Fwd: Elderly homeless " falling through the cracks " ?

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Ron Ruggieri <radicalron72647@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2021 at 15:06
Subject: Elderly homeless " falling through the cracks " ?
To: Gregg, Katherine <kgregg@providencejournal.com>

      Katherine Gregg, can some reporter investigate why ANY elderly man on Social Security Disability , Medicare , and Medicaid should  get so little attention and no efficacious  help from the state after a month of homelessness and many months of seeking  Housing Authority residence ?   This is the fate of my 73 year old friend, Dave Nelson, formerly of Cranston.

                  Is it not rather cold hearted, bureaucratic to direct this man ( a difficult " case " , to be sure ) to hellish places like Harrington Hall in Cranston or  Crossroads in Providence?

                   The details of Dave Nelson's life are right out of a Thomas Hardy novel .   But homelessness for any length of time for a near dementia 73 year old male -with flimsy family ties- is a virtual death sentence.   I am an  old friend who has helped him as much as I could , but as I explained to his long estranged son , Dean Gold :  " I am not the Red Cross ". Dean too is trying to help his " difficult " father .  If Dave cannot " get along " with Dean he might presently be living on the streets of always dangerous Chicago .

                      Way back in 2014 the Providence Journal published a letter about my friend titled " Ragged Dave ".  At the time Dave was living in his car. 

  [ Whole books have written about the  failure of " de-institutionalization " of the mentally ill ... " a crime against humanity "  ]

   Ron Ruggieri , 75 Mathewson St. , Cranston, Rhode Island ( 401-580-7432 )