ECHO Village opens after years of delays

Rico Ramey was one of a kind.

The forty-eight-year-old from Providence had an ear for hip hop and loved laying down a beat with his cousins. An Eagles fan, he rooted his team on this year for what became a Super Bowl-winning season. He attended Hope High School on the city’s East Side. More than anything, he loved the outdoors.

Ramey, who spent time on the streets in the Smith Hill neighborhood, passed away suddenly in January. According to homeless advocates, he froze to death on the streets of Providence. Janice Luongo, editor of Street Sights newspaper, recalled him recently in an editorial as well as a story in RINewsToday. The young man, she says, was a gentle soul who declined help beyond breakfast and a cup of coffee.

“He was a great kid. He really was. There’s just no need that this happened to him,” she told Rhode Island Monthly.

Ramey was remembered this week during a dedication of ECHO Village, the newly opened and much delayed Pallet shelter village off Route 146 in Providence. A speaking program marked the celebratory occasion, which featured a marching band and included tours of the shelters for lawmakers and reporters.

House Speaker Joseph Shekarchi mentioned Ramey in his remarks about the state’s funding priorities. The newly opened shelter village cost an estimated $4.6 million, including state and municipal funds.

“We can do all the programming we want, but if a person doesn’t have a safe place to sleep at night, what does it all mean?” Shekarchi said. “Just recently, Rico, one of our unhoused neighbors, froze to death not too far from here, and there are probably others we don’t know about.”

State Sen. Jake Bissaillon, whose district includes the Pallet shelter village, also paid tribute to Ramey.

“I know it’s cold out, and I appreciate the speaker for mentioning Rico, who many would recognize from Smith Hill, who passed away tragically about two weeks ago.”

According to homeless advocates, there have been others. In December, the Rhode Island Homeless Advocacy Project held a vigil outside the State House for the estimated fifty-four individuals who died while living outside last year. As of January 2024, 534 people were living unsheltered in the state, while the total number of homeless individuals stood at 2,442. By contrast, the state has approximately 1,400 emergency shelter beds, according to the latest numbers from the Department of Housing.

ECHO Village is expected to make a small dent in those numbers. The settlement on state land near the highway on-ramp from Douglas Avenue includes forty-five seventy-square-foot units, each equipped to house one person. The units are heated and cooled and include fire suppression systems, fire-retardant paint and doors that lock. The village has bathroom units along with showers and office space for outreach workers.

The ceremony marked the culmination of a long journey for House of Hope CDC, the Warwick-based homeless services provider that championed its opening for more than five years. In remarks during the dedication, Laura Jaworski, the organization’s executive director, recalled that effort, which began during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. The project, she says, grew out of the need for alternative housing options expressed by those experiencing homelessness.

“By November of 2020, we had identified our first potential site for ECHO. But after six attempts across the state, we finally found our home here on Victor Street,” she said.

The shelters were installed on the site last year, but faced continued delays due to a lack of infrastructure and a decision to classify the units as hotel or dorms, as Rhode Island Fire Marshal Timothy McLaughlin told a legislative commission in December. That decision meant the shelters had to be fitted with individual fire suppression systems according to the state’s fire code.

In comments on Tuesday, Amy King, the founder of the company that supplied the shelters, praised the village’s supporters for their perseverance and called it one of their “longest sites to date.” The shelters, she said, have previously been installed in thirty-one states and three provinces.

“I hope and I’m excited for the people who come to live here [that] when they go to bed at night, they can know that the walls around them were built by someone that walked the journey that they are on that has successfully exited that, and I hope that gives them hope,” she said, referencing the company’s model of hiring formerly homeless individuals to build the units.

McKee on Tuesday responded to questions from reporters about the delays.

“We’ll regroup and take a look at the process here, but I think you’re going to find out that a lot had to do with the site being a raw site, and you had to bring utilities in,” he said. “That was certainly the thing that I get from the contractor here, but we’ll look at and we’ll do a regroup on the strategy.”

Last month, Shekarchi introduced a bill that would lessen regulatory hurdles for shelters similar to those manufactured by Pallet, exempting cities and towns from fire and building codes for 180 days if they declare a state of emergency.

“We — everybody here, me included — we need to do more, and we need to do better,” Shekarchi said on Tuesday.

McKee has previously resisted calls to declare a statewide emergency over the homelessness crisis. He repeated that position on Tuesday.

“It doesn’t bring federal money in, and I’m not going to violate local fire laws and regulations. Just talk to the fire departments about why they were put in,” he said.

While the opening of ECHO Village represented a significant step for House of Hope CDC, not everyone was satisfied with the celebration. Luongo told Rhode Island Monthly she and others boycotted the dedication because they were unhappy the village’s unhoused residents were not onsite for the ceremony.

According to Jaworski, residents were expected to begin moving into the village on Wednesday, with the transition taking place in small groups over several weeks. Residents, she said, would go through the state’s Coordinated Entry System and be prioritized based on highest need, longest time homeless and highest barrier to finding shelter.

“This project is targeted for folks who are chronically homeless, the folks who normally haven’t been able to shelter for any number of reasons, but mostly because our shelter system has said, ‘We can’t shelter you here,’” she said. “We took in that ‘no’ pile, and all the reasons why our system has said ‘no’ to someone, and we’re trying to turn that around to get to ‘yes.’

John Chiellini Jr., who was formerly homeless and now works as a community health worker for bosWell, also spoke at Tuesday’s dedication. House of Hope, he says, was instrumental in helping him find stable housing when he was struggling with substance use and PTSD after spending time in prison.

“It wasn’t just about having a roof over my head. It was about having a foundation to rebuild my life. Without stable housing, I could not address other critical needs,” he said.

“These tiny homes represent the same opportunities for others. Without House of Hope, I wouldn’t be here today.”

ECHO Village is one of two new emergency shelter options the state celebrated this week. On Thursday, the Department of Housing announced the opening of sixteen additional beds at the former Charlesgate nursing home specifically for older adults experiencing homelessness. That shelter will be operated by Amos House and is expected to expand to forty beds by early March.

 

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