NEWSHOMELESS SHELTERS

When they say everything is bigger in Texas, you would hope that would also mean a larger sense of compassion. But when it comes to dealing with homelessness, that's not always the case. The City Council of Lubbock, Texas, has once again stalled on proposed plans to establish a homeless committee to address the needs of the city's homeless population at a time when outside temperatures have already begun to plummet.

While the council recently agreed to create a homeless committee, a plan put forward by Councilman Todd Klein, the latest council session ended with a vote which severely weakens the committee's potential to help the homeless. It also delayed appointments for the group's members until December.

Klein, the only council member who opposed the changes and delays, argued that removing a city liaison from the 17-member committee and only giving the group one year to develop a plan is no way to establish meaningful and lasting solutions to homelessness in the area.  I agree. I can understand if other council members are anxious to find ways to address the issue, but rushing the process and setting short-sighted deadlines is not only unrealistic, but likely to lead to temporary fixes. Or worse.

Pressure on the City Council to take faster and more aggressive steps came in large part from the staff at downtown Lubbock's Mahon Library, where homeless individuals have long sought refuge. Eager to displace those who take shelter there (the city currently lacks a permanent shelter), employees have posted warning signs that property will be confiscated, a move that only serves to displace the homeless to other parts of town rather than addressing the issue directly. Worse yet, two ordinances have been proposed to the city council — banning the storage of private property on public areas and setting a curfew — which would in effect criminalize homelessness in Lubbock and slap offenders with unreasonable fines that will likely never be paid.

"Help the Homeless Week" kicked off last Thursday in Dallas, but something was noticeably absent from the opening day breakfast fundraiser, and I'm not talking about pancakes. Mike Rawlings, the city's former homeless czar, zapped some of the joy when he announced that The Bridge, Dallas' homeless assistance center, is facing a brutal $200,000 budget shortfall.

While the shelter has been struggling to stretch its limited resources to assist ever-increasing numbers of homeless individuals, it was dealt a particularly harsh blow when Dallas County decided to cut its contribution by 10 percent this year. Cash-strapped municipalities across the country are having to make due with less, but now is not the time to eliminate funding that helps support our most vulnerable citizens.

The Bridge, a city-owned facility, opened in 2008 to offer shelter, counseling, health care and meals to 600 people a day. It now serves 1,400 each day. Facility staff have worked tirelessly this year to cover costs with the $8.1 million dollar budget, provided by government funding and private donations, but dramatic rises in homelessness over the past year and the partial elimination of County funding has placed them in a difficult spot. Mike Faenza, president and C.E.O. of the Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance, which operates The Bridge, explains, "We've done a really great job of keeping costs down, but the numbers we serve continue to grow. We need people who need services to seek help at The Bridge, but we look at the community to help us continue these services."

Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert praised the Homeless Alliance at last week's breakfast, noting that the organization has helped to reduce chronic homelessness in the city by 57 percent, while saving government agencies millions of dollars by assisting people who might otherwise end up in other, more expensive government institutions (like jail). The numbers alone speak to how important funding a facility such as The Bridge can be, and should serve as a clear indication to Dallas County officials that they are not only doing a disservice to the county's estimated 6,000 homeless individuals by cutting funds, but they are also negatively affecting the entire county.

I met LaQuisha and her daughter at a rotating shelter (meaning that residents are shifted between churches) near Detroit. Although living in a homeless shelter can be challenging, LaQuisha works hard to look at the bright side. She was scared at first, but that changes as she made friends with people in the same situation.

I love the rotating shelter system. I visited this one last year, too. As I listened to LaQuisha's story about how her mom kicked her out, I could not help but notice the similarities with Dawn's story. Young single mothers are a growing portion of the homeless population.

Special thanks to MCREST

Temperatures are dropping and shelter doors are ... closing? While Washington D.C. officials push a plan to turn away non-residents from area shelters, homeless people in Columbus, Ohio have been turned away from shelters with nowhere to seek refuge from temperatures in the 30s.

City rules stipulate that all people are guaranteed shelter when the temperature dips below 25 degrees. (Since 27 degrees, or 29, or 32, isn't dangerous?) But because it was 39 degrees and rainy last week, 41 men and women were turned away from the Faith Mission, where 514 beds were already full.

Here's where the city is stuck between a rock and a hard place. In recent years it has targeted its funding at getting its homeless residents into apartments, rather than adding shelter beds. But now that the economy is forcing people to seek help for the first time, there aren't enough beds to go around. Non-profit officials acknowledge that they might have to rent additional space for temporary shelter this year. It's better to spend the money well the first time to make sure that the city's most vulnerable can get shelter in dangerous temperatures.

As if the need could be more clear, the AP tells the story of Columbus resident Nicole Moberly, 24-years-old, nine months pregnant and homeless. (For the record, she's employed at a fast food restaurant.) As she climbed into a bed in a homeless shelter, she told a reporter, "I am blessed. I saw a girl as far along as I am sleeping out in the rain." Tell Columbus' mayor and city council to guarantee shelter for homeless residents all winter long!

What if instead of an economical way to clear clutter from your home, inexpensive storage units offered an alternative to living on the streets? For many people who are without a home, renting a public storage unit can provide them with a relatively safe, private and affordable shelter, especially when faced with the limitations and risks of overcrowded shelters or the streets.

Lacking running water, proper insulation and a variety of other hospitable amenities, the cramped quarters are far from ideal living conditions, not to mention illegal.  But could the DIY domiciles serve as a blueprint for low-cost, temporary non-shelter housing that maintain the privacy and safety of the storage units, while providing the amenities of an apartment?

Living in the containers is, of course, not permitted by the storage companies, forcing occupants to develop stealth tactics or perhaps encounter a sympathetic employee willing to look the other way.  But hiding in the shadows fearing discovery robs those individuals of a dignity they deserve. While they may be able to avoid some of the dangers of the outside world, without plumbing, heating, proper ventilation or safety codes, the containers present their own health hazards. As Joel John Roberts, CEO of PATH Partners (People Assisting The Homeless), explains on Poverty Insights: "We need creative low-cost dignified housing so homeless people do not have to scamper into secret hiding places."

He writes about Sarah, a woman over 60 who has lived for the past two years in a storage unit in Los Angeles. Her air mattress is next to a full-size refrigerator covered in family photos. Tell the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority to help find safe, affordable alternatives to storage units.

Well, Washington, D.C. will soon join the ranks of cities who like to make the homeless someone else's problem.

Local government, trying to mitigate a $175 million budget shortfall, has determined that about 10 percent of those who apply for shelter and other homeless services in the city are from elsewhere — and officials want them to go back to "elsewhere."

People from neighboring Prince George's County have been known to come to D.C. looking for shelter, in some cases claiming to have been sent by service providers in Silver Spring, Maryland. In response, D.C. Councilman Tommy Wells introduced legislation that would require all people seeking homeless services in the District to produce city identification. He later withdrew it in an effort to avoid creating any unintended consequences.

Washington, D.C. gave the homeless a "right to overnight shelter" in 1984 and rescinded it in 1990, due to the financial burden that it put on the city. (This is reminiscent of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's recent claim that he was saving taxpayers money by sending New York's homeless elsewhere.) Now homeless Washingtonians only have a right to shelter if the temperature is 32 and below or 95 and above.

However, D.C.'s "low-barrier" shelters have traditionally allowed people to enter without showing identification and even allowed them to give a false name. Those who are on the lam, undocumented or avoiding family need not worry about having the police called, so long as they don't commit any new crimes while in the shelter. The same is true for those who enter the shelter drunk or high. The city has, in effect, removed all barriers to entry in an effort to encourage people who might otherwise stay outside and freeze to come in, thus saving their lives. Tell D.C. to provide winter shelter to people in need!

Knoxville, Iowa could be transforming a former veterans' hospital into a new national center for homeless veterans with 400 beds and federally-subsidized education and treatment programs. The proposed National Veterans Recovery Center would provide services to homeless and at-risk veterans for up to two years. And it seems that the Department of Veterans Affairs is investing in the program for the long-haul: they've expressed interest in leasing the property for up to 75 years.

Regular readers of this blog (and people with common sense) already know why services for homeless veterans are so desperately needed. Though 400 beds doesn't seem like much when more than 100,000 veterans are homeless, it is a promising step in the right direction. Plus the proposed location boasts 163 acres and 39 buildings, plenty of space for on-site training and treatment, and possibly enough space to offer more beds after the center establishes itself. Best of all, this proposal has a fighting chance of becoming a reality – with a little push from supporters. Voice your support for the National Veterans Recovery Center!

The center proposal comes from a nonprofit headed by former Army Reserve officer Bob Krause. Krause has decades of experience in the Reserves and as a politician, and has been a long-time advocate for veterans, so he seems to have the skills to bring the center into being. Knoxville's mayor Donald Zoutte has voiced support for the project if Krause "has his ducks in a row." The bad news: Knoxville is a town of only 8,000 and may lack job opportunities for transitioning veterans, though it is only 35 miles from Des Moines. And the veterans' organization isn't the only group with an eye on leasing the property. An investor group and a college are also interested in securing the government's long-term lease.

Who's hungry?

This is the kind of rough justice we can get behind: a pizza shop owner in Buffalo, NY who cheated the government out of more than $100,000 in sales tax in the last four years has been sentenced to good works. Instead of getting prison time for his guilty plea to third-degree grand larceny, a state Supreme Court judge just ruled that Joseph Jacobbi, who owns Casa-Di-Pizza, must deliver 12 pizzas each week for the next year to the Buffalo City Mission. (Story from the always-interesting Twitter feed of @hardlynormal.)

While the pizzas will not go to waste, Jacobbi should know that decent nutrition is hard to come by when one is homeless. After all, McDonald's is chosen more often for the price than the food. So if he could kick in some side salads, he'd be doing even more good.

Thinking about this for too long makes my head hurt. How much of that $104,000 in withheld sales tax could have been used on services for the poor and the homeless in New York State? Sadly, I wonder if it's not less than it would take to deliver a dozen pizzas to a single shelter 52 times. Jacobbi still has to contribute the cash, though; he's repaid about half so far. In any case, men sitting in prison aren't contributing to society much, if at all — and often see earnings decreased by 40 percent after their release — so at least Jacobbi can keep paying taxes while he serves his sentence and some large pies for the homeless.

Working off this new judicial model, what should be the next item on the docket? How about forcing those unethical foreclosure fiends to invite someone homeless over to stay in the guest bedroom?

Last winter, with a record 55 inches of snow, was a harsh one for Washington, D.C. The city's homeless outreach quite understandably was unable to reach and assist many of the street homeless in their time of crisis, as roads became impassible and all above-ground metro service was halted. The city was literally shut down.

D.C. Central Kitchen, which provides food to all city shelters, was unable to deliver some of the meals, causing those without money to go hungry or go to the park in hopes of being fed by church groups and other do-gooders. Those with money had to fight their way through knee-deep snow to buy a meal at McDonald's. Many people could do little more than sit around for days on end, as they waited for their streets to be plowed and life to return to normal. With last winter having been a "perfect storm" of troubles for D.C.'s homeless, this hypothermia season is shaping up to become more of the same.

While the severity of last winter may have been unpredictable, local government was given fair warning, despite some people's statements to the contrary. In July 2009 dozens testified in front of a city councilman about the shortage of shelter and the fact that many shelters were at or near capacity in mid-summer, creating grave concern about how the city would deal with the spike in shelter usage that always occurs in winter. During that hearing a video was shown in which various homeless people described their need for shelter. The last interviewee had died in June — just three days after being videotaped.

During a post-winter hearing, D.C. Councilman Tommy Wells, who oversees the Department of Human Services, seemed appalled by reports of over 200 families being crowded into a shelter that was made to accommodate only 135 and of male employees having sex with female residents. During that same hearing, he addressed news reports of a shelter employee arrested for dealing drugs at the shelter. Councilman Wells maintained that there was sufficient shelter for single men and women, but said that we needed more shelter for families. The city admits that it still lacks sufficient shelter for families, which leaves one to wonder why Wells and his colleagues still haven't fixed a problem which they became aware of 15 months ago.

When I wrote about Washington, D.C.'s impending winter housing crisis last month, I did so with what one might call "a shred of optimism." It appears that shred might have been misplaced. It's been more than a month since D.C. officials promised to improve the city's efforts to house homeless families during hypothermia season. Yet, as hypothermia season stands less than a month away, the District appears unprepared.

There are two key drivers of the city's lack of preparedness: a failure to recognize and a failure to act.

Failure to Recognize: The District's failure to recognize the magnitude of the situation has the potential to have an incredibly negative effect on the city's homeless families. The number of homeless families has already increased by over 10 percent his year. Given the economy, it is likely that figure will continue rise. The number of families already in shelters before winter begins  is also significantly higher than in years past.

According to city officials, instead of building additional family shelter space, they are going to focus their efforts on getting families into transitional housing. The relatively modest transitional housing stock (185 units) combined with the smaller "cushion" of space in family shelters makes this approach difficult to say the least. Further, municipalities adjacent to D.C. are cutting their own homeless services in a good old fashioned "race to the bottom," forcing D.C. to cope with a greater influx of homeless individuals from neighboring areas. Any one of these factors would be a cause for concern. Taken collectively, they suggest imminent, serious problems for the city's homeless population.