Every year since 1969, Boston's Pine Street Inn has been serving up hot meals to the hungry and 2015 was no exception.
People entered the dining room in shifts, 80 people at a time, every one of them with a story to tell.
Former Pine Street Inn resident Michael Howard said, “I was in a place in my life where I didn’t know which direction I was going.
Howard said things in his past led him down the wrong road. After three months living at Pine Street, he just moved into his own rental in Dorchester.
Lyndia Downey, president of the Pine Street Inn said, “Our numbers have gone up for the past couple of years, which is really disappointing.”
She said, “The rental market has gotten not just so much more expensive. The vacancy rate is so low that we have people here who are working every single day and they can’t afford a place to live.”
The inn provides a bed, a hot meal and a Thanksgiving dinner with all of the fixings prepared and served by hundreds of volunteers.
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Among the volunteers on the carving crew was Mayor Marty Walsh, who said, “We have the power to do something special for folks that are down on their luck and we’re going to continue to work to house the homeless and also close the wage gap."
When it was over, 3,500 Thanksgiving dinners were served.
