think it's show just showing this visual about the definition of homelessness, kind of explains how complicated it can get sometimes. So in order to determine whether or not somebody meets the definition of homelessness, you have to read all of this. So here's the first part, and the second part, and the third part, and the fourth part. And then there's the McKinney Bento definition.

So to summarize ... Basically, according to the HUD (Federal Dept of Housing and Urban Development) , you're homeless if you are staying in a shelter or a transitional living program that's meant to have people who are experiencing homelessness. Or if you're living in a place, not meant for human habitation. So that's something like the encampment or in a tent, or if you're staying in your car or in like an abandoned basement, and that's kind of like the simple answer. There are also some information about, well, if you're going to lose your house within 14 days and you don't have the ability to pay for something else and you don't know where you're going to go, that you can meet the definition for programs.

The big thing that McKinney Bento definition adds to it, that's not included in HUD definition, is if you're doubled-up or couch surfing. And so I had a good friend of mine who was a small business owner. This was like maybe 15 years ago. And so just had a hiccup with his business and decided to put the money into the business instead of his apartment, so lost his apartment. He ended up staying with me for probably nine months to a year. And so during that time, he was couch surfing with me. He did not have a lease, so [technically] I could kick him out. You know, he didn't have any real legal standing. And so we know that that is a huge and very hard to measure, and pretty invisible population of people who I would say, are experiencing homelessness in New Hampshire. But they're not included in our housing statistics. So again, like, there is this like massive group of people who are really at risk and are probably reaching out to places like the way station or BJ Parker (general assistance/welfare officer for Conway) for help and but it's not captured in my numbers. Unless it's the schools, the schools do consider them. So the students who are in a doubled-up situation have the rights that are afforded to them ... as a student who's experiencing homelessness. So this is another terrible oversight.

And so ... we talked about chronic homelessness earlier, and like, what does that mean? And this is the flow chart about how you figure it out. But again, sort of the quick summary is that if you were somebody who's been experiencing homelessness, so not doubled-up, but like those other pieces of definition, right? For 12 months or longer, then you were considered chronically homeless. There's some special money from the government that goes to fund programs for people who are experiencing chronic homelessness. As you can imagine, if you're somebody who's been homeless for 12 months or longer, then you probably have some more complex situations. So it's not just, oh, like, I need to borrow a security deposit from my mom, right? And so the other piece is if you're — and I always get confused on this — over a period of three years, if you've had like four or more episodes of homelessness, that add up in total to over 12 months. So that there is like a longer piece of that too.

So who is homeless? Lots of people that aren't counted as homeless, but then in this group of HUD definition homeless? You You mentioned BJ, but can we say?? Oh, yeah. Sorry about that. BJ, can you introduce yourself?

BJ Parker: I'm BJ Parker and I have been the Welfare director fortown of Conway since I99. I love this ... my 27th year.

Jennifer Chisholm: Yeah. And so ... the coalition is a huge fan of BJ. We're in communication, and she sends us great information, because again, being somebody who was in Manchester working, like, I had my, like, urban blinders on, right? And so in stepping into this position about 18 months ago, I went, oh, there's other things going on in the state besides Manchester, but when you're in an encampment with somebody who's into domestic violence situation who's like, has a safety issue and we're trying to figure out, who's sort of like, I don't hear what's going on in Berlin or Conway or Keane ... for that matter. And so you've [BJ] been a wonderful resource. You get sort of opening my eyes to what's going on in the rest of the state. Okay, so. So here's the next piece, which is how is homelessness counted? And really the answer, when it comes down to it, is pretty inaccurately, as you can probably imagine, it's pretty complicated to count. ... And again, I've been involved in this in for over 20 years in New Hampshire, and we're doing a lot better job than we were when I first started. So there's a lot of collaboration that is happening to get us the best numbers that we can in the most accurate numbers that we can. We're not trying to blow up the numbers to, like, make us look good or bad or whatever. But it is important that we have accurate data because the amount of money that we get from the government in order to fund programs that had funds is based on the number of people that who are experiencing homelessness. So we just want to make sure we get it right, right? That being said, so the main source of data that you'll see about homelessness is what's called the Point In Time data or Point In Time count [HUD measurement]. How many people have heard of a Point In Time count? So a bunch. Okay. And so what happens is that every year we are tasked with trying to estimate the number of people experiencing homelessness. This is approximation. One of the coldest nights of the year, which, when we think about that Arizona / New Hampshire thing, that date is kind of problematic for New Hampshire in a way that it isn't in Arizona. So it's generally [scheduled] the last week of January. And so there's two parts to the Point In Time count.

1. One is the housing count, housing inventory account. And so that's people who are staying in a shelter bed, staying in a transitional living program, so pretty easy to count because, you know, you get the staff that are like, yep, that bed's full. Okay, here's the information.

2. The challenging part is the unsheltered part. So if you can think about trying to count the number of unsheltered people in the entire state, especially ... in today's times where people are getting moved around a lot, and it's a real challenge with encampment clearings. Because what we're seeing and what we're hearing from providers, is that even people who have really great relationships with them in the past, [people] are very nervous to let them [providers] know where they're staying. Because they're afraid that that information will ...get leaked out to somebody who has the authority to move them along. So and then it's the winter. So it's freezing cold. And so some of the limitations, again, it's really, really cold out. And the trust issue is there. That's something that's kind of cropped up over the last couple few years. Also, when we think about the geography of New Hampshire, the groups that are in charge of this, or what's called the continuum of care. So just really briefly, a continuum of care is kind of like where the money comes and who's in charge of distributing it for like a geographical region. And there's three in New Hampshire.

   1. So one is the city of Manchester?

   2. One is Nashua and like eight or nine surrounding towns.

   3. And then there's what's called the balance of state. which is everything else.

   And so ... having worked in New Hampshire, I've been very involved. I've been in charge of the account in Manchester. That was complicated enough. I can't even wrap my head around everything that it takes to get a good count for the rest of the state. But you know, the state of New Hampshire Department of Human Services, Bureau of Homelessness Services [NH DHHS] now --We've changed names a couple of times -- kind of helps head it up. It's done a really nice job of trying to increase coordination around that and stuff ... We probably miss a few people, I'm guessing, you know, because there are some towns that are like super invested in it, and there are some towns that like, maybe don't even realize that it's happening. You know, even though we're doing the best that we can.

Jennifer Chisholm (cont'd): So that's why I say it's inaccurate. So generally, we assume that it's an undercount. And then we have some data from the state. HMIS is the computer database that the providers use. And so that's like longer data over a whole year. So it's a little bit like more weighty, but usually you hear Point In Time data.

And then we do look at for our report, the school counts as well. And so I think that in SAU 9, is that right? SAU 9 last year had 53 students who were experiencing homelessness in the district.

So that's about 3% of your entire student population, which you say, like, ugh, only 3%, maybe, but like, 3%? Oh, my goodness, these are like kids we're talking about.

So. Let's jump into just some numbers real quick. So this is a graph that ... state of homelessness report, like working with data and research, the numbers get kind of delayed. So you'll see that I have a lot of 2023 data. We're actually like just started working on the 2024 data to put out this year's report now. But what I will say is this is like a graph of subpopulation, so I know you can't see in the back of the room.

This is like total homelessness in New Hampshire. So that was 2,441 people statewide for the Point In Time count.

And then it talks about chronic homelessness, which is the number of people again, who' been, who are those really vulnerable people who have been homeless for over 12 months. And so that was 545.

And then it breaks it down into families and stuff. But when I would just point out really quickly is that the dark blue line, which is the most recent data, for all of the categories, except for veterans, has grown.

Veterans ... the veteran system for homelessness is like the model to look for comparatively, it's really well resourced and it's done a lot of really great stuff for funding programs. And so we saw about a 20% drop in New Hampshire from 2022 to 23, but everything else, families, unsheltered, all went up.

So and then if you look at the year-long data, everything went up, even veterans.

And the reason that I think that this happened with veterans, actually, is we had an expansion of some programs that pulled some veterans in, that otherwise, maybe it wouldn't have gotten services. And so we don't think that it's an actual number, an increase in the number of veterans who are serviced, it actually just represents us expanding capability and eligibility. So it's actually a good thing, even though it kind of sounds backwards.

So, some key takeaways from our data from our last year's report.

• In 2023, New Hampshire had the highest percentage increase in these Point In Time count numbers in the entire nation. And so we showed a 52% increase that year. Nationwide, 12%. So like not something that we want to be number one in, like, just not a good look. Yeah, go ahead and look. For Point In Time count, we jumped ... from a little over 1,600 to just under 2,500. So I can't do the math in my head. Thank you. There is some, I will say that we believe that there is someone that increase was again due to some people being able to be served by some programs in the state that were funded through COVID money. There were people maybe who kind of came out of the woodwork because they were being able to be served. But not that whole piece. But we know some of it is, which again is like so part increases a good thing because we were able to serve more people or find more people. So we went up by 52%. The U.S. was by 12%. Whoops.

• And here are some numbers. So the lines, if you take a look at this, so this is from 2019 to 2025. So I found the last couple of years of data so we could take a look at kind of what's going on in the last couple of years.

  • And so I will say the 2025 data is preliminary, it's not official until December, but we threw it up anyways.

  • So we did see in 2024, we did see about an 8% drop in those numbers, which is like heading in the direction,

  • And then it's bumping up again. So we'll see what it does in 2026.

  • But at least we're like making some gain back.

• And so if you look at the year long numbers ... New Hampshire in 2023 had 6,806 people who experienced homelessness in the whole state, which was almost a 50% increase over 2020. And just for comparison, that's bigger than the population of Wolfboro. which I'm hoping you're all familiar with. ...

• So all ages, and I can do a breakout, but I'll say now, and then we can kind of skip ahead later.

  • So one one, at least in the Point In Time count data, one out of every four, actually more than one out of every four, was a youth. So when they talked about youth as 24 and younger

  • And then one out of every five people was somebody who was 55 or older. We were really worried about the aging population and the effects of the economy that their rental economy on that group.

• Okay, unsheltered homelessness. Whoop. Okay, when I looked at the 2023 data, I was like, oh, my gosh, we hit a flat 2% increase. That's a beautiful thing. And then I was like, well, because the preliminary 2024 data was out, let me take a look at that. Nope. ... So there was a big jump again ... so in 2023, we went from 338 people, then 2024 to 579 people. And so again, these are all people who are living unsheltered, so then the encampment, in their car. And then the preliminary 2025 data shows that it went up again to 652 people across the state. And so that means that since 2019, the number of people in our state who are living unsheltered has more than quadrupled...

• And in let's see, I have, so I pulled from Carroll County specific data, and so Carroll County is looking a little bit better as far as the explosion, but it still has more than doubled since 2020. So the high number between 2019 and 2024, the high that you guys have had in Carroll County, for people who were sheltered was 81 people in 2023 and actually, again, in 2025, and then the high for unsheltered between 2019 to 2024 was 60 people. And so I put some numbers down here. so it was increase. So BJ, I'm interested in this, and maybe we can talk about it later. Like, why did you jump from, actually 2023, there was 81 sheltered people and then it dropped to 30 and then it popped up to 81 again? So I would love you to explain that to me..

Gail Doktor: Is this all Point In Time? Yeah ...So can we just make the point that the Way Station is the first organization ... BJ tried to get people [like churches] to provide data around homelessness, but that was like people who didn't know how to do it or collect it. So until the Way Station existed, we [Carroll County] did not document homelessness. So until 2020, there was no Point In Time data. We recorded at like zero or one. Zero in Carroll County as homeless. And the very first year that we started the couunt, I believe it was ... our average was 97. And the numbers vary, but there are other organizations helping us along with the Way Station, which is why we are able to collect any data and why there's anything for Carroll County at all.

Jennifer Chisholm: Well, I was gonna say, you just answered another question for me. So when I looked at this, the reason that I was looking at like a high for 2019 to 2024, but then this switches from 2020 to 2024 was because there were no people marked as unsheltered and homeless, and it's Carroll County in 2019. And so then the Way Station has filled a huge gap because this is what we rely on. Again, these numbers and what the Way Station is doing then in coordinating this is bringing money into the county and into the town and municipalities to be able to provide services.

Gail Doktor: To be clear, Tri County Cap runs it and we help work with them and other agencies, too. So we're contributing ...

Jennifer Chisholm: ... systems need changes too. You know, but I'll tell you, my life is different now, sitting at my dining room table than it was, you know, three years ago when I was, you out by the river with poison ivy, because I wasn't smart and didn't wear long pants to a new encampment. So, you know, but this is what we rely on, and you know, the amount of grassroots effort. So also, you know, one of the things that often times I'm hearing from providers I'm working with on the Point In Time count, is that sometimes they call for volunteers to help in one or another. So keep your ears out for that, come January.

• So, okay ... There was a 50% increase in family homelessness from 2022 to 2023 And so here are your number, sir. So for the Point In Time count, there were 541 families. That jumped to 793 in the state of New Hampshire in that one day, that 24 hours in January. And so year long, ... it jumped from 1,600 families to a little bit over 2,300. in New Hampshire.

• So youth homelessness is up as well. I already gave you the data about one in every four.

• Homelessness among aging adults and medical frail is a huge area of our concern. New Hampshire is an aging state, and we're aging quickly. It's said that the number of people who were 55 and older in New Hampshire is set to double by 2040. So if we're seeing this increase in people who are aging in the homeless community now, like, it's just scary for what that looks like in the future. So.

Audience question: How is that ???

Jennifer Chisholm: Yeah, so that's a really great question. So the answer is, yes, different places do it a little bit differently. I can tell you what we do in Manchester, but what I will say is that places that are lucky enough to have outreach teams oftentimes really overrely on the relationships that they have or like places like the Way Station to be able to because you're able to, like for the week surrounding that 24 hours, you're able to like say, hey, where are you going to be staying on Wednesday night and then check in with people, okay, did you stay, like out? Were you in your campsite on Wednesday night to be able to collect that data over a broader period of time, but literally, there are crews of people. So in Manchester, there are crews of people, we meet at the library at four in the morning. We get assigned a room and some are walking routes. My husband and I had a driving route, so I was like out in parks on sort of the far ends of Manchester, like tromping around., there were snow on the ground, like looking for footprints. So then I could talk to Outreach team to be like, okay, go to Stark Park, in this corner of the park, you'll see a set of footprints and like, go and see if you can find somebody there.

Yeah, and so again, if you think about that, Manchester's tough enough, blow it up to the entire state to balance the state, like, mind blowing.

So we as part of our research, went around and did 10 round tables in the rural parts. So we haven't hit Manchester and Nashua yet, but we've hit Keen and the seacoast, and we came up to Littleton. We were in Lancaster, Ossipee, Claremont, down in Keen... across the state, 10 places. And so there were people here who were like beautiful and attended and gave us wonderful data. And so thank you again for all of that. We're still working on sorting through all of it because we've got so much information.

But based on the information that we got, one of the questions that we asked, is what's the most challenging population serving your area?

• And so the ones in yellow are the ones that touch aging adults. So this is aging adults, people who are medically vulnerable. So interestingly, the middle class working poor are people on fixed income was a huge concern for most service providers. We'll get to the economics of it. But we know that so there's people experiencing homeless now. But then there's this huge group of people who are teetering on the edge of it. There are so many people at risk. And so people who can't live independently, and then people with disabilities are mobility issues. And so those all kind of touch aging adults, right?

So I'm guessing that in my next year's report, we'll probably have a lot more data about our concerns about aging adults, because it's really sort of like all hands on deck. How can we figure this out?

Okay, let's talk economics for a minute. So affordable housing and the sort of gap in wages is what we do should be sort of the largest piece of pie. There's so much homelessness. Not only in New Hampshire, but across the nation. So this is some data about what it takes to afford housing, so specifically rental housing, and it's talking about a median, so average two bedroom apartment. And this is gross rent, so it includes your utilities as well. So New Hampshire housing does a really great job of putting out a report that kind of tackles all of this, so this is not my data, this is their data, that I'm sharing. But you can see, so it costs about a little over $1,800 a month to rent in New Hampshire for a two bedroom kind of on average, and they have some Carroll County data in the second. So the median renter income for a household is about $57,000 a year. But in order to afford that apartment, which HUD says affordinging your rent is like no more than 30% of your income, goes to rent and utilities. So in order to afford that $1,800 apartment, I would need to make $73,300 a year. I'll tell you that's more than I make in a year. So I'm a part time executive director. And, you know, so like, if I lost my relationship with my husband, if I didn't have savings or whatever, and if I didn't have a social network, like, I would be costburdened, right? So maybe I could find an apartment, but then I'd be paying, you know, so cost burden means that you're paying ... I have a friend who has a master's degree, she works for the university system, she's a single mom of a kid, and she pays over 50% of her income rent. So she lives in one of the most expensive parts of the state. You know, and she's a great tenant, but I get really worried for her, because actually they just sold her building and she's looking at another rent increase. I'm just like, Won't you come live in Manchester with me if you need to? Like So again, it comes to that like group of people who's really at risk.

And so the number of, if you were working at minimum wage in New Hampshire in order to forward this meeting two bedroom apartment, you would have to work 194 hours a week. So the problem is, well, A, 194 hours a week, B, like what's our minimum wage, $7.25 an hour? That's a problem. But there's only 168 hours in a week. So we don't know how to clone people yet. But so here's so Carroll County in and of itself, the numbers look a little bit better, but it's still pretty scary. So there's this gap of like $5,000 a year in the median wage for a renting household and a median two bedroom apartment. So there's this big gap.

So people just sort of like, at the start, are kind of behind the eight ball and are having cost burdens. And so just, you know, to talk about, again, sort of that like group at risk. If you have two kids under the age of five and daycare and it's not subsidized in the state of New Hampshire, the average cost is $32,000 a year right now. Like, insane that's some data from New Hampshire fiscal policy Institute. So if you think about people trying to work at like these non livable wages to afford rent, which is sky high, plus we' like, we won't even get into the price of eggs. And then daycare and all of that. It just makes it really, really, really hard. And this is why we have homelessness going up.

So what did I say? Oh, and so just if you're curious, only 50% of the rental units in Carroll County are affordable at that meaning. So, you know, and again, that's a lot that there's one county that it's only 4% co county, I believe, at their median income. So County's doing like, okay, but it's still terrible. You know?

Can we address how many are available, though? It's 0.01%. Yeah. So a healthy rental market in any healthy rental market, 5 to 8% of the apartments will be like ready to be turned over, right, to be rented. And we have been at less than 1% in New Hampshire for I don't even know how many years.

So the inventory. So we need to build ... things that are actually affordable. When you hear affordable housing, look into it, just know that the definition of affordable at the federal government is very specific. So there was a waiver that happened down in Manchester kind of near where I live, for some affordable apartments. Their rent was capped at $2,500 a month. I don't know about you. I bought my house in 2018, I'm, like, blessed enough to be a homeowner, and that's more than my mortgage and my escrow together.

You know, so were there other apartments that came in at deeply affordable? That's like a term to know, deeply affordable rates? Yes, but like to call $2,500 a month for an apartment affordable. This makes me sad.

Okay. I pulled some 211 data for Carroll County. So do people know what 211 is? The phone number that you can call 24/7, 365 days a year if you're just like, I'm need resources. So they'll answer and they have this great database of kind of agencies that they can send you to, et cetera, et cetera. And so since January of this year for Carroll County, 211 made 115 referrals to specifically emergency shelter, cold weather shelters, or to street outreach programs, and for housing related calls, which is like I need rental assistance, I can't afford my apartment. I need to find something that's like for people with low income or like senior housing I' on a fixed income. They made 159 referrals since the beginning of this year, just for this county alone.

And so when I talked to the person who got the data from over at 211, she was like, Make sure you explain this is the floor, not the ceiling. And what she meant by that is like, these are only the people or the referrals that were made because people knew that 211 existed and then were like, okay, I'm going to do the thing and I'm going to call them. Right.

And so again, like the homelessness numbers, there are more people out there who probably could use these referrals, but just don't know about their resources or, you know, for a load of different reasons I may not be making that phone call.

Hey, BJ., do you mind it? So I heard you were talking about caseload. Do you mind if I share. No, So it sounds like the local welfare office and correct me if I'm wrong. Right now, in Conway, has a caseload of just under 100 people. 91. 91 families.

Just to kind of, again, if you're taking a look at the causes of homelessness, poverty is one of them, and was interesting about that, and of the contacts, about half of them are between 50 and late 80s. Okay. First ever...

Yeah, I mean, the number of people when I lef... Manchester, the number of people that I was seeing living in cars or living out in tents who were like in their 70s, late 60s, 70s, had really grown. The number of people specifically, and this might sound a little odd, but thinking about medically frail, the number of people with the amputations, who were coming to stay at the shelter and sometimes, like, it's really hard for shelter providers because we have people who are really sick, people who experience long term homelessness will start to show like symptoms of illnesses in their 50s, that usually don't show up for the people who are lucky enough to have been housed, in their 70s. So there's like this 20-year period that they are showing all of this medical stuff. And so people who are, again, long-term homeless tend to ... have medical compromises, but our shelter system right now isn't necessarily set up to be able to provide that level of care, so there's is huge gap.

So we're working on trying to figure out what can happen about that, because it's a huge need in the state. But that brings us to kind of like, what can you do to help?

And I'm gonna do some myth busting here. So the first thing is education, which is you are here and like, again, I'm getting responsive the number of people in the room. So ... genuine thank you for being here and listening to me.

• So the majority of people experiencing homelessness are either from this, you know, their own community or have lived there for years and are kind of coming back. So there's this whole thing about, no, we're just getting everybody from like, you know, Manchester. It's coming up here at oh, like everybody from Conway is coming down to Manchester. The data shows naturally, that people tend to stick in their communities or like find their way back to their communities because their community is home. And so people can kind of like bounce around about saying that that never happens, but on the the whole, people are staying within their communities.

• And so there are so many people who are experiencing homelessness, and I hope from some of the information I've shared, you realize is that most have not experienced significant mental health or substance use disorder. We need to help those people who are, and, you know, so we need those resources. It's a big concern for the people at the Round Tables. You know, that was one of the things that came up. But with substance use in particular, excuse me, somebody who's experiencing homelessness and is using substances actually is more likely to have either started using substances or like that became problematic for them as a response to the trauma of being homeless. It did not cause their homelessness. So maybe they were dabbling. Like, I'm sure that there's plenty of us in the room who have done our dabbling, right? But you become homeless and then homelessness is trauma. And for those who have a substance use disorder and become homeless, like substance use is trauma, is trauma, is trauma, is trauma.

  And so I would argue that, you know, the stigma, is just another thing that really breaks my heart, because there is a reason that people are struggling with that, and it's tough. But the best predictor of beat homelessness is a lack of affordable housing. It's not mental health, it's not substance use disorder. I think, you know, we hear about that population a lot.

We don't hear about a gentleman that I worked with who worked for however many years and developed chronic health condition and wasn't the age of retirement and the disability system takes, you know, the six to eight months to make a decision, that if you need to make an appeal, if they deny you at first, which kind of they tend to, then that's on average, add another 11 months to be able to get that hearing, and so he's without income, because he can't work. Those aren't the people that we hear about.

So, okay, end rant. So what else do we have?

• So homelessness is not a choice.

• And so and there are plenty of people who are working, who are homeless. So either are employed, maybe underemployed, I was talking to somebody from Strafford County recently who was telling me about a client that they had who was just talking about like, listen, I do landscaping, but I'm like, unhoused right now, I don't have access to a shower because they just don't have those facilities in the area that he's in. And so can you imagine, like trying to keep a job when you're doing landscaping in 93 degree weather? And like, but don't have access to it. Like literally hasn't showered in two weeks. You know, like your boss might sort of have some concerns about that. It's really hard to like keep everything together in the chaos of living unsheltered.

• And then people experiencing homelessness are disproportionately likely to be victims of crime as opposed to the perpetrators of crime. And so understand that as well. So if I'm experiencing homelessness, I'm much more likely to have crime happen to me than for me to do something with somebody else. And I'll tell you my experience in the encampment with the number of people that I worked with ... the number of times that I was uncomfortable or, like, felt worried about safety was like, maybe you .00001% of the time. You know, so, and again, like, we hear about incidents, we don't hear about the like things that don't happen, right?

So that brings me to what can lead to homelessness?

• So, lack of truly, not just affordable housing, not the like $2,500 a month, but like deeply affordable housing, poverty, lack of livable wage. We talked about

• And a lot of times this is crisis-driven, so loss of a job.

• So loss of a home, right? And when I say loss of a home, it's not necessarily eviction because I didn't pay my rent. Maybe it is because I just couldn't pull the money together because of the terrible economy. But it could be because my landlord, we saw this whole rash of renovation evictions where landlords were saying, like, oh, we're going to renovate the apartment and they would have people leave. And then maybe like paint a wall and then bring back in a different set of people for like, sometimes like 800 a month or more for that rent. I literally had clients during COVID whose rent was raised like $400, $500, $600 a month. So it could be just like, maybe the propert was sold or maybe it just is a rent increase. Like my friend is facinh a rent increase that she just doesn't know she's going to be able to afford that for herself and her son, right?

• It could be health issues, like my gentleman who just like couldn't work anymore.

• It could be domestic violence. You know, so safety issues there.

• It could be a loss of relationship. One of the things in the aging population that we see is a major catalyst, I guess, is the death or loss of a spouse, but it could be a divorce, it could be a break up. So, lack of a social safety net, you know, like there were times in my youth that like, maybe I wasn't as smart with my money as I should have been and had to make the, like, call to my parents to be like, "Can I borrow $400? I can't make my rent this month or whatever." But not everybody has that. You know, I was blessed that [my parents] were just like, the idiot, yeah, right? And then still continued to support me. But not everybody has that.

• Transitioning out of systems, so whether that's foster care, whether that's going to incarceration, that's a really hard transition to make to kind of get on your feet.

  So if you think about the barriers of getting a well paying job, whether you are somebody who is 18 and truly on your own, or if you're somebody who's coming out of, you a prison, that can be really challenging.

• And then I also just added the slow and unresponsive systems that take a really long time to provide for help. So like my gentleman who is applying for disability, he was lucky enough that he this all happened during the time of COVID money in the state, so there was ways for us to keep him in his apartment while he was waiting for that really long decision process. But he would have been at the shelter otherwise. So he was 61, because he was just below being able to do his retirement, early retirement.

So another thing that I would suggest, if you haven't seen it, as far as education goes, if you're looking for some real stories about people who have experienced homelessness for one reason or another in the state, is WMUR's faces of homelessness Series https://www.wmur.com/article/faces-of-homelessness-wmur-new-hampshire/45522305. You can find it on their website, and it's wonderful.

You know, I think that it just gives you get like a personality and, you know, just like a story about it. So Joni is a face just living in Manchester that I would see all the time pan handling. And so unfortunately, she passed away in homelessness a couple of years ago.

Excuse me, but I would highly suggest taking a minute to watch that. and then, the other thing that I also say, especially when we're talking about when sheltered homelessness, doing some stigma busting is that there's a lot of reasons that people don't go into shelter, so sometimes I'll hear like, oh, they're not doing anything to help themselves. Like, they're not taking any, you know, any services or whatever.

• Well, like, where's the closest shelter to here? Do you think we've always like, offering somebody a shelter bed? There's no shelter in Carolroll County, right? ... yes, there's a domestic violence shelter ...so there is a specialized shelter. Thank you for breakfast Correction. There is a specialized shelter for people experiencing domestic violence in Carroll County. And so but for general population. So if I needed someplace to say, it's my understanding of B.J. Kirby, if I'm wrong, but that ends up going to like Littleton or Lancaster. If they have open beds, and if somebody's willing to travel that far.. Or Laconia.

• .You know, and I may not want to because maybe I have my job here, or my family here, maybe my daughter's here.

• So sometimes it's about being separated because it could be like that gender separation, and couples can't stay together.

• And so there can be like a real safety concern before that, for individuals, pets and emotional support animals, generally aren't allowed in most shelters. I have four cats and a dog. I couldn't leave them.

• Like, I gained my car. So, I'm concerned about possessions, because oftentimes if you're standing in the shelter, you only get like one bag worth of stuff. or whatever.

• So oftentimes there's like challenges with shelter schedule requirements. So if I have a job where I work at night, where I have to be there by 7 p.m to get a bed. And some are more flexible than others.

• Again, trauma history, it just could not feel safe. I have somebody in my personal life, who died in homelessness by suicide, and they would not go to the shelter because they had such a complex trauma history. He, you know, between stuff that happened when a kid and the military trauma as well, and just like being in a shelter and that congregate environment, he just couldn't couldn't do it, couldn't do it. Anxiety and fear, domestic violence, and the fear that you're going to be found, right, if you're not in one of those more specialized shelters.

• Local shelters, it might be that local shelters aren't low barriers, to find somebody who is drinking alcohol or using substances.

• It might be like you can't use or you can't come in like inebriated or under the influence, you know, so it might be too high barrier I might not be able to like meet that.

• On the flip side of the coin, it could be that I'm not going into the shelter because it is a little bigger shelter and I'm a person in early recovery and I can't be around that. There are people who are intoxicated around me because that's going to put my recovery at risk.

• So we need like this spectrum, I would say, of services and meet different needs for different people.

• And then another thing is just no bed availability. So bed availability is generally right around zero in the state right now, both in the winter, and oftentimes in the summer, too, is what we're hearing, which is like a shift over a number of years. So. What do we got?

What haven't I covered?

I want to make sure, rural versus urban. Let's talk about that.

So, challenges that we, I'll say, okay, so in mention, people don't know Manchester. There's like the east side of Manchester, where most of the stuff is, and then there's the west side, and it's like a Catholic Medical Center and a bunch of rural neighborhoods. So for me, as a social worker, a case manager, a Manchester getting somebody from the West Side to come into our medical clinic on the East Side was like such a headache. We have a bus system. We have Uber and Lyft, we have like transportation options, right? I don't know how y'all do it up here. You know, like one of the things that I learned, again, like Manchester Blinders, right, I just make the assumption that like, you all can get stuff from Amazon in two days or in one day, like I can. And that there's like Lyft and you just like whatever time it is you can get a ride to where you need to go. Not the case. And so transportation, when we did the roundtables, is one of the huge, like one of the largest barriers, because the, like, trying to scale up services for the need and like, it doesn't. There's so many people that need help, but there's only so much money and so many places that you can put things, which means that you end up having to send people to Laconia for a shelter, you know, or the Way Station, I'm sure that you have people kind of end up coming in from different places. ...

One of the other things, you know, not to say that homelessness is in visible at all here. So when I was sitting outside, waiting for this to start, I got here earlier, I was sitting in my car. And so there was somebody who I'm making an assumption. My guess is that they' experiencing homelessness actively. Just based on their presentation, which, again, assumption. But what would ask me for money. And so, oh, okay, so that's cool.

But in rural areas, the homelessness tends to be much less visible. In Manchester, if you walk down down to the main drag downtown, play, it's it's there. If you're in the park, it's there. And so there's that piece of like people not necessarily understanding it's an issue, especially to the integrity that it is.

And, you know, we can link that back to, if it's invisible, it's hard to count, if it's hard to count, it's hard to get money to solve the problem, right? Let me see, what else?

I mean, the fact that it's so that it's so out there in the major cities of Portland, Manchester, it makes it front page news, right? So when you have these little changes in the laws and they want to start breaking up the camp, it becomes a really big story, both right? And so people are very aware of the problem. Yeah, I think I think people are very aware of the problem, and definitely it's in the news.

So, interestingly, so there was this Supreme Court decision, like a couple of years ago now, like last year, that said that municipalities, towns, and cities can, if people are staying on public land, they can either arrest or find them. Even if there's no place for them to go. So if there's no shelter bed availability.

And so Manchester was the first city in the nation to make a change to their local ordinance to say, oh, yes, we can arrest you, or they went fine. So they didn't criminalize it, but they't put the fine. So there's a $200 fine if you know, sleeping in public, a public park in Manchester, which is, you know, people aren't going to be able to afford that, which then it's a whole thing.

I would argue it's not solving problem. You know, and so you're right. So like they jumped on that, it made a big splash, you know, sometimes there are encampment clearings, they made a big splash. And so it's on people's minds.

And I think that the myth busting still means to happen because I think people don't truly understand the why of it. So it's definitely definitely out there, but we need to do a lot of like better job of explaining sort of like how people end up in these situations because unfortunately, you know, I see that one of my jobs is really just humanizing, people who are experiencing homelessness. Like these are our neighbors.

Audience question: I'm curious about what the other peripheral difficulties there are for people that are homeless, like registering to vote, who didn't realize there's univeral signup for Medicare, that.

Jennifer Chisholm: Yeah, yep. Well, we're really concerned.

• So there were some changes or impending changes with Medicaid that I guess we're putting a work requirement. And so if you think about the amount of documentation that goes with that.

• And so, you know, I've, I've had plenty of clients who, when their encampment got cleared, they lost all of their documentation, right? And so like just trying to manage that documentation, you know, there was somebody who lost her husband's ashes, which was like, just a heart wrenching, but they just kind of like, scoop..

• But yeah, so trying to vote, every time I go to vote, I ask the poor people at my voting station, I'm always like, okay, and if I don't have an ID, then what do I do? If I don't have an address for what do I do, just to make sure that they can tell me the answer. So there are ways, but it's like, really complicated, then if you be like, how am I going to know where? How am I going to, like, get there and all of that? So it's like another vulnerable voice ... you know, doesn't have the voice.

• And so I'll tell you that applying for like disability takes well, it takes a PhD and in those sorts of systems, it could be really complex, the people work with a lot of things that you have to sign, you get back to a lot of equipments to go to.

And so when you're just trying to manage where am I staying tonight and how am I going to pay myself? then that makes it extra extra difficult. Even when you have a case manager.

• So one of the things that we found in the roundtables is that people are saying, we need more case managers, more social workers, to be able to like sit with people to like help walk them through these really complex systems and kind of keep them on target and remind them of dates and all of that stuff.

• Like, you know, our phone, we live and die by our phone. It's the keeper of everything. And so sometimes, well, if they can afford a phone that, no, no, no, no, I want them to have a phone that reminds them that they have their disability, like, you know, real appointments or whatever. So it makes already difficult application processes that much more difficult.

Audience question: I'm sure there's no rent control. So the landlord, and there's no cap on how much landlords can increase. Their rent..

Jennifer Chisholm: So I would agree with you. I think in the live free or die state, that's going to be a tough sell. This legislative session, I'll say unfortunately, there was a bill HB60 that passed, that makes it easier for landlords. So landlords no longer starting next July, have to give a just cause for people. And so that means like, can be evicted, even though you paid your rent on time and you were a great tenant or whatever, like, they might, it makes it easier for discrimination. It makes it easier to, like, move people on so that you can find somebody who can afford that extra $700 or month. That was a really tough hit.

Okay, so ... Thank you. so much.