On two separate occasions I’ve been honored to serve as the executive director of Craig’s Doors — A Home Association, Inc. My time with the agency came to a close this past week and I offer this reflection.
Craig’s Doors provides shelter and services to people who are unhoused. In 2011, when we started this new nonprofit organization, we named it after a gentle man who had been homeless. Craig D. Lorraine, a Navy veteran, spent his days playing the marimba on the streets of Northampton. After a particularly exhausting day, Craig once shared that he just wished he had a “door.” Sadly Craig died, at the age of 45, before he ever got one.
Over the years, Craig’s Doors has become the premiere agency sheltering individual adults who are homeless in eastern Hampshire County. Each winter, along with dedicated staff and volunteers, Craig’s Doors helps people to survive the unforgiving northeast winds and freezing temperatures.
Our philosophy was basic: meet people where they are, reduce barriers to shelter and do whatever could be done to keep people safe. We also served nutritious food, provided access to hot showers, delivered basic case management and sought to get people rehoused. We maintained a simple covenant: “You sleep, while we stand watch.”
During my second tenure as executive director, which began in October of 2019, we collided with a global pandemic. By March of 2020, the streets felt deserted and people who were homeless had almost no indoor places in which to seek shelter. As other doors were closing, we opened Craig’s “DOORS” even wider.
Thanks to the solidarity of Amherst Houses of Worship and area hoteliers, we transformed our basic operation from 28 to about 70 people. From the basement of Amherst’s First Baptist Church we traversed across multiple sites including the Unitarian Universalist Society of Amherst, the University Motor Lodge and the Econolodge in Hadley. This past year we were welcomed with open arms by Immanuel Lutheran Church, and just this week we began helping people secure temporary rooms at the Knights Inn in Hadley.
Throughout this crisis Craig’s Doors has not only kept people from freezing to death but we’ve done what we could to help keep them safe from a deadly virus which has already claimed 1 million lives in the United States and nearly 6.3 million worldwide. It’s been a worthy struggle even though any resources we were able to secure would gladly have been returned for those precious lives which were lost.
I’m proud to live in a community and to have directed an agency which did whatever it could to help in this noble effort. I believe Craig’s Doors helped to reduce the effects of this pandemic among those who are very vulnerable in our community.
As for me, I will continue to seek ways to help in this struggle. In the words of Dorothy Day, “No one has the right to sit down and feel hopeless. There’s too much to do.”
Kevin J. Noonan is the former executive director of Craig’s Doors — A Home Association Inc.