Serving Those Who Served

Photograph by Ken Martin/Impact Visuals

What was once a building so dilapidated that the Veterans Administration abandoned it today is home to a charity that serves homeless and unemployed veterans.

Under a federal law that allows nonprofit organizations to convert derelict federal property into homeless shelters, the New England Shelter for Homeless Veterans took over the century-old building next to City Hall in downtown Boston.

Founded in 1990, the 320-bed shelter provides more than just a bed and a warm meal. It also provides transitional housing for homeless people working to get their lives back together, and permanent housing to people who are gainfully employed but don’t earn enough to afford their own apartments.

It also provides counseling and medical care — including vision and dental care, a rarity at most homeless shelters — and offers job-training programs that have helped more than 2,000 veterans get paid jobs. Trainees in its culinary-arts program prepare the 800 meals the shelter provides each day.

The majority of its clients are Vietnam-era veterans, although the shelter has seen a recent rise in the number of older World War II veterans, which concerns the executive director, Thomas J. Lyons, who is himself a Vietnam veteran and Boston’s former commissioner of veterans’ services. “Some need a little more care,” he says, “and it has forced us to change our delivery of our services, and think about how we can expand them to take care of these older veterans.”

Here, Arturo Wallen, a Vietnam veteran who served in the Marine Corps, stands in front of the Suffolk County Courthouse, where he works. Mr. Wallen came to the shelter five years ago to escape the cold one night. After participating in the shelter’s substance-abuse counseling and job-training programs, he was able to get a job at a private security firm, and went on from there to work for the courthouse. He now lives on his own in Boston.