New Bedford's 'Street Sheet' has entered the digital era. See how it's become more helpful

NEW BEDFORD — If there's anyone with a sense of how much the network of local service providers, assistance agencies and other important lifeline resources has grown over the last 20-or-so years, it's New Bedford's Office of Housing and Community Development staff, charged with putting together the city's annual Street Sheet — a free-to-grab graphic printout compiling key contact information for local populations in need — in conjunction with the New Bedford Homeless Service Providers Network.

As of 2024, the paper size it's printed on can barely contain it, New Bedford's Office of Housing and Community Development Director Joshua Amaral says.

"Some of the service providers will send back these paragraphs of information and you think, how are we going to fit this onto an 8 x 11 page?," Amaral said. "If you look at it, it's pretty crammed."

While times like those would have called for some picking and choosing of what info to leave out in past years, officials decided it was time to make the Street Sheet fully digital in live webpage format. No longer just a static image, Amaral says the added functionality of being able to have a clickable, linkable Street Sheet will hopefully add to its usefulness.

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"One of our hopes was to make it so case managers and other social service workers will be able to bookmark the page and refer to it in their work," Amaral said.

Amaral added that the digitized Street Sheet also addresses a shortcoming of the printed sheet in that it can be updated if and when information like the schedules of meal sites and food pantries change throughout the year.

"So at least on the website version we'll be able to update things more seamlessly and in real time," Amaral said.

What's on it?

Like its printed counterpart, New Bedford's digital Street Sheet is organized into categories. They are: shelter; coordinated entry; schools; crisis services; foreclosures/legal; supports; food, meals & sites; health/medical, mental health, substance abuse, and veterans.

On the same category navigation page, online viewers can also access printable versions of the Street Sheet in English, Portuguese and Spanish.

While print-out versions for 2024 are not yet produced, Amaral said they are in the works and should be out in the next month or so.

"We still want to have the paper version considering its original intent, which was to be able to hand out to people who may actually be on the street," Amaral said.

Housing still a top issue

As far as what various levels of needs in the community are, Amaral says housing is still a major issue, but there's reason for optimism.

"Trends are largely the same. We're seeing good progress in terms of housing construction — we've got hundreds in the pipeline either under construction or soon to be underway, so we're excited about that," he said. "We still need more to really address our housing problem, which obviously goes well beyond New Bedford's borders, but we want to be a leader in tackling that problem."

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According to data from the 2023 Point In Time (PIT) count, an annual count of unsheltered homeless individuals in the city on a single day during the month of January: 373 people were identified as homeless — 67 sheltered and 306 sheltered — compared to the 61 unsheltered and 309 sheltered counted in the 2022 PIT count. However, the report cites "poor weather" activated the city's cold weather overflow shelter on the night of the count last year. With the 30 who stayed there that night who potentially would have been on the street otherwise, the "unsheltered" count for 2023 would have been 97, "doubling counts recorded in previous years," the presentation reads.

Access New Bedford's Street Sheet today

To access the new digital Street Sheet, visit www.nbhspn.com/nbhspn-street-sheet. Hard copies of the printed version can downloaded and printed from the website, or picked up at City Hall, city libraries and other locations throughout New Bedford.

This article originally appeared on Standard-Times: New Bedford's digitized 'Street Sheet' makes online debut