Roughing it

 

Keith D. Hill, 36, gathers wood and starts a fire at his Keene encampment Saturday evening.

The sun has barely set and it’s 29 degrees outside, but Hill does not have a place to go home to. Instead, he has lived for the past few weeks in a marshy, thorn-infested patch of woods where he thinks he’s unlikely to be discovered.

Hill lives by himself at his campsite, but he’s not alone in his situation. Matthew S. Primrose, path outreach worker for Monadnock Family Services, is out in the woods three times a week, speaking to people with nowhere else to go.

Mid- to late fall is Primrose’s busiest time. As the temperature drops, more and more homeless people search for services, and local shelters are often already full, he said.

The Hundred Nights Shelter on Lamson Street, which serves as a nightly warming shelter, does not open until the first day of winter. Until it does, Primrose said many living outside have to bide their time or accept shelter outside the area.

“They’re stuck between a rock and a hard place,” Primrose said.

Hill and his wife and four children have been homeless since October 2009, when Hill lost his job. The family fell behind on the rent and were evicted, he said. They lived in hotels through the first winter, but quickly ran out of money. Hill went out to the woods for the early spring and his wife and children moved into her cousin’s house in Keene.

The family came back together to live at the Surry Mountain Campground, where they spent April through October. During the first two months they were in tents, but then a woman offered them a camper she wasn’t using, and they spent four months in that until the campground closed last month.

The family lived at the Valley Green Motel for a few weeks at $300 per week, but quickly ran out of money, leaving them back in the situation they faced last winter, Hill said.

“We’re just a normal family and we had normal things and normal lives, but then everything went bad,” Hill said.

Hill said the family applied for housing through Southwestern Community Services in Keene when they first lost their house, but were denied.

When he looked for assistance through the city of Keene, he was directed to the crowded Federal Street shelter, where he and his family would have had to sleep in the living room, he said.

He says he and his family slipped through the cracks.

Finding work and a place to live has been difficult, in part because Hill has a criminal record. Hill’s crime was an assault 12 years ago, he said, and he has been clean since.

His campsite consists of a low tent, a pile of wood and a small cleared space for a fire. In his tent he keeps his food and an Army-issue sleeping bag he’s borrowing from a friend.

He only goes there at night, spending the day with his children and looking for work.

His youngest is three years old, and has spent nearly half of his life homeless, Hill said.

Last year, several homeless people lived in the woods behind Hannaford’s Supermarket on West Street in a group encampment called “Tent City.” Primrose said the number of people living outside this time of year hasn’t improved since then.

Southwestern Community Services has done a lot to help pull people out of the woods, however, Primrose said.

But while Primrose isn’t aware of any larger encampments like Tent City this year, he is aware of many people living outside.

Hill will remain outside until he can find a way to improve his situation.

Hill knows his family is struggling, but he wants better than a homeless shelter for himself and his family, and refuses to move into one, he said.

“I guess I’m just really stubborn. Who knows, maybe I’ll be out here for the whole winter.”