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Homeless in RI: First Snow Falls. Meet Joe, Chris, and Vicky
December 13, 2025/
As snow is forecast for tonight, and emergency shelters are few and far between, we hope the information on shelters and emergency pop-up locations is accessible to those in need.
Refer to this list, being update daily:
From the Publisher: Recently realizing that I was going to be very early to an appointment, and also that I had neglected to have anything to eat since early morning, I stopped at a McDonald’s for coffee and – ahem – fries. I pulled into the way-back parking lot, listening to talk radio, enjoying my snack, and watching the time. Tara Granahan was on with her noon tal show on WPRO. She was talking about homelessness. What can be done. How her informal calls to police chiefs and town managers resulted in as accurate a count as the exhaustive Rhode Island effort to dispatch counters into communities to “count” where homeless people are – not going too far into the woods – definitely counting those on park benches or in retail vestibules. And yet, RI is about to “count” again – in January – along with the rest of the country – this year done by the state agency and now the nonprofit advocacy group (which has quietly moved out of their offices to location unknown). Every state will be doing this. One wonders what President Trump would do if he focused on it. The sheer wastefulness of the effort, over and over again, that does nothing to reduce homelessness anywhere.
Back to McDonald’s – as I sipped my coffee and enjoyed each and every skinny fry – I saw a bright blue image in the temperate forests – a big chunk of land in this municipal city that had been stripped of its leaves that hide reality to us. As I looked deeper I saw a black image – then a faded yellow one. I started the car and drove parallel to the wooded area. More tents. And then an opening – almost like a young child would build to his hidden backyard wooded camping area. Hmm. Lots of tents – a veritable small village, long there, you could tell. You could tell by the garbage and papers strewn everywhere. Not a person was to be seen. A white car drove up and parked parallel to the woods. No one got out. No one came up to it. I stayed as long as I could, determined to see a drug sale or a contribution of blankets or food. Nothing. The car sat there. I left.
I could not imagine propane tanks burning heat in the wood that would go up like a matchstick with one accident. As they have in Providence several times. People burned. Possessions destroyed. Firefighters’ lives at risk. But, some advocates do. A true loss of reasonable alternatives.
As I ponder this scenario and wonder what could be done by a group of very entrenched, probably resistant people living in the woods behind a McDonalds, uncovered for the winter by the heartless trees that also gave community, we share this more personal writing of Bernie Boudreau – as he tells the stories of 3 homeless neighbors. Read it now. Read it when the snow begins to fall tonight. What is the answer?
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Bernie Boudreau, a tireless advocate for people experiencing homelessness, has been interviewing individuals in Rhode Island to share their stories. Here is his latest:
I met Joe over a year ago. He has a daily routine of assisting customers with a shopping cart at my local grocery store, saving them the step of putting in a quarter to release a cart and then returning it to get their quarter returned. People take notice of his homelessness and many donate a buck or two. Some shop first and offer him food which he appreciates. Joe garners just enough to survive camped in the woods.
At 65 years old, Joe has been in a tent in the woods “for many years” he told me. He’s learned how to survive the weather and take care of himself and has a propane heater for the coldest nights. During the winter most of his money is used for propane to keep warm at night. A family member buys the tanks with Joe’s money and drops them in a spot at the edge of the woods where Joe walks a distance to retrieve them. Joe says he’s tired of living this way. He’d like to get out of the woods but won’t go to a shelter. He’d have to lose all of his survival gear to go to a shelter, which he has tried in the past and felt unsafe.
Joe welcomed Vicky and Chris, a younger couple, over a year ago to camp out next to him. Joe told me that he prefers to camp alone but welcomed them as he could see they needed his help and guidance. I met Vicky a month ago, while she was sitting with Joe at the supermarket. She told me that she and her husband Chris lost their apartment when the landlord raised the rent beyond their ability to pay. She said that Chris was traveling daily to the Boston area working as a concrete pourer.
When I met Chris yesterday, taking his turn to ask for donations in front of the grocery market, he told me that the concrete company hasn’t called him in over a month so he’s out of work and money right now. I guessed that he was with Vicky, Joe’s neighbor in the woods. We spoke about the 10 degree weather forecast for tonight (Monday, December 8th) and I asked if they had what they needed to keep from freezing. He said they could use whatever we could give. So I went home and my wife washed and dried an extra large quilted blanket we had in the closet. We packed some snacks and fruit and I visited their encampment yesterday afternoon. Chris and Vicky were very thankful for the blanket and food. I gave Joe a small bag of snacks and fruit and he thanked me as well, on behalf of his neighbors who really were unsure about how to survive the cold.
According to the HUD Point In Time count of homelessness, there were 618 unsheltered homeless in our state in January 2025, a 15.7 percent increase over 2024. An unknown portion of this number are hunkered down in encampments and the rest sleep in doorways, under bridges, in alleyways and out in the open. We don’t know how many of these folks will experience frostbite, hypothermia or worse tonight. The overnight shelters will be open, but will all who are outside without a tent be able to find them and be helped?
I asked an outreach worker friend with twenty years experience reaching out to homeless and encamped folks, what we could do to help people in tents and encampments throughout the state–who for many reasons a congregate overnight shelter is not a practical option as they can’t protect their camp possessions and they feel unsafe. She said that for now, they need propane heaters and a supply of tanks through the winter months, in addition to help with food and medical care. Until these folks have the option of staying in a non-congregate shelter (like Echo Village) or in subsidized apartments they will choose to survive, with help from the community, as best they can, camping even through the winter.
This is part of the massive and growing crisis of the severe lack of affordable housing in Rhode Island. Until the supply can approach meeting the needs, we must acknowledge that the hundreds of unsheltered homeless need an increased effort of state government matched with community resources to survive.
Bernie Beaudreau Community Volunteer, Rumford, RI
We are grateful for your compassion & greater social justice efforts. Thank you Bernie.