Outreach teams race to protect Boston's vulnerable in heatwave

Boston Globe

24-06-2025

Pine Street Inn is Boston's
'If we see someone on the street, absolutely we're helping them,' Reading said. 'Whether they're our client or not.'
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Sitting in a wheelchair in the shade outside the West End Library, Rob Snyder, 56, graciously accepted two 8 oz. Good Life water bottles and Nutri-Grain bars del Valle produced from her backpack. Snyder said his main priority that day was avoiding a repeat of last weekend's incident.
Del Valle and Reading spoke to Rob Snyder in Cambridge Street in Boston.
David L Ryan/ Globe Staff
'Saturday, I had a heat stroke right over by the Copley Library. That was my third one,' he recalled. 'It's tough. It just takes a toll on you. You can't always predict when it's going to hit, but I've learned to stay in the shade whenever I can.'
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Sitting just a few yards away, 61-year-old David Bard wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand after accepting water and Nutri-Grain bars from the outreach workers.
'Brutal,' he said of the heat. 'But I've got nowhere to go.'
Bard said he's been living on the streets for 24 years and is currently battling multiple forms of cancer, including pancreatic and lung. The extreme heat, he said, only exacerbates his symptoms.
'It makes me nauseous, exhausted,' he said. 'Too much. Too much.'
He said he tried to find shelter to ride out the heat wave, but capacity limits kept him on the street.
'Everyone is already booked up,' Bard said. 'There's never no place for us to go.'
As del Valle and Reading spoke with Bard, sharing suggestions for other places he might seek shelter, two residents of nearby Beacon Hill, Anna Schoenfeld and Deborah Bennett, approached with a tote bag full of water bottles they had just purchased from the Target a block away, which they handed to the outreach workers to distribute to more people on the street.
Reading and del Valle walked under the Longfellow Bridge in Boston.
David L Ryan/ Globe Staff
'We were hot, they were hot,' Schoenfeld said. 'We walk by here all the time and saw people out in the sun. We just wanted to make sure they had enough water.'
Later, sitting in a shaded concrete walkway outside North Station, 39-year-old Joe Joe, who chose not to disclose his last name, distributed wet wipes, sunscreen, and other toiletries handed out by the outreach workers to several of his fellow homeless friends gathered around his wheelchair.
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'You've just got to find a cool place,' said Joe Joe, who's spent 23 years — more than half his life — living on the streets. 'I got a bunch of 'em, but I can't tell you — then other people find them.'
There are worse things to deal with than the heat, in his opinion.
'Summer's easier than winter,' he said. 'But it all depends if we got somewhere to go.'
Moments later, an MBTA employee emerged from the nearby North Station entrance and informed the small gathering they couldn't remain in the area. Joe Joe and his friends dispersed back into the sunlight, searching for another shady refuge. Meanwhile, del Valle and Reading began the trek back to their office, their once-heavy backpacks now nearly empty.
Nathan Metcalf can be reached at