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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 5, 2016)
Page 8 News Street Roots • Feb. 5-11,2016 Street Roots • Feb. 5-11, 2016 News COMFORT to a certain degree As M ultnom ah County's first year-round homeless shelter prepares to open, service providers aim to help families become stable - but not too complacent BY AMANDA WALDROUPE agencies to operate satellite locations to meet with residents. There will be no time limit for how long a family can stay. r I Ahree weeks ago, Jake P., his wife, The significance of opening a year-round I Christina, and their 8-month-old child shelter in Multnomah County cannot be X became homeless. overstated. In the past, shelters have been One month ago, B.J. Coney, 39, chose to regarded as the ugly duckling of homeless become homeless rather than continue to live services: necessary during the winter, but not with her husband, who she said verbally and regarded as a solution to ending physically abused their four children. homelessness. In mid-November, Jerri Menard, 44, and her Andy Miller,-Human Solutions’ executive 12-year-old daughter, Raven, became homeless director, says the need to provide shelter for after being evicted from their two-bedroom homeless families has become more urgent as apartment, an apartment Jerri said she could that segment of the homeless population no longer afford after she asked her abusive grows. husband to leave. “With respect to families, the community These families became homeless for has always supported the notion that no child reasons that have become all too familiar in should sleep outside,” Miller said. “The Portland: no-cause evictions. An inability to shelter is really trying to immediately address j find a new home in a city with one of the the trauma that people and children country’s lowest vacancy rates. A struggle to experience when they experience keep up with drastic rent increases. homelessness.” But they have all found a temporary home - The shelter will be an experiment in of sorts. creating more robust services within a They sleep in a shelter operated by Human structure that has been defined by how Solutions, a nonprofit that serves homeless stripped down it is. As more shelters open, families in Multnomah County. The shelter is Jerri Menard and her daughter, Raven, get settled in at Human Solution’s family shelter. It will soon they will look to Human Solutions’ a bare-bones operation; people sleep on mats programming as a model, which, staff agree, that are slightly thicker than an inch. It opens must walk a fine line between helping families them. L-shape around the play area. Residents eat at 3:30 in the afternoon. Lights-out is at 10. become stable and allowing them to become “These new folks are wide-eyed. Their dinner there. After dinner, the tables and Residents wake by 6 in the morning, and leave too complacent or too comfortable. bandwidth is incredibly limited, and they get chairs are folded to make room to sleep on by 7. overwhelmed really easily,” Hodge said. “They j the floor. The shelter is low barrier, meaning want to know how do I get a bus pass? Where ! On a recent Saturday afternoon, Jerri residents are not required to be sober or ‘The newly homeless’ do I shower? Where can I get extra clothes, Menard is in the room assigned to her and clean. The only requirement is that residents extra shoes? They know nothing. The learning j her daughter. She and Raven lie next to each either are part of a family with children or«arew On Jan. 21, a Thursday, it is gray and cold. curve is steep.” other on mats padded with blankets and in their third trimester of pregnancy. A cluster of people loiters near the entrance Jake P. agreed. Around 130 people stay at the shelter every of the shelter, a nondescript one-story building pillows. Menard reads a book; Raven plays a “Most of these people know the ropes,” he i game on a laptop. night. Last year, shelter staff rarely saw such across the street from a MAX stop on said. “We have to ask as we go. We’re still Jake P., Christina and their baby are also high numbers during the winter. This year, Southeast Burnside Street. Some shuffle back getting used to it. That’s the hardest part, just i assigned a room, down a short hallway and those numbers are average. and forth and swing their arms to stay warm. getting used to it.” around a corner. It is quieter and more The shelter opened in November. But A couple sit in folding chairs and snuggle Menard calls homelessness her “great private than the other rooms, and the family unlike the winter shelters of previous years, against each other. Another couple pushes a awakening.” often rests there before dinner. this shelter will not close in the spring. Once baby stroller. A father chases his daughter “Before, I was very much a homebody. I B.J. Coney normally sits at a table with her it relocates, by the end of February, it will be around the parking lot. stayed in my house. I didn’t reach out to a lot three children. On this Saturday afternoon, the first shelter in Multnomah County to be Some people carry their possessions in of people. One of the things that I think she’s playing Monopoly with her daughter. open year-round and during all hours of the garbage sacks, backpacks, hand carts or homelessness did for me was wake me up and These three families are what Charles day. luggage bags. Kids carry games or puzzles. make me get out,” she said. Hodge, Human Solutions’ emergency services The shelter will move to Southeast Stark There are two dozen adults and a half-dozen “When you become homeless, you do a lot coordinator, calls “the newly homeless.” He Street and 160th Avenue, in a building that kids with nothing to do but wait for the of soul searching. Why did this happen to me? estimates that a third of the shelter’s once housed the Black Cauldron strip club. shelter to open. This doesn’t seem fair. This doesn’t seem population falls into that category. The new space opened Feb. 1, and Human They enter through the back of the They’re easy to pick out. They wear newer right,” she said. Solutions’ Daybreak program, which provides building. A short hallway leads to a large open clothes. They store their possessions in She realized that “why” wasn’t the respite services during the day, has already space that includes a partially walled-off area - luggage bags. They are worn and tired, but appropriate question to ask. moved into the building. a former office cubicle now used as a their faces aren’t carved with the deep “The question that I came up with and The new shelter will have semi-private children’s play area. Twelve rooms run along answered is, what did I not do? What were the weariness of years spent being homeless. sleeping spaces for 130 parents and children. one wall. Shelter staff assign two families to a things that I was not looking at, that I was not Hodge said serving that population is the It will have showers, laundry, lockers to store room each week through a lottery system. focusing on in my life? Maybe it was what I shelter’s biggest challenge. Unlike people who belongings, a commercial kitchen to cook and None of the rooms has a door. have been homeless before or for a long time, didn’t do rather than what I did do.” prepare food, a covered outdoor patio where Every afternoon, shelter staff and residents they aren’t familiar with services available to The story of how Menard became homeless kids can play, and space for social-services set up large folding tables and chairs in a STAFF W RITER P H O TO B Y JOE G LO D E operating this month. A t the previous shelter, families have slept on the floor. is one of complacency that turned into catastrophe. Last year, her husband of seven years started drinking heavily. He would shout at Raven and black out regularly. Menard asked him to go into rehab; he refused. One night, Menard and Raven returned home from seeing a movie. Menard’s husband was passed out in front of the couch. He lay in a weird, unnatural position. Menard thought he had died. She asked him to leave, and he did in March 2015. “Think about it, seeing your dad that way,” Menard said. They were able to stay in their two-bedroom apartment in Southeast Portland for nine months. Menard does not work, as a result of a spinal fusion, a surgical procedure that fuses together two or more vertebrae in the spine, which she had done when she was 15. She receives $900 in Supplemental Security Income each month. Menard cobbled the $720 in rent together with her SSI and money from a Department of Human Services program that helps victims of domestic violence make rental payments. Menard’s divorce became final last year. She is supposed to receive spousal support, but she said she has not received any payments. She asked her landlord if she could make partial payments and catch up once the support arrived, but she was turned down. They were evicted Nov. 13, Raven’s 12th birthday. They spent the first weekend in a motel. Menard called her daughter’s school counselor, who told Menard about the family shelter. Raven now goes to the Transitional School, a school designed for children who are homeless. Many families try to establish a semblance of normalcy and routine, for the sake of their children if anything. Menard makes sure Raven gets a snack after school and does her homework, and that they have a chance to spend time together during the afternoon. Most parents at the shelter spend the afternoon with their kids. They sit at the tables with them, talking, eating snacks, or playing card and board games. Kids outnumber the adults two to one. The majority of the kids are toddlers or in elementary school. There are a handful of teenagers. It is never quiet. People talk loudly. Kids scream. Much pf the adults’ time is taken up by keeping kids busy. Conversations are constantly interrupted, filling out paperwork is put on hold, and thoughts are derailed as adults tell the kids to settle down or be quiet or sit in the chair or get a snack or stop fighting with another kid. Coney is often exhausted in the afternoon. Like other parents, she struggles with how to spend the day while the shelter is closed. Many go to a day program at a nearby church. Others go to Human Solutions’ Daybreak program, where they can shower and do laundry. Coney likes to take her kids to the public library. “They love it,” she said. “They can play on the iPad, get on the Internet, read. I just go in the car and go to sleep.” She became homeless when she left her husband. He had verbally and physically abused her for years, she said, and gradually, he began behaving the same way toward their children. She knew it would get worse for her kids. “That’s when I decided to leave,” she said. She said her kids are happy at the shelter. They have other kids they can play with. But she is overwhelmed. “I’m doing a lot of things by myself,” Coney said. “I’ve gotten more migraines than I usually do. It’s not the shelter. It’s the atmosphere.” Jake P. is tall, rail-thin and wears a baseball cap over his black hair. His beard partially obscures his sunken cheekbones. Page 9 “I have a hard time being around a lot of people at once; too many things going on around me,” he said. The family started staying at the shelter three days after becoming homeless in Eugene, after Jake’s family kicked them out. Their days, he said, have been “really chaotic. Very anxiety filled.” “At times, we feel hopeless,” he said. “At other times, we feel uplifted.” Like the other families, he and his wife focus on the well-being of their child. “We just have to keep smiling because that little baby smiles, and we need him to be happy,” Jake said. Jake and Christina choose to be optimistic. “As tough as this is, it’s a blessing,” he said. “We could say this sucks or that sucks or this is kind of hectic, but it’s all a blessing because the alternative would be much worse.” Commotion at the shelter The shelter rents two PODS storage containers, which sit in the parking lot, for residents to store most of their possessions. Every evening around 5:45 p.m., the container is opened for people to retrieve their bedding for the night. Shelter staff yell, “Pods! Pods, pods, pods,” and a handful of people trickle outside and use a single flashlight to see inside the container. The system has nearly gotten out of control. The containers are overflowing with plastic tubs and garbage bags. Once the shelter moves to its new location, each three- person family will be assigned a 26-gallon plastic tub; larger families will receive more tubs. Many people will have to discard some of their things. Other people, like Menard, can afford to rent storage units. Dinner starts around 7 p.m. People trickle into the shelter throughout the afternoon, and at least 80 people have arrived by dinnertime. There is no commercial kitchen at the shelter; volunteers cook the food at their homes or churches and bring the meals to the families. The energy level ramps up. People talk more loudly, children run around faster. People lead their children to where a line forms. These times of tránsition, when people aren’t settled down, are when fights are most likely to start. “These fights just erupt,” Menard said, snapping her fingers, “and you’ve got to try and stay out of them.” As people line up for dinner, two women Scream at each other. People stand back in a circle. Robert Anthony, the shelter’s evening manager, walks up to the group. The altercation is over cutting in line. Anthony defuses the argument, asking a woman to “please, please, instead of cutting in line, go to the back of the line.” Anthony, whose every action and word have Zen-like attributes, takes fights like this in stride. “They have been in a desperate situation for a long period of time,” he said. “Your ability to communicate is diminished. When you’re thinking about where you’re going to rest at night, where you’re going to get extra clothes, where you’re going to get your next meal, that other stuff goes out the window. We hope that bandwidth will open up eventually.” The line re-forms and people calm down. Volunteers from the S t Joseph the Worker Catholic Church serve chicken Alfredo, salad, See SHELTER, page 12
