Councilors discuss repurposing city-owned vacant buildings to add homeless shelters; motion kept for future meetings

At the April 3 Student Government Day city council session, Councilor Louie Giuffre proposed a motion to plan, develop and build additional homeless shelters by repurposing abandoned city-owned buildings and to launch a public-awareness campaign about homelessness in Peabody.

The council heard background from the director of health and human services, who said Peabody currently tracks roughly a dozen people sleeping outdoors and that several nearby shelter providers operate larger or weather‑emergency facilities (for example Citizens Inn). The director said the city could consider partnering with nonprofits and neighboring towns to expand shelter capacity.

On available inventory, the director of community development said the city had "under five" vacant buildings that might be candidates but cautioned many are in poor condition and “we just wouldn't be comfortable with people living in them right now.” The finance director told councilors the city would need to own any building to convert it and, absent grant funding, construction or conversion would be paid from the municipal budget.

When asked about current homeless counts, the director said: "So as of right now, for the homeless, there's 12 people that we've are aware of that are homeless... There are 12 people living outdoors." The director also said that a January homeless census is conducted to count people living outside.

Council discussion covered whether to expand capacity at existing providers such as Citizens Inn versus building new capacity, the potential use of grant funding, and public outreach strategies (social media and flyers were mentioned). The council agreed to keep the proposal on the agenda for future meetings rather than vote immediately, and asked staff to provide more exact counts, shelter-condition assessments for candidate properties and funding options.