Pubdate: Sun, 20 Mar 2005
Source: Boston Globe (MA)
Copyright: 2005 Globe Newspaper Company
Contact:  http://www.boston.com/globe/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/52
Author: Sam Allis

THE END OF THE LINE

A Mat And A Meal For The Homeless Downtown

Marty Miller's on a billboard in Medford.

His homely puss greets you above Mystic Avenue just off the exit ramp
coming south on Interstate 93. He is, literally, the poster boy for
the Boston Rescue Mission, the oldest continuously run shelter in the
city, which has been serving the homeless since 1899. Next to his
photo is the following: ''Drug dealer at 16. State prison at 22.
Homeless at 47. Enrolled in college and employed at 49." The man gets
endless grief about his new fame. His answer: ''It beats the post office."

He should know. Over three decades, Miller, 51, has done time for
heroin possession, financial scams, robbery, driving to endanger. He's
had a rasher of DWIs and a wife who evaporated ages ago. There was a
year of sobriety once, then a five-year stretch of clean before it all
went dirty again. Girlfriend, job, car -- all gone. Heroin. Always
heroin.

During Vietnam, the Army took one look at him and, in his words, said,
''No thanks." Miller, a diminutive pear-shape with the cigarette rasp
of a cartoon gangster, works evenings running the BRM's wet shelter on
Kingston Street in downtown Boston. (A wet shelter takes the homeless
in any condition. The Pine Street Inn, among other programs, is also
wet.) He estimates that maybe three-quarters of the 65 men who crash
there are high on something. Contraband is verboten so you watch for
the water bottles in their pockets. After the lights go down, he
checks the bathrooms for needles and other drug paraphernalia that can
clog the toilets.

The men start lining up outside the Kingston House, as the place is known,
after 6 every evening. Doors open at 7, earlier if it's really cold. David
Faulcon, who works with Miller, checks names as they troop in while Miller
passes
out blankets. Some good soul donated 3,000 of them last year. Home Style
Laundry in Beverly lets the BRM use its washing machines to get the scabies
out.
Miller maintains his patter: ''Jason, are you going to take a shower
tonight?" And: ''Anthony, you don't look so good."

They arrive with headphones and sunglasses and gym bags and windburn.
They've been out in nowhere all day. Everyone's up at 5 and out of the
BRM every morning at 6:30 after breakfast. Then maybe it's over to the
day shelter at nearby St. Francis House, or Borders bookstore, South
Station, the Boston Public Library. ''It truly is a lousy existence,"
says Miller. They know the drill when they arrive: Stake your claim to
a blue mat on the floor and head downstairs for a hot meal. There are
no tables. They eat on their feet or slumped on their mats. A few take
showers. A Latino without much English mimes his need for toilet paper.

They walk and shuffle and limp and stagger in. Some are sober. Stevie,
all gums like a newborn, says he's been off booze for 11 years but
concedes, beaming, that he smokes the weed now and again.

There are groups of hard-core drunks Miller calls ''bottle gangs."
There are those who have soiled their clothes and must be spoon-fed
their supper. The men often help each other out. There are those who
have drunk so much Listerine that their stomachs bleed and they're a
mess when they hit the shelter. ''We get the bottom of the barrel,"
says Miller.

He is stating a fact, not making a judgment. Miller, after all, was
one of them -- in and out of the place for months before getting and
staying clean more than three years ago. He went through the BRM's
post-detox program upstairs and then its residential unit. Today, he
has a place of his own and has begun courses toward a bachelor of arts
degree at UMass-Boston. Some men drop immediately. Doing nothing for
long periods of time does that to you. The rest are down after dinner
and the lights are out by 8. A guy with headphones sings loudly in
Spanish, prompting a symphony of epithets. There's wheezing and
snoring and moaning. A speechless drunk from Guatemala materializes on
his knees in the doorway. Faulcon calls 911. The emergency medical
technicians come to see if he can enter the building under his own
steam. He eventually does.

Miller and Faulcon ride herd on two floors of men on mats. They take
turns watching the lower floor on a monitor. The shelter can get
violent. There are rare calls to the police amid less-serious events.
One guy was discovered making a robust meal of his own in the middle
of the night after having unscrewed the refrigerator doors.

The BRM is a Christian mission, a faith-based nonprofit living, in
part, off of taxpayers' dollars. The sign over the cafeteria serving
area reads, ''Jesus is the head of this household." There is voluntary
Bible study and religious services. So what's a card-carrying member
of the ACLU to do with this? Make a stand over church-state
separation? Nope. There are other places to pick that fight. If
there's a problem with the BRM shelter, aside from the state-funding
cuts, it's the lack of facilities for women.

Miller is no holy roller. He's more concerned with staying sober. He's
not out of the woods by a long shot and knows that running the shelter
improves his chances. ''It keeps it green," he explains.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin