GREENFIELD — Community Relations Committee members met with the mayor, the mayoral-appointed liaison to the city’s Haitian immigrants and a Haitian immigrant living in Greenfield on Monday to discuss ways to best serve the needs of those living at the Days Inn shelter.

Since last summer, the Days Inn on Colrain Road has been providing emergency housing to a population predominantly comprised of Haitian immigrants. Roughly 45 families receive shelter.

In an update to the committee on the status of Greenfield’s Haitian immigrants, liaison Wendy Goodman noted that ServiceNet, the non-profit human services agency that manages the shelter, had banned her from the location in April. Goodman, who lived in Haiti for eight years and speaks Haitian Creole, had volunteered at the shelter since it opened, providing translations, home-cooked meals, transportation and assistance obtaining driver’s licenses or English classes to the Haitians.

“Despite multiple requests by ServiceNet management to respect our staff’s scope of responsibilities and authority, you have continued to cross the line, interfering with our operations and with the safety and security of both staff and residents,” ServiceNet’s Vice President of Community Programs Polly Normand wrote to Goodman in a notice dated April 8. “Therefore, from this date forward, you are no longer welcome at the Days Inn family shelter and may no longer be on the property for any reason.”

In an interview Tuesday morning, Goodman said that prior to receiving the notice, she had been turned away from helping Days Inn residents on multiple occasions, once when she brought corn to a Haitian woman and another time when she tried to connect a resident with English classes. She said she doesn’t know what she did that was “egregious” enough to warrant a ban from the shelter.

Much of the one-hour discussion Monday night centered around ServiceNet, with some community members expressing concern with the agency’s quality of services and its relationship with city-affiliated community volunteers. Although a ServiceNet representative was invited to appear at the meeting, none of the agency’s members or affiliates attended, as Precinct 6 City Councilor Sheila Gilmour said the committee did not directly receive a response.

“It got very heated and so I just stepped back for the last three months, since April. I have continued to do what I can do, but can’t be on-site or haven’t been able to connect,” Goodman said at the meeting. “People are reaching out, asking ‘Could you help me do this? Can you help me get a license? Help me call this landlord,’ or ‘Can you come? My kid isn’t feeling well.’ Whatever it is, they can only find somebody that can reach out to me because I’m not allowed to be on-site.”

ServiceNet Vice President of Community Relations Amy Timmins, in a written response sent to the Greenfield Recorder on Tuesday, wrote that the agency did not receive an invitation to the meeting.

“Though it was stated at the meeting that ServiceNet had been invited to attend, neither our Vice President of Community Programs, Director of Shelter & Housing Services or Vice President of Community Relations received any such invitation,” Timmins said. “Had we been invited, we would have been available to answer questions and share the work ServiceNet has been doing since last summer to shelter families at the Days Inn, assist them in obtaining needed documentation and benefits, connect them to services in the community, help them conduct housing searches and more.”

Goodman’s remarks were echoed by a Haitian immigrant living at the Days Inn, who noted that generally, the services residents receive have been in decline since the site lost its volunteers. Other volunteers, such as Public Health Nurse Megan Tudryn, said the shelter has bed bugs, a concern she said she raised with ServiceNet, to which she did not receive a response.

“It’s not fair to have people at the Days Inn and nobody can speak their language. There’s nobody to complain to if there’s an issue, nobody that will listen, nobody that will report back to us,” Tudryn said.

Mayor Ginny Desorgher, pointing out that no ServiceNet representatives were present to speak on behalf of their agency, said she has weekly conversations with ServiceNet and other agencies in the human services field and has received positive feedback on their work in the community. Desorgher also said there are staffing shortages across the human services field, which might contribute to the agency’s alleged lack in communication.

“There are lots of social service agencies, those that our delegations try to call generally to sort out some of these problems,” Desorgher said. “This group does provide an enormous amount of service to the Greenfield community.”

Goodman explained that despite her frustrations with ServiceNet, her motivation as a volunteer is to create an access point between the city and its new arrivals. She noted that many of the immigrants are having trouble finding housing and, as new families arrive and depart from the Days Inn, they need access to a translator.

“I am blown away by the graciousness and grit of most of the people who have come here in search of a better life,” Goodman said. “My goal is to help people get settled here and connect them to the opportunities Greenfield has to offer.”

Councilors Gilmour, William “Wid” Perry, Lora Wondolowski and Derek Helie agreed that further communication between city officials and ServiceNet is necessary to ensure proper services for the city’s immigrants. Perry said that discussion on the Days Inn shelter will continue, either at the city’s next Committee Chairs meeting or at City Council meetings.

“ServiceNet cannot do this work alone, and we have partnered with several community agencies, the schools, other city services, hospital and medical practices, our legislative delegation and others to get people the help they need,” Timmins wrote in a statement. “We would welcome the chance to participate in a subsequent meeting that may be scheduled — whether by this committee, the City Council or the Human Rights Commission — so that we might clarify what ServiceNet’s role is and has been in this vital work of welcoming new arrivals to our country and community, and connecting them to essential services.”

Anthony Cammalleri can be reached at acammalleri@recorder.com or 413-930-4429.