NORTHAMPTON — Off a section of the Manhan Rail Trail near the Mill River leads a path to a wooded area with around a dozen tents, clustered together as if forming a small, wooded city. Further along the banks of the Mill River lay more tents, spaced out from one another like a suburban sprawl.
Several residents who live in this encampment recently spoke to the Gazette about how they came to live there, although none would give their names.
One young woman said she had recently returned to the camp after being in jail for one month. She had been living in the camp prior to her arrest, and said she thought the camp had improved its condition in her time away.
“It’s my home, where I live for now, it’s all cleaned up and spiritually the energy is much better,” she said. “I’m sober, I’m clean, and I’m getting an apartment soon, I hope.”
An older man said he lost his home shortly after COVID due to foreclosure and had struggled with addiction issues in the past. He said he lived in a tent further down from some of the other sites, and was working to try and get a job and secure housing.
“I never thought in my wildest days I’d be homeless,” he said. “It’s really rough.”
These individuals certainly are not alone. Across western Massachusetts, the number of people struggling with homelessness has continued to increase, with myriad factors contributing to the cause.
Advocates have stressed the role the ongoing housing crisis plays in the contribution to the rise in homelessness. According to the nonprofit National Low Income Housing Coalition, the hourly wage needed for a two-bedroom apartment in Massachusetts is $45.90 an hour, ranking fourth-highest in the nation overall. For the Springfield Fair Market area, which includes Northampton, the hourly wage needed is lower at $28.77.
“Obviously that’s not real life, and yet that’s the math,” said Pamela Schwartz, director of regional coordination at Western Massachusetts Network to End Homelessness (WMNEH). “There is not enough affordable housing in our country, in our state and in our community, and that is not for any lack of Northampton trying.”
A report put out by the WHNEH at the start of this year shows that across the four counties of Hampshire, Franklin, Hampden and Berkshire, the unsheltered population has increased fourfold over the last four years, from 80 in 2021 to to 318 in 2025. Northampton was estimated to have 36 unsheltered persons at the time of the report, the third-highest amount in the region behind Holyoke and Springfield.
The report also noted that rents in Hampden, Hampshire and Franklin counties increased by 32.5% during that same time period, and that 54% of renters in western Massachusetts had become cost-burdened, meaning that more than 30% of their income goes toward rent.
The region has also seen an increasing number of tenant evictions. According to the nonprofit group MassLandlords, the number of evictions in Hampshire County doubled between 2023 and 2024, the most recent full year available, from 224 to 444. In 2024, the the group considered the Northampton village of Florence the “least stable municipality” in the commonwealth with at least 10 eviction filings. The nearby city of Holyoke was considered the least housing-stable municipality with more than 100 eviction filings.
“People are just ending up where they can’t pay for their rent,” said Shaundell Diaz, director of the Three County Continuum of Care in Greenfield, which coordinates housing and services funding in the region as well as provides homelessness data to the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. “They can’t afford it all.”
The city of Northampton has made its own efforts to tackle rising homelessness, mainly in the formation of the Division of Community Care (DCC). Created in 2023 as an alternative first-response unit, the DCC assists individuals struggling with homelessness and mental health. According to Health Commissioner Merridith O’Leary, the DCC has served more than 1,600 individuals since its inception two years ago, and the division had provided support for navigating housing and sheltering programs over 1,000 times.
In an interview with the Gazette, O’Leary said that Northampton took a “housing first” approach to solving rising homelessness in the city. The housing first model, adopted by many other municipalities and states, prioritizes securing housing for individuals struggling with homelessness above other types of services.
“The approach that we do take in the DCC is to make sure that those people that are looking for stable housing, we’re connecting them to the resources to help navigate that system,” O’Leary said. “It might take 50 or 100 times, but we keep on trying to make that connection, build trust, create a relationship, so we then can help be a resource connector.”
O’Leary also said that it was important to highlight that the demographics of the homeless population is changing, with more elderly and families being affected.
“They’re disproportionately affected by the increased housing costs and having to live on a fixed income of Social Security,” O’Leary said. “These are populations that really have never faced housing insecurity before.”
Last year, Gov. Maura Healey signed the Affordable Homes Act authorizing more than $5 billion in funds toward various programs meant to boost housing construction and bring down the cost of living. The bill includes $2 billion for the repair, rehabilitation and modernization of tens of thousands of public housing units, and $425 million for the creation of a Housing Stabilization and Investment Fund, to support preservation, construction and rehabilitation projects.
But that approach could be threatened by the change in position at the federal level under President Donald Trump. In July, the president issued an executive order calling for a shift in federal funding toward addressing behavioral health problems. The order calls on the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Health and Human Services to reassess federal grants and give priority to states and municipalities that, among other things, “enforce prohibitions on urban camping and loitering.”
“Surrendering our cities and citizens to disorder and fear is neither compassionate to the homeless nor other citizens,” the president’s order states. “My administration will take a new approach focused on protecting public safety.”
Schwartz said such an approach effectively amounts to a criminalization of homeless individuals.
“The idea that somebody becomes a criminal because they have no place to live is really beyond a sense of common decency,” Schwartz said. “It does not solve homelessness. It’s ludicrous to think of that as a solution.”
In addition to the DCC, Northampton has seen an expansion in providing shelter, with local nonprofit Clinical & Support Options (CSO) opening a new shelter on Industrial Drive in December that can accommodate around 50 beds. However, Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra said that the new CSO shelter had already reached capacity.
“All sheltering is completely full, so we are seeing this increase in the houseless population,” Sciarra said. “Last year, we worked with the state to have emergency sheltering open, and I’m really concerned coming into the winter that there are not going to be state resources for that.”
With shelters at capacity and cost of living still prevalent, homeless camps like the one by Mill River remain. O’Leary said that given the camps already exist, the best way going forward for the city is to ensure those living there have resources and relationships needed to eventually find housing.
“We want to mitigate any type of impacts that might be caused by them staying there. We want to make sure that people are safe there,” O’Leary said. “We do engagements there several times a week, just to kind of check on those types of impacts and let them know that they’re what the resources are in the city, not just DCC, but the other resources too.”
O’Leary acknowledged that the services the city provides and the clamping down of homeless camps in other municipalities could lead to a rising unhoused population within Northampton as transients arrive to seek services. But she said the city was committed to providing aid and helping people find housing.
“We are a more tolerant community. We’re welcoming. We don’t necessarily say ‘you can’t stay here,'” O’Leary said. “It’s sort of in Northampton’s DNA to do this.”