NORTHAMPTON — Her work began in local church basements: finding a different place each night for those without homes to spend the winter. Since those initial efforts in the mid-1990s, Yvonne Freccero has built a full-fledged organization dedicated to the homeless in Hampshire County, establishing an emergency shelter on Center Street and two permanent housing options for people who were once homeless, one of which is named after her.
“She’s raised the voice of the homeless in Northampton,” said Rick Hart, who succeeded Freccero as president of the Friends of Hampshire County Homeless Individuals.
As the second annual Daily Hampshire Gazette “Person of the Year,” Freccero, 86, of Florence is lauded by many for her continued commitment to sheltering those who find themselves without a home they can count on. Since handing over the president’s role several years ago, she has focused on raising money for the organization, which is now looking to purchase a home for unaccompanied homeless youth.
The Gazette will host a gathering in her honor at the Hadley Farms Meeting House on April 4 from 5 to 7 p.m. As this year’s winner, Freccero will receive $500, half of which she can keep, and half of which she can donate to the organization of her choice.
A committee led by United Way executive director James Ayres selected Freccero from a list of 26 nominees, Gazette events coordinator Laura Dintino said. Though it was a tough decision, Gazette Publisher Dennis Skoglund said Freccero stood out for her work on homelessness.
“There are so many good people out there who volunteer for good causes who don’t really want to be recognized but deserve recognition,” he said. “This is just a really small way of recognizing all the volunteerism in Hampshire County.”
In addition to the Interfaith Cot Shelter, the Friends of Hampshire County Homeless Individuals started two houses in Northampton. Purchased in 2008 and known as Yvonne’s House, a building on Straw Avenue houses six chronically homeless individuals and is now operated and run by ServiceNet. The organization purchased another duplex on Maple Street in 2011, for people recovering from substance abuse, which is managed by Gandara Center.
Freccero grew up in England during World War II, in the small southern town of Totnes. “We were always expected to be doing something for others,” she said.
Living near Plymouth, England, which was devastated by a series of bombing raids during the Blitz, Freccero said she was all too familiar with homelessness. “When you’re young and you see this it stays with you,” she said.
She went on to study languages at the University of Exeter, the first in her family to attend college, and began working for the British Passport Control, which took her to Austria, Israel, Greece and Germany. “Refugees are the same the world over, it’s really sad,” she said, remarking on how similar today’s refugee crisis seems to the post-WWII climate she observed.
Freccero first came to Northampton in 1976, when she began working as the registrar at Smith College. She moved away in the late 1980s and returned to retire here in 1996, when she said she “almost immediately” began to devote herself to aiding the homeless. She said she was answering a call from her neighbor, then-mayor Mary Ford, who asked local churches to provide emergency overnight shelter after a homeless man had frozen to death on the railway tracks.
Peg Keller, the city’s housing and community development coordinator, said she began working with Freccero around this time, as part of a team that was searching for a more permanent site for a winter shelter. The shelter first found a site on Holly Street, then later on Masonic Street, before settling in the current space in the former Elks building on Center Street. This wasn’t always an easy process, as some city residents resisted the idea of a shelter in their neighborhood, but Freccero “never faltered,” Keller said.
Keller described Freccero as “always thinking big, always planning, always trying to put pieces together — just kind of a force of nature that we have all grown to love and respect.”
One of Freccero’s many skills, Keller said, is remembering who says they’ll do what, and reminding them to do it. Hart echoed this praise, saying Freccero’s outreach has been crucial in educating the public about their cause and bringing in donations. “If you talk with her for any length of time you usually find yourself volunteering,” he said.
Or, as Freccero explains it: “If you tap them on the shoulder, they’ll help.”
Smith professor Anna Botta, who came to know Freccero through the college, now volunteers at the Interfaith Cot Shelter. Botta taught a class Freccero audited several years ago, and now teaches a book Freccero translated from Italian, “The Wind in My Hair,” about a Palestinian refugee, in a course of hers titled “Cosmopolitanisms.” She described Freccero as both “very generous” and intellectually curious.
“I really am both humbled and a little stunned by this, because as I get older I’m not doing as much,” Freccero said, emphasizing that she thinks there are many other community members just as deserving. “When I saw the ad in the Gazette I sat down and thought: the trouble is, I could nominate 50 people.”
Stephanie McFeeters can be reached at smcfeeters@gazettenet.com.