Incidents not a sign of failure

by Sue Reinert

When the Cambridge Housing Authority reopened an expanded, renovated  building at 116 Norfolk St., it was hailed as a boost in the city’s  resources for the homeless. It has been, but it has also had incidents,  including a fatal stabbing, that have rattled the community.

The CHA has used 116 Norfolk as transitional housing for homeless  people since it purchased the building, a former home for nuns, in 1975.  Renovation began in January 2023 and replaced the single rooms for  tenants with self-contained studio apartments. CHA also added 25 units  and provided significantly more services than it had offered in the  former building, meeting the definition of permanent supportive housing.

But police have had to respond to calls at the building or from  residents numerous times. The CHA has also moved to evict several  tenants for violating policies.

The most serious of these involved the stabbing on Jan. 6, just six  months after the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the building. A 9-1-1 call from a security guard drew paramedics within nine minutes. They found  Antoine Johnson, 37, of Freetown, bleeding in the lobby of the building  with a deep stab wound to his chest. Victor J. Rivas, 51, of South  Boston, was accused of inflicting the wound with a folding knife with  brass knuckles attached. Rivas was found nearby by police, also with  injuries. His public defender claimed he acted in self-defense at his arraignment.

Neither of the men were residents of the building and it was a  violation of the program’s policies for them to be inside. The CHA has  moved to evict the resident whose apartment they were inside.

At the Jan. 14 meeting of the CHA commissioners, Kevin Braga, CHA  director of operations, said of the stabbing “it’s a jarring incident.”  Overall, though, he said “six months in we have had a lot of  heartwarming success stories.”

After the stabbing, building residents organized shared meals and  movie nights, showing “a sense of community and a willingness to look  out for one another,” Brenda Downing, CHA deputy executive director,  said in a Jan. 20 email to Cambridge Day. And “while experiences vary by  individual, staff have not observed a broad disruption to residents’  engagement with services or recovery efforts.”

Building resident Jeramy Dalpe told Cambridge Day “when you live in a  place like this, you expect a certain level of seediness.”  Nevertheless, “most of us were caught off guard” by the fatal stabbing.  He said residents couldn’t leave the building for several days, parts of  the building were off-limits while state police investigated, and “the  lobby was drenched in blood.”

Dalpe, 51, said he moved into 116 Norfolk St. last April after  spending two years without a home. He spent six months in a Harvard  Square shelter that “a nice policeman” told him about and six months “on  the bench in front of City Hall.” “People in City Hall took care of  me,” he said.

Dalpe said the Norfolk St. project has exceeded his expectations. He  praised Eliot Community Human Services, which is onsite. “They’ve been  very helpful,” he said. “They have emergency lines. They have teams that  show up if (you) need people. They’re involved with people.”

Dalpe said he had faced retaliation and attacks by staff at a Pine  Street Inn supportive housing project in Brookline where he previously  lived, which destabilized his mental health to the point where “I was on  the street again” in 2023.  So, “I’m on high alert for things to go  wrong,” he said. To his surprise, staff at CHA and 116 Norfolk St. have  responded to his concerns, Dalpe said. For example, “last summer I woke  up every morning to someone outside my door barking like a dog,” he  said. “I got that stopped.”

Another problem involved a building system that tracks residents’  movements, Dalpe said. It alerted staff when he didn’t leave his  apartment for a couple of days. Concerned staff members then knocked on  his door, alarming him. “With my traumatic history from something that  happened to me 20 years ago I don’t need someone walking in,” Dalpe  said.

The staff understood his distress and agreed to email or text him if a  similar situation occurs, he said. “if it was anyone else (in charge)  it never would have gone that well,” he said.

Dalpe said he is not addicted to drugs or alcohol. He had worked in  biotech and felt he would not need support when he decided to find a  job.

He also does not want psychological help; “I’m not ready to get a new  psychiatrist and therapist” and go through recounting his history of  trauma again, he said.

He devotes himself to obtaining redress from Pine Street Inn  administrators and property managers at its Brookline residence, where  he says a manager falsely accused him of racist and threatening  behavior. As a result, he lost his apartment and belongings he values at  $80,000. He did “very well” at the residence until this happened, and  Pine Street Inn is a “wonderful organization in all other (departments)”  except property management, Dalpe says in a website he created to  advance his campaign.

In response to a request for comment, A Pine Street Inn spokesperson  said the organization provides support services to help tenants remain  stable and housed, “including access to medical and behavioral health  care, life skills and job training.”

It is not rare for Cambridge police to visit the building. In fact,  they were called to the address twice near the time of the stabbing,  police reports show. The day beforehand a resident wanted two visitors  ejected from his apartment, but when officers arrived, the resident  wouldn’t open the door, and police left. No visitors were supposed to be  in the building at the time. Then, several hours before the stabbing,  police returned because one tenant accused another of throwing rocks at  his window from outside the building. Officers calmed the two and they  returned to their units.

Brenda Downing, CHA deputy executive director, noted that neither  incident had anything to do with the stabbing. And those who work to  bring chronically homeless people into stable housing say these types of  incidents are not signs of failure.

The Norfolk St. project follows the “Housing First” model; applicants  obtain housing without preconditions such as being in treatment for  mental illness or substance abuse. They are offered help but don’t have  to take it.

Randomized controlled trials – the “gold standard” of research – have  shown conclusively that Housing First helps people “exit homelessness  more quickly and stay in housing,” said Howard Koh, professor of the  practice of public health leadership at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of  Public Health and a former Massachusetts Commissioner of Public Health.  He said Housing First also improves health and saves money by reducing  use of costly medical care such as emergency room services. Koh was not  asked to comment specifically about the program at 116 Norfolk.

Koh noted that homelessness among veterans plunged after the federal  government focused on providing veterans with a place to live, and  supports, including rent assistance vouchers specifically for homeless  veterans. The 116 Norfolk project does not use veterans vouchers, but it  does use rent vouchers whose federal funding is under threat, which  will affect programs across the state.

Until recently Housing First enjoyed bipartisan support, Koh said,  and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development helped fund  permanent supportive housing projects nationwide, including in  Cambridge. Last fall, the day before the federal government shutdown  ended, HUD abruptly changed its funding formula to sharply reduce funds for permanent supported  housing in favor of more treatment requirements and time-limited  housing.

Cambridge and other communities sued the Trump administration and won a preliminary injunction,  preserving about $4.6 million in aid for the city while the case is  argued. “It can be difficult at times like this when people question  those outcomes (demonstrated by research) and keep us from moving  forward,” Koh said.

Boston’s Pine Street Inn is one of the largest providers of permanent  supportive housing in the region. Its executive director, Lyndia  Downie, has said that it shifted away from solely providing emergency shelter. The shift  moved long-term shelter residents to housing, freeing shelter beds for  people needing temporary help. Though the program has succeeded in  keeping formerly homeless people housed, she said, those tenants can be  challenging.  “On a given day 30-35 percent of our clients are in  crisis, they’re actively using. You know they’ve got serious and  persistent mental illness and are psychotic or delusional and that’s  what the staff are there to do.”

A spokesperson for Pine St. declined to make Downie available for an interview or answer questions for this story.

Prior to its renovation and conversion, tenants at 116 Norfolk St.  rented rooms and shared kitchens and bathrooms, a rooming house  arrangement called single-room occupancy.

Cambridge has about 400 units of permanent supported housing,  including the 62 apartments at 116 Norfolk St. Applicants for housing  answer a questionnaire that seeks to quantify their “vulnerabilities,”  or barriers to getting housing, such as mental illness, evictions or a  criminal record. The Cambridge Coordinated Access Network, or C-CAN,  runs the process. Homeless people can answer questions on the street, in  shelters, or the city’s Multi Services Center.

Last year about 491 individuals were assessed and 116 referred to  housing, city spokesperson Jeremy Warnick said. Applicants get a score  based on their “vulnerabilities” as elicited by the questionnaire. Those  with the highest score, or most vulnerabilities, get priority for  housing.

When people are referred to the CHA’s two housing programs, 116  Norfolk and 16-18 Wendell St., a former Lesley University dormitory  converted to single-room occupancy, CHA deputy executive director  Downing said they go through CHA’s normal tenant selection procedure,  which includes items such as a criminal records check.

While that process would seem to contradict the no-conditions Housing  First model, neither Maria Melo, director of the Cambridge  Multi-Service Center, nor coordinated entry program manager Hannah  Selman can remember the CHA rejecting an applicant.

Melo and Selman said C-CAN directs applicants with moderate need to  projects that are not federally funded and that the option helps place  homeless individuals who would not ordinarily be chosen for housing. The  CHA promised Lesley University people with severe needs would not be placed at 16-18 Wendell St. A supported housing program at the YMCA in Central  Square also gets referrals of clients with moderate vulnerabilities.

Before its conversion and renovation, 116 Norfolk had many residents  with mental health and substance abuse problems. In 2021, Jeffery  Mcnary, a resident who had previously run for City Council, brought  attention to serious unmet needs at the building. In a letter to councillors and city officials, he  described conditions such as trash in kitchen sinks, cat litter in  toilets, and disturbed tenants howling, screaming and cursing  “throughout the day and evening.” He called for “seasoned psychological support” for residents.

At the time, CHA executive director Michael Johnston acknowledged  that more services were needed and the single-room-occupancy model did  not work. The authority decided to renovate the building and build  another structure, adding 25 units.

The redeveloped project opened in March 2025. Only one former  resident exercised their right to return, Downing said. There are four  full-time case managers on site at 116 Norfolk St. and two at Wendell  St., with supervisors at Eliot Human Services available. The support  staff is there from 8 am to 4:30 pm weekdays, with an answering service  and “on-call supervisory staff” available 24-7, she said. A licensed  “recovery coach” to help residents with substance abuse conditions  visits 116 Norfolk St. three times a week and Wendell St. twice a week.

Research hasn’t established what type and amount of supportive  services work best in helping chronically homeless people transition to  permanent housing, said Harvard’s Koh.

After the stabbing, the authority ended a policy that allowed some  residents to have visitors on specific days; Rivas and Johnson were in  the building when no visitors were allowed, Braga said. Now, residents  can’t have visitors at any time. CHA has also increased security; staff  now arrives at 4 p.m. instead of 7 p.m.

Though the program is aimed at providing housing to chronically  homeless individuals and keeping them housed, the authority has filed  eviction proceedings against three tenants at 116 Norfolk St. and  obtained an injunction against a fourth tenant barring him from the  building and voiding his lease. The eviction of the tenant who let Rivas  and Johnson visit her is also the result of an injunction request from  CHA.

At least two of the residents facing eviction have been arrested. One  of them, Dennis McNulty, 60, was arrested three times in five months  last year, including most recently on Nov. 10 after he allegedly shouted  racial slurs at students from the nearby Prospect Hill Academy Charter  School and spat on one girl with crutches, according to a report in MassLive.  In the two earlier cases he was released after seven days because  authorities could not appoint a lawyer to represent him due to a public  defender strike, the newspaper said. A lawyer was assigned to McNulty  after the Nov. 10 arrest.

McNulty was released on Dec. 23 on condition that he stay away from  116 Norfolk St., consent to mental health programming, and cooperate  with a social worker at the Committee for Public Counsel Services, the  agency that provided his lawyer. His case is being heard in mental  health court, where defendants with serious mental health issues can  avoid incarceration.

McNulty has been ordered not to enter 116 Norfolk St. under a  preliminary injunction the housing authority obtained in October. The  authority said McNulty hit two people on the property with a drumstick  on Sept. 28, then broke the front door of 116 Norfolk St. with his hand.  He was arrested in that incident.

Cambridge remains committed to permanent supportive housing as one of  its tools for addressing homelessness, said city spokesperson Jeremy  Warnick. “The city’s support of permanent supportive housing reflects an  understanding that people may face many barriers to housing, including  affordability and other circumstances that may require long-term  support, which is why this type of affordable housing is so important.”

This story was updated to clarify that Victor J. Rivas stands  accused of inflicting the fatal wound, and the time frame for police  visits to 116 Norfolk before the incident.

https://www.cambridgeday.com/2026/03/17/116-norfolk-challenged/