Homelessness On the Rise
By David Panian
Staff Writer
Daily Telegram
Lenawee County, MI
Agencies report more people seeking housing assistance
Agencies serving the homeless and those seeking emergency housing assistance have noticed a marked increase in people seeking help this summer.
The three agencies that offer emergency shelter — the Lenawee Emergency and Affordable Housing Corp., the Catherine Cobb Domestic Violence Program and the Lenawee County Mission — report their beds are full.
“Because of that, homeless situations become more dire — people living in cars, living in the woods, living in sheds,” Beth McCullough, homeless education liaison for the Adrian Public Schools, said.
McCullough said for the 2005-06 school year, 314 students used homeless services provided by different Lenawee County school districts. In the first month of school this year, 75 students have already used those services. Those numbers are about evenly split between the Adrian schools and the county’s 11 other school districts.
“We have several situations that we were dealing with kids sleeping in cars,” McCullough said.
Khris Henson-Jones, executive director of LEAHC, said the agency paid out $4,635 in housing assistance in August, almost $2,000 more than August 2005 and about $1,700 more than in July. Those funds help people pay their rent or mortgage payments to avoid being evicted. LEAHC also has three emergency beds for individuals and one shelter for a family.
The Lenawee County Mission has 10 beds that are used every night, executive director Jim Watson said. The mission is hoping for financial assistance to help it rent a second house so it can add seven more beds for the homeless to its emergency shelter for men (see related story).
The Catherine Cobb shelter, which is primarily for women and their children who are the victims of domestic violence but offers any spare room in its 36-bed shelter to homeless women and children, saw the number of people it sheltered increase from 56 in July to 71 in August. For the first two weeks of September, 43 people stayed at the Cobb shelter, with 16 people turned away because the shelter was full. The shelter turned away 12 people in July and 13 in August because there was no room.
The Daily Bread of Lenawee soup kitchen on South Tecumseh Street in Adrian has experienced record numbers of people seeking a meal in recent weeks. Kitchen manager Patti Rose said in August they set an all-time, one-day record of 186 meals served. Daily Bread Executive Director Kathy Poisson-DeWitt said the soup kitchen has had “just an enormous increase” in people coming through its doors this year, a trend that began last year.
In 2005, the soup kitchen served 16,000 more meals than it did in 2004, Poisson-DeWitt said. At the end of August this year, the soup kitchen had already topped 2005’s total by 13,000.
“We see a lot of new faces, a lot of new families,” she said.
The 27 human services agencies that make up the homeless continuum of care in Lenawee County had an emergency meeting two weeks ago to try to find more shelter space.
“We got out the shoehorn two weeks ago and said, ‘Where can we put them?’” McCullough said.
Continuum of care representatives say many of those finding themselves homeless or on the brink of homelessness are living paycheck to paycheck and having trouble making ends meet.
“The face of homelessness in Lenawee County is not … the person on skid row,” Capt. Gordon Knight of the Adrian corps of the Salvation Army said. “It really is the working poor or the recently unemployed that were barely getting by to begin with.”
That view of the homeless population is not well-known. Henson-Jones said she has run into resistance from landlords as she tries to move two of LEAHC’s individual shelter beds from a building that is being renovated to be sold. She said they think LEAHC works with stereotypical homeless people and won’t house them.
“I’ve had landlords say, ‘No. I know the population you work with,’” she said.
“A lot of the new folks (coming to The Daily Bread) have worked for years for the auto companies or one of the related companies,” Poisson-DeWitt said. Those jobs are disappearing, she said.
“What I see is a lot of hopelessness on the part of our patrons because they feel it’s going to get worse,” Poisson-DeWitt said. “I agree with them.”
Bob Bertram of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s rural development programs said he has seen a marked increase in mortgage foreclosures. He said there were 28 foreclosure sales in August.
“I’d never been to (a foreclosure sale) where there were more than two or three,” he said.
If a family is evicted from their home, the mother and children can see if the Cobb shelter has room, said Sharon Hudson, executive director for Family Counseling and Children’s Services Agency of Lenawee County. Family Counseling runs the Cobb program. Knight said the Salvation Army can provide emergency housing for up to three days at a motel. They can also check with LEAHC or the Lenawee County Mission if they have available space.
“If a family becomes homeless, you’d get three days (of temporary housing),” McCullough said. “The reality for a homeless family today is not very good.”
Others losing their jobs are being employed for just short of the 60-day marker when unemployment benefits would kick in.
“It’s not that they’ve been laid off. They’ve been ‘let go,’” McCullough said.
Those people then jump from job to job, being let go after less than two months at a job. McCullough said having several jobs in a short period of time listed on a resume looks bad to prospective employers, making it more difficult to land a job even if the person is a good worker.
Knight said he has heard of businesses that were planning to add staff, but with the minimum wage increasing today from $5.15 an hour to $6.95 an hour those businesses have decided they can’t afford to add staff. Other employers are changing jobs from full time to part time to avoid paying benefits, he said.
Theresa Rupley from South Central Michigan Works said employers also are able to be selective when hiring because of the large number of applicants.
“People with higher-education degrees are going for entry-level jobs,” Jessica Hannah from the Hope Community Center said.
The price of housing in Lenawee County also strains families’ budgets. Henson-Jones said Lenawee County now has its own fair-market rent — after being included with Washtenaw and Livingston counties — as determined by the federal Housing and Urban Development Department, but it will take time for rents here to moderate. For 2006, HUD says the fair-market rent for a two-bedroom apartment is $647 a month.
McCullough said the financial assistance a mother with one child receives from the state does not meet the cost of living in Lenawee County, especially if she has an older son. State rules say a single mom and a boy have to have separate bedrooms, and having one of them sleep on the couch in the living room while the other sleeps in the bedroom doesn’t count as two bedrooms.
Burt Fenby, director of the Lenawee County Community Action Agency, said CAA is able to help pay utility bills, but not rent.
“We’ve been telling people to pay rent and put off their utility bills,” he said. When someone receives a shutoff notice, then CAA can help pay those bills.
There is also a prejudice in the rules, in society and amongst landlords on renting to large families, the continuum representatives said. Large families can’t necessarily afford larger homes, some people think people shouldn’t have more kids than they can afford, and landlords are concerned about large families causing more wear and tear on their apartments.
Hannah said that bias extends to employers, who don’t always follow the rules on what they can ask in interviews. Once they find out a prospective employee has several kids, they might not hire that person based on concerns about whether they would need lots of time off to take care of their children.
Rupley said the Michigan Works office gives information to job-seekers on what questions employers may and may not ask during interviews.
Kathryn Szewczuk, supervisor of community outreach services for the Lenawee County Mental Health Authority, said people with mental illnesses also carry an unfair stigma.
“Just because there’s a mental health worker involved or they’re on medication or have a diagnosis, it’s not a reason to keep them out of an apartment,” Szewczuk said.
“Or out of a job,” Hudson said.
Hannah said that people with mental illnesses who are homeless often have trouble treating their disease.
“It’s a vicious cycle because when you’re homeless, you aren’t thinking first of going to therapy,” Szewczuk said.
The continuum of care representatives say the community can help reduce homelessness if landlords offer affordable housing and don’t discriminate against people working with human service agencies.
“Just because they are working with LEAHC or whoever doesn’t mean they’re drug users or abusers,” Hannah said.
Rupley said employers could give ex-cons a second chance with jobs and that Michigan Works offers bonding if employers want financial protection in hiring someone with a criminal record.
In the meantime, the agencies working with the homeless also need additional funding as they spend money more quickly than in the past, their representatives say. The county received $73,959 from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for emergency food and shelter in 2006.
“We had almost twice as much money this year and still went through it in the same amount of time,” Henson-Jones said.
“It was gone in six months,” McCullough said.
Other funding sources are becoming scarce. Fenby said the amount of assistance from the state of Michigan is at its lowest level since 1978. Poisson-DeWitt said she is going to apply for grants from out-of-state funding sources. Knight said there are many agencies vying for the same funds.
“The diversity of resources that are out there, it’s beginning to concern me,” he said.