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Page 8 Street Roots • June 8-14, 2018 Rural Housing Street Roots • June 8-14, 2018 Rural Housing Page 9 'S w Housing Rural Oregon Coastal Crossroads - — —— Simulating poverty ------------ Oregon's coastal communities are struggling with a housing crisis all their own - one that's gotten worse every year following the Great Recession. Short-term vacation rentals, generational poverty, an increasingly visible wealth divide and aging populations have all pushed coastal communities to an irrevocable reckoning. For these communities to have a viable future, something has to change, but what? Teachers get schooled on living with poverty and homelessness - experiences many of their students face every day " I felt like more people within onr district, who have contact with kids, need to understand that this is not their fault. How can we build more empathy and understanding of these children who are homeless, in foster care, almost homeless?" MELINDA TORRES BY EMILY GREEN community is struggling with housing and poverty issues of its own, where demand for housing outweighs supply and costs outpace magine you’re a single mother trying to incomes. A side effect is that many children support two school-aged children on low are either experiencing homelessness, or wages earned working two jobs. You’ve just paid your car insurance and utility bills, their parents are heavily rent burdened. In Coos County, 30 percent of children when the transmission on your 1997 sedan live in poverty and nearly half qualify for gives out, and with it goes your only means free or reduced lunch, according Children of transportation to your graveyard shift First for Oregon’s 2017 County Data Book. cleaning offices. Public transportation in The Coos Bay School District has been your neighborhood doesn’t run at night. hit particularly hard. As of April, 390 of the With no money for repairs, you miss 3,100 children in the district had work, you get fired, you don’t make rent, experienced homelessness this school year, and the downward spiral begins. You spend said Melinda Torres, who works as both the the last of your cash taking the bus to job ARK Program manager and the homeless interviews and social-service agencies, liaison and for the district. looking for any way to keep a roof over your Torres fulfills her two roles « both aimed kids’ heads. Just when you think things can’t at serving impoverished families - out of possibly get worse, your teenage daughter the same office located at Harding Learning tells you she’s pregnant. Center, an alternative high school where 70 For those who grew up in poverty, going percent of the student body is considered through the motions of a simulation such as homeless. this can be triggering, said Steve Roe. He It’s also where the ARK Program offers a owns and manages a car dealership in food pantry, free clothing closet with most Grants Pass and conducts these simulations child and teen sizes, hygiene items and across Oregon, free of charge. He said it’s other essentials that have been collected as important for people who, like himself, have donations and are provided to struggling never lived in severe poverty, to have the families with kids enrolled in the district powerful experience the simulation affords. Torres said the majority of her homeless It was after going through one himself students are either couch surfing or doubled two years ago at a Ford Family Foundation up in a relative or friend’s home after their retreat in Bend that Roe decided he wanted family lost their own. She said many to become a facilitator. students falling into the homeless category He flew to St. Louis, Mo., for a two-day are living in substandard housing, such as a training and bought a $2,150 kit from the camper or RV, and others are living in Missouri Association for Community Action. Since then, he has taken groups, typically of motels. Thankfully, she said, she doesn’t currently 100 or more, through the simulation in have any families camping in tents, but that various towns across Oregon, paying for his situation typically arises in the summer. own travel, room and board along the way. “I remember one family had a 4-year-old and a 1-year-old, and I’m just calling everywhere, because I am like you have to A district in poverty be somewhere before winter comes. I cannot handle you being in that tent with When Lisa DeSalvio, a program director those babies,” she said. “And that’s what at Coos Bay School District, experienced a really kills me.” poverty simulation at The Mill Casino in North Bend, it immediately struck her as Until Coos Cares’ Harmony House something that would be beneficial to opened in December, there was no educators working in her d istrict homeless shelter for families in the entire In last week’s edition of Street Roots, we county. However, Harmony House only has reported on how generational poverty space for two families and is running a wait following an economic collapse in the 1980s list There’s also no shelter for unaccom has fed an increasingly severe housing crisis panied youths in Coos County - or in Coos County. anywhere else along the coast Up and down the Oregon C oast each Part II Coos County A R K P R O G R A M M A N A G E R A N D H O M E LE S S L IA IS O N FO R THE C O O S B A Y S C H O O L D ISTR IC T SE N IO R STAFF REPORTER I ■ W r - ER*"1 ILLUSTRATION BY ENRIQUE RAM O S LOPEZ/ISTOCK In Lincoln County, where 1 in 8 students are homeless, the school district typically has one or two students who are bused to school from the nearest homeless youth shelters, in Salem and Corvallis - at least an hour each way. If the kids can’t find people who will house them locally, it’s the only way to prevent them from falling behind academically, explained Katey Townsend, the homeless liaison for Lincoln County School District. During the 2016-17 school year, 215 homeless students in Lincoln County School District were unsheltered - finding refuge in campers, tents, bams and storage units, said Townsend. That same year, 84 stayed in shelters and motels, and nearly 500 found shelter in the homes of family or friends. Townsend said the numbers are up from when she moved back to Newport to work for the school district in 2010. Back then, there were about 400 homeless youths across the entire county. Two years ago, the number peaked at close to 1,000. While the increase may be partially due to better tracking, she said, “the problem has definitely gotten worse.” With no youth shelters, homeless youths living on Oregon’s coast can often find themselves in less-than-ideal living situations, such as staying with a coworker they recently m et at a new job or with a relative who has a substance abuse issues. “I remember some of them last year, About this series This article is part of Street Roots’ Housing Rural Oregon series. This segment of the series examines housing and homeless issues along Oregon’s coast. Read previous articles from the series at news.streetroots.org. were staying with random people, and there was nothing I could do about it besides give I them a tent,” Torres said. Barbara Green, education assistant at the Coos Bay School District’s ARK Program, added, “It happened this year for a couple kids. They just moved here and don’t have anywhere to stay, so they ask their classmates, ‘Hey, can I stay with you, would your parents be OK with it?’” In the two years she has been with the district, Torres said unaccompanied teenagers have made up a large part of her caseload. She said in some cases, they moved to the coast with a significant other who has family in the area, and then a break up leaves them homeless. Many are simply at odds with their family. Green said families and youth are often drawn to Coos Bay because they have “an awesome childhood memory’ of the place and decided to move there without a solid plan for housing or work. “That is always a major one,” said Torres, “for why families move here. Or they were promised a job. And then that didn’t go through. We hear that all the time.” Erin Skaar, director of Community Action Resource Enterprises in Tillamook County, said she can name three families in her area who have a teenager who is not their own living with them right now. “I think that this goes back to that we have a friendly, small community, where we have a lot of amazingly wonderful, loving households that will allow those youths to stay for a window of time,” Skaar said. For homeless students, accessing the internet or finding a quiet place to do homework can be barriers to succeeding in school. Objectives like finding shelter and acquiring money can become priorities, while schodlwork and grades fall to the wayside. It can be tough on teachers, too. In both Lincoln County and Coos Bay school districts, it’s likely a teacher will have multiple homeless students in his or her classroom. “Sometimes, it’s probably hard when juggling 30 students, and maybe one of the homeless students is sleeping that morning, in their class,” said Townsend. “That can be frustrating, but I think when a teacher learns the underlying issue of what’s going on - they didn’t have stable housing or they stayed up half the night because they were in a tent and it was raining outside, they really switch into figuring out how to support the student” Teachers can point their students to their school’s homeless liaison and other resources for students who are struggling with housing or food insecurity. In Coos Bay, thé ARK program offers a computer lab, along with transportation See POVERTY, page 12 PHOTOS BY EMILY GREEN M elinda Torres (above) goes through supplies a t Coos Bay A K K Program, which provides clothing, food and other supplies to housing insecure fam ilies with children in the Coos Bay School District. In Coos County, 30 percent o f children live in poverty and nearly h a lf qualify fo r free or reduced lunch, according Children First fo r Oregon’s 2017 County Data Book. Hygiene kits (at right) fu n d ed by the Cow Creek Umpqua Indian Foundation, are ready fo r students. This past winter, Torres said her program distributed 120 suck kits.
