Whitinsville, MASS. - Most of Massachusetts is bracing for one of the coldest weeks of the season so far, including organizations who help people without any housing.

“We are cold right now, we don’t even know what it would be like to be out here all night long and then get up and go to work,” Leslie Reichert said.

Reichert runs the Blackstone Valley Emergency Shelter. They’re in their eighth season offering people a warm place to stay on some of the coldest nights of the year.

“We’ve had up to 12 people in a location at once, it could be as little as one," she said. “We want to be there when someone needs us.”

The organization operates a temporary emergency shelter at St. Patrick’s Church in Whitinsville, but without enough volunteers to help they can’t offer the support that’s needed.  

“It’s really hard for us to look at a cold night and say, 'oh my gosh, it’s going to be 18 degrees tonight and I only have 2 volunteers, we cannot open'," Reichert said. “It’s not a hard thing. You can bring your laptop down, you can watch TV.”

The winter chill comes as a new report by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban development shows Massachusetts as having the fifth largest homeless population in the country. Numbers grew from a little more that 19,000 in 2023 to more than 29,000 in 2024.

“It’s the affordable housing issue. It’s so expensive here,” Reichert said. “Even my son who is 26 and just getting his first job, he can’t afford to go to Worcester and pay up to $3,000 a month with all the expenses that go with it. It’s not just the rent.”

The report also highlights an increase of 74% in family homelessness in the commonwealth, something Reichert said she’s seeing in her own community.

“We have moms that have kids that are in cars and they’re trying to go from neighborhood to neighborhood,” she said. “These people are not all in a bad situation, emotionally or physically or addictive wise. These are people that have jobs they just can’t find a place to live, so they’re staying outside, they’re staying in their cars.”

The shelter opened Sunday and Monday night and Reichert plans to stay open as many times as possible this week.