56 POST | Issue 4 March / April 2014 FREED Senior Editor Mary Stone spent some time with a handful of homeless people in our city in an attempt to understand what they are going through. The truth she found was heartbreaking—and surprising. The Price Of by Mary Stone
Transcript
1. 56 POST | Issue 4 March / April 2014 FREED O Senior Editor
Mary Stone spent some time with a handful of homeless people in our
city in an attempt to understand what they are going through. The
truth she found was heartbreakingand surprising. The Price Of by
Mary Stone
2. Issue 4 March / April 2014 | POST 57 Men, mainly, dressed in
sweatshirts and coats soaked from rain, carrying sleeping bags or
shopping bags, loiter in a stairwell on their way to the garage
below. At the bottom of the stairs, my new friend Arleen Hodge, a
Rochester documentarian photographer, prepares me for a reality Im
about to experience: homelessness. She comes to the Civic Center
Parking Garage on Exchange Street often, in a rotation of a half a
dozen other public city locations where people can go to escape the
brunt of the elements. Originally, her visits were to document
homelessness with her photography. Now, she says, they are more for
company; for helping her put reality back into perspective. That
process already is happening to me. My hands are cold. My neck too,
I think, as I immediately chastise myself for a sensationa
realitythat is unrelenting for this subterranean community. I am
not scared or intimidated, as I often am for interviews. Instead I
am ashamed: of my weather-appropriate apparel, of the way I shiver
when its not even December. Out of the wind and absorbed in
conversation, I start to forget the cold. One of a precious few,
out of a dozen and a half men there that night, is willing to tell
me his story. Wolf is sitting on the curb of the garage a few yards
from the entrance, with few belongings apart from a sleeping bag.
People like him are scattered, alone or in groups of no more than
four, along the perimeter of the garagesome in the dark recesses,
others here in the light. Wolf goes by his last name, which also
happens to denote his attitude, Im told. Under the influence, Wolf
reacts violently to confrontation of any sort, Arleen explains. It
gets him into an average of six fights a week, he tells me.
Sometimes, however, its unprovoked, when hes sleeping, for example,
and someone tries to steal his things. Theft is common, the men
tell me. Thats why it doesnt do any good to have anything new:
boots, electronics, gear to protect them from the cold. Unless they
can sleep on top of it, they will wake to find it gone. Wolf is 53,
but he looks at least 70. He is gaunt, but hot-blooded and ready to
disagree. I listen to his story, and think how it sounds romantic:
a combination of John Updike and Jack Kerouac. Wolf tells me about
a womanCorawho broke his heart. He was 42 then, and she was
sleeping with his friend. The devastation, which still brings him
to tears, set him on a vagabond life, a cross-country adventure,
where he worked as a mechanic, a hardware salesman, a tow truck
operator. He went wherever there was work, he says, until two DWIs
within two weeks cost him his license and his job. He was in
Baltimore at the time. His sister paid to bring him back to Western
New York, where Wolf settled in Rochester. He has been O n a
November night, in the stinging wind and slanted rain, hockey
specta- tors file out of Blue Cross Arena and down Exchange Street
bundled and huddled together for the walk to their cars and the
eventual drive home. Underneath them, in the parking garage across
the street, another group assembles. Jonathan Rutherford D OM Fred
(left) and Joe (right) often prefer a winter night on the pavement
in the County Civic Center parking garage to a bed in a local
shelter for the freedom from authority it allows them.
3. 58 POST | Issue 4 March / April 2014 homeless for eight
years, the last two of which have been in the parking garage. As
fearless as Wolf seems, even he admits it is dangerous. He often
wakes to being kicked for nothing more than someones sick
amusement. Hubert Wilkerson, a local activist for the homeless and
shelter worker, says that kind of violence, after a hockey game,
for example, is common in that neighborhood. Some of the people
coming from Blue Cross Arena go to kick some of the guys. Just get
violent on them for no reason,Wilkerson says. When I ask Wolf why
he doesnt sleep in a shelter, he says because of curfewsand
bedbugs. He wasnt alone. Four out of four men I spoke to cited
bedbugs as their reason for sleeping in the garage instead of a
shelter. Wilkerson, who is known at city shelters for placing
people in showers and closets wherever there is space when no beds
are left, says bedbugs are rampant, yes, but there are bigger
problems shelters face. Bedbugs, as real as they are, he says, are
just an excuse homeless people use. When you go to the garage, a
lot of those guys have mental health issues on the severe side. A
lot of them are alcoholics. They really dont like the shelter
situation, which I can understand, because when I was homeless I
didnt like it either, Wilkerson says. Wilkerson spent some time
homeless after being shot in 2005 and losing one eye. He said it
was due to a group of people and organizations that he was able to
get back on his feet. Many homeless people want to come and go as
they please, to do their drugs, if they want, he says. They dont
have to be sober to sleep in a parking garage. And for that
independence theyre willing to brave violence, theft, the cold and
more. Bedbugs is an excuse. In a garage, youre dealing with
everything: there are rats running around, mice, lice, etc., etc.
No! Wilkerson says. Its to have their freedom. Wolf says he is an
alcoholic, but not exclusively. One of his main concerns, and the
primary obstacle, he says, to getting back on his feet is a crack
debt he still owes. Hes been paying it off in small installments
from the $540 a month he receives from his pension and money he
gets panhandling. I struggle to survive every day, in every way I
can. I panhandle. I get a sign. Thats how I get food, he says.
After he pays his debt, Wolf wants to move to Florida. Until then,
he says, he survives the hardest moments with the odd phone call to
his daughters. Both live in Colorado, and speak to him only when
Wolf can get his hands on a phone. Hodge says connecting with
people like Wolf has helped her in her own life. Hodge moved to
Rochester from New York City. Looking to make a name for herself in
photography, she sought a niche: documenting homelessness in
Rochester. She recalls packing a wool blanket and finding a group
of homeless people at an encampment by the railroad tracks. She
gained their trust and they even more quickly gained hers. Hodge
and others talk about the vulnerability of the people here. I
realize it is because they are vulnerable that they are so
immediately relatable, despite their very different stories. The
state of suffering seems to bring their souls to the surface in a
way that instantly is very beautiful but also in extreme contrast
to the odor of excrement, urine and other harsh material reminders
of their circumstances. Hodge, personally, was strengthened by her
experience with the homeless. I had a daughter who died. I know
suffering. Or, I thought I did, Hodge says. I didnt start healing
until I stepped into the world of true suffering. She recalls a
night at the encampment, when a homeless woman in her 20s suffering
from multiple sclerosis fell from her wheelchair trying to reach
the top of the encampment. It took some time for Hodge or anyone
else to notice. When they did, she was face down in the mud, her
diaper full of excrement. In the years since then, the young woman
has since found the help she needs through an assisted-living
apartment on East Avenue, Hodge says. Her story turned out well,
but thats not usually the case, she says. In this place, theres
mental illness; PEOPLE THINK THIS IS THE LAST STOP, BUT ITS NOT.
YOU DONT HAVE TO BE HERE FOR THAT. THE LAST STOP IS WHEN YOUR
FAMILY DONT WANT YOU NO MORE. THATS WHEN YOURE DOWN ON YOUR LUCK:
WHEN THEY SAY, FUCK IT. IM DONE.
4. Issue 4 March / April 2014 | POST 59 theres addiction, yes.
But for this girl it was MS. Some people just find themselves with
a problem they werent prepared for. In her case, she needed help,
and there was no one, no family who could deal. Thats the reality.
In the parking garage, everyone I speak to says that despite the
bedbugs and the rules, ultimately it is their own choice not to be
in a shelter, and they assume the consequences. A man named Ernie
tells me this. There is no reason to be hungry in Rochester. There
is no reason to be homeless. It is a choice, he says. Ernie is
dressed nicely, in a plaid blue shirt, with an apparently warm
jacket and boots. He tells me he has a phone with Internet, but he
doesnt have a place to live, and thats his choice. As we are
talking I notice a young man wearing a red hoodie. I noticed him
during my conversation with Wolf swoop in briefly to find out what
I was there for. He scooped up the box of sandwiches I brought and
took them to his friends. When we make eye contact, he walks away
in a loop, like hes riding a bicycle. I sit down to talk to someone
else Hodge said was willing to talk. He is lying partly in a wet
sleeping bag, with his back leaning against the parking garage
wall. Like Ernie, he says he accepts the choices he makes. His name
is Elijah. No more than 25, his skin is smooth and perfectly
poreless. He looks radiant. He speaks to me reluctantly, and
without revealing any details about his personal story, he talks
about Jesus. He tells me he is not worried; he is not afraid of
anything. He grew up going to church. He has Jesus in his heart. He
talks with a kind of pity about the people outside who appear not
to have the same inner peace. When he realizes, however, that my
recorder is taping our conversation, he becomes angry. He tells me
I am exploiting him. Overcome with shame, I realize I had left my
recorder on from the last interview. Before I realize, let alone
explain, Elijah has shut down. He pulls his hoodie over his eyes
and tightens the strings. I am dismissed. I make some stupid
excuses and apologize. I feel like Ive wounded an already wounded
child. I turn around, a little dizzy from the conversation, and
find Fred, who is more than willing to talk. Behind him, I notice,
the teenager in the red hoodie, who presumably also is willing to
talkjust not yet willing enough to overcome his fear. Fred tells me
that the people in the garage, as different as they seem, are a
community. We help each other out. People share down here.
Everybodys in the same boat. Its not like a club: Its a family,
Fred says. Hes talking fast; hes excited. Five or six people gather
around us to listen. We can sleep here until 6:00. Im the first one
up, so I make sure everyone gets up and out. People go, some of
them go to St. Josephs to wash clothes, take a shower. Surviving,
especially in the cold months, requires a lot of work. The men tell
me their days are full before they return here to sleep. I tell
people, Dont sleep like youre on vacation because somebodys going
to come through here from outside, Fred says. Its a hard life, but
its not the worst there is, Fred says. People think this is the
last stop, but its not. You dont have to be here for that. The last
stop is when your family dont want you no more. Thats when youre
down on your luck: When they say, Fuck it. Im done. Fred is talking
excitedly when he notices one of the men behind us laughing at him.
He shuts down for a moment, his face turns down, and I turn to
glare at the old man they call Santa (for his white beard). Fred
starts talking again but with more reserve. Theyve got all of these
empty buildings in the city. Why dont they open them up to the
homeless? Fred asks. The people who work there would do it to keep
their bed. If they dont work, they get kicked out. Half the people
here get checks, and half of them drink it away, half of them smoke
crack. Let them work for their housing was his point. And apart
from the insurance considerations, the idea seemed to me to make
perfect sense. Wilkerson, the shelter employee I later spoke to,
told me this is a solution he has longed for, and one he promotes
constantly at city and church meetings. I believe in housing first,
Wilkerson says, referring to a term in social services for moving
people directly into their own apartment, instead of transitioning
through various stages of housing. We have more abandoned houses in
this city than we do homeless people, he says. A lot of these
people have talents. If you can allow sweat equity, allow these
guys to rehabilitate, renovate these houses, rebuild them and start
opening some of them up, we can start eliminating this problem. The
alternative, he says, is just recycling the same people. Wilkerson
insists, from his experience helping the homeless, that independent
housing allows people to bounce back faster. Im proof of that
because I bounced back, he says. Wilkerson helps supervise men at a
wet house on South Avenue Located across from a soup kitchen and
shelter, the wet house allows people who are still drug- or
alcohol-dependent to stay in apartments at little to no cost. The
house is a project launched this year by St. Marys Church, St.
Josephs House of Hospitality and House of Mercy. Michael Boucher, a
social worker at St. Josephs Neighborhood Centera medical and
mental health center for people without insurancesays the idea of
converting abandoned houses into housing for the homeless is
brilliant. (It) would need to be safe, obviously, but there are
models from around the country that support this idea, Boucher
says. I doubt that it would take a lot of capital to initiate.
Supervision becomes an issue, I think. I cant see a lot of
taxpayers being OK with wet houses (where people are allowed to go
if they are not drug and alcohol free). This has already been an
issue with social services, Boucher says. For that reason people
are required to answer questions about substances use and seek
treatment in order to get public funds. So for me the idea is a
good one but complicated. (It) underscores the point, however, that
in every major metropolitan area there is more housing than there
are peopleabandoned or otherwise, Boucher says. It is a lot like
the issue of hunger: There is plenty of food worldwide to feed
everyone. It is a matter of political will to make sure that it
happens. All that said, he adds, I do think that there are ways
that the city could creatively use its abandoned housing stock for
people who are homeless. Something needs to happen, Wilkerson says,
because there are too few beds at shelters to accommodate people.
City shelters, bedbugs or not, he says, are full most winter
nights. Even when you call social services after- hours, theyll
tell you theyre full. They have no rooms to place anybody. I will
say, What do you want me to do with these people? They hang up on
me, Wilkerson says. I try Jonathan Rutherford
5. 60 POST | Issue 4 March/ April 2014 to stash them somewhere.
I put them in the shower, the bathroom. I would get admonished by
the shelters themselves. They tell me I cant do this. I tell them,
These are human beings were talking about. Rochester already is
emphasizing housing first among other aggressive approaches toward
permanent housing, such as rapid rehousing and permanent supportive
housing, following new goals initiated by the Federal Strategic
Plan to End Homelessness and the Homeless Emergency Assistance and
Rapid Transition to Housing Act. In response to new federal goals,
the city commissioned a homeless needs study that included two
national experts brought in to evaluate the effectiveness of
Rochesters response to homelessness. Carrie Michel-Wynne, director
of housing at YWCA of Rochester and Monroe County, is on the
steering committee for the Homeless Services Network, a group of 70
people that meets monthly to find better methods for easing
homelessness. Wynne serves in various other organizations such as
the Rochester/ Monroe County Continuum of Care advisory committee.
She says she was encouraged by the study findings. It is true that
many of the shelters run at capacity but what is exciting is that
our community has been working very diligently to alleviate the
need for hotel placements (which is where homeless individuals are
placed when shelters are full), Michel-Wynne says. First, it was
noted that we have a very low street homeless problem compared to
cities of similar size. We also do an excellent job at getting
people out of a homeless situation when they are homeless, she
adds. Our average length of stay is about 14-16 days whereas in
some communities people stay homeless for a year or more. By
adjusting the prevailing philosophy, she says, the problem of hotel
placements could be solved within Rochesters existing shelter
system. Those changes would include, for example, coordinated
access, so that all shelters screen and prioritize people the same
way, Michel-Wynne explains. Individuals with minimal needs might
only need short-term assistance, she says. We have a very dedicated
task force, developed by the Rochester/Monroe County Homeless
Continuum of Care team, and comprised of more than 20 agency
providers, advocates and former consumers. All of our work is being
steered by the recommendations of the experts that came to
Rochester. One measure, she says, is diversion. Helping people out
financially in very targeted ways. An expert from Cleveland is
slated to train local providers on the technique. (Diversion)
essentially means that we will use mediation techniques and minimal
cash resources to keep an individual in their current living
situation. For example, if a youth has run away from home, a
trained counselor might bring the family together to identify
solutions so the child can go home or to a safe relative. Another
example might be that a person fell ill and as a result fell behind
on rent. The landlord might be apt to evict the person but with
good mediation and short-term cash assistance, we may be able to
convince the landlord to keep the tenant. THEYVE GOT ALL OF THESE
EMPTY BUILDINGS IN THE CITY. WHY DONT THEY OPEN THEM UP TO THE
HOMELESS? I TRY TO ENCOURAGE PEOPLE EVERYWHERE FOR IDEAS AND
SUPPORT BECAUSE I WAS BORN IN 1954, AND ROCHESTER WAS A
HIGH-POVERTY CITY THEN, AND TODAY ITS STILL IN THE TOP 10. Michael
Hanlon Local homeless activist and shelter worker, Hubert
Wilkerson.
6. Issue 4 March/April 2014 | POST 61 People who stay in
garages and other public places, Michel-Wynne says, are people who
dont want to deal with rules. Federal legislation requires some
screening and qualification before they can receive benefits.
Significant outreach and planning has gone into addressing the
needs of this population, Michel-Wynne says. We have prioritized
shelter plus vouchers for this population and some have taken
advantage of it. Others refuse to go through the process and we
have even found ways to minimize the qualification process.
Shelters, she says, have to have rules to protect people. Even so,
many shelters are willing to accommodate people under the influence
or people who have unaddressed mental health problems, so long as
they can keep the rest of the population safe. Michel-Wynne says
using abandoned houses to house people presents code violations. In
many cases, they are unsafe for people to renovate. Plus, she says,
renovating a house requires planning, commitment and engagement,
which generally are difficult for the homeless population. The
individuals that refuse to go to organizations are often those that
are not likely to commit to fixing up a home. Most of these folks
have a difficult time with relationships. Putting a few people in
an abandoned home and expecting them to work together to restore
the home is highly unlikely, she says. Ideally, there should be wet
houses, Michel-Wynne says, but agencies wont take the risk for the
liability it represents. However, she says, some new affordable-
housing projects are developing an open- air concept. She says:
Individuals with significant risk factors can go into housing but
still have the option of sleeping outside if they want. The design
includes a safe outdoor spot for people to sleep if they so choose.
Wilkerson, however, is less optimistic than Michel-Wynne but still
hopeful. He says, I think this is my calling, to work with the
homeless to work with mental illness, because I have mental health
issues myself. I think this is where I should be. I try to
encourage people everywhere for ideas and support because I was
born in 1954, and Rochester was a high-poverty city then, and today
its still in the top 10. This is what I call a one-horse town. You
can walk the length of it in a couple of hours, and its still in
poverty. They have administration after administration that come
out with these 10-year, 15-year plans. We need immediate help. We
need plans for today. Indeed. In December, a report found Rochester
to be the fifth poorest city in the nation, according to the
Rochester Area Community Foundation and ACT Rochester The ranking
was against the 75 largest U.S. metropolitan areas. Among
comparably sized cities, Rochester ranks second, mainly for its
extreme concentration of poverty within the city. It infuriates
Wilkerson, who advises people who want to help financially to give
to shelters directly. The House of Mercy, for example, he says, is
particularly dedicated to the homeless. And of course, he says,
people should give money to the people who need it, not necessary
some middle man who is going to distribute it for them. Clothes,
for example, often get sold for funds that get distributed to
various programs. People who take their clothes to the Salvation
Army, he says, dont always realize that homeless people have to buy
them in order to wear those donations. Wilkerson says, if people
want homeless people to get their clothes for free, its generally
better to donate to churches instead. At the parking garage, food
is appreciated and blankets and pillows too. Leaving there, Red
hoodie circled back. The only thing he managed to say the whole
night was to ask if I had any books for him. I told him I wish I
had. Walking up the stairs and out to my car, I wasnt cold at all,
but I didnt realize it at the time. I was too dazzled by the
soulful beauty downstairs. The rawness of their circumstances
evoked such an immediate connectiona recalibration of my own view
of the worldthat I didnt seem to feel anything but happiness. In my
mind, on the drive home I saw colors like jewels. It wasnt until
later, warming up by the radiator and writing my notes, that I made
the connection with the colors I saw, as I wrote their names: Wolf,
Ernie, Elijah, Fred, and Red. For the sake of privacy, the full
names of the homeless men in this story were not included. Data
from the Homeless Management Information System, which tracks the
prevalence of homelessness in Rochester and Monroe County, showed
that there were 1,161 single homeless men and 693 homeless women
here in 2011, and only half as many available beds or housing
units. Total, there were 1,854 homeless single men and women three
years ago, and 998 places for them to sleep. For families, there
was slightly more availability, according to the same 2011
statistics. That year, there were 640 homeless families with
children in 2011 who had some 524 places to stay in Rochester
(including emergency housing, transitional and permanent supportive
housing). Jonathan Rutherford NUMBERS