Street roots., June 29, 2018, Page 9, Image 9

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Rural Housing
Street Roots • June 29-July 5, 2018
P H O T O S BY E M IL Y GREEN
x
Right, A lan Evans at Helping H ands Seaside office. Evans founded Helping H ands after
spending 2 5 years o f his life on the streets. Today it operates 11 facilities with 190 beds,
including the Tillamook facility, above.
Shelter: Conditions
definitely apply
Clients at Helping Hands m ust follow strict
sobriety and programming requirem ents in
exchange for a roof over their heads. It’s working.
BY EMILY GREEN
S E N IO R S T A F F R E P O R T E R
esidents in Oregon’s coastal towns
are willing to help people in their
communities who have fallen on hard
times. But they expect those seeking
services to meet them halfway - and many
are weary of enabling an increasingly visible
homeless population that’s perceived as
transient and criminal, according to social
service providers Street Roots interviewed
in Astoria, Seaside, Tillamook, Lincoln City
and Coos Bay.
“A lot of people want to help homeless
people who just had unfortunate
circumstances that landed them at our
door,” said Raven Brown, development
director at Helping Hands, which operates
shelter programs in three coastal counties.
“They don’t want to help the traveling,
transient people that are destructive to
property and leave debris behind and cause
problems in our community.”
Teaching potential donors that not all
unsheltered people fall into that latter
category can be a challenge, but on the
coast, it’s necessary for nonprofits trying to
secure funding.
Given local attitudes and limited area
resources, it should be no surprise that
most well-funded charities that assist
homeless people on the coast require that
they remain clean and sober and work
toward self-sufficiency.
While this reality can leave some with
mental health and substance abuse issues
outdoors, the success these programs have
with those who are eligible begs notice.
Remarkably, despite shoestring budgets
and skeleton crews, these programs see the
R
Mousing Rural Oregon
vast majority of graduates maintain their
own housing for years after they graduate.
Helping Hands Reentry Outreach Centers
(“reentry” is used to describe a person’s
reentry to society from homelessness rather
than from prison) is known as the primary
provider of shelter in the coast’s northern
counties.
It operates four emergency shelters
anyone can access for up to four days, as
long as they aren’t a sex offender and are
not intoxicated. This is to protect children
who may be onsite.
After four days, however, if an individual
cannot commit to the Helping Hands’ strict
sobriety and programming requirements,
and pass a drug and alcohol test, they must
leave.
Sixty percent of the people who access
the emergency shelters agree to stay and
work the program. Fifteen percent secure
another roof over their head before the four-
day time limit is up.
Of those who stay, 90 percent
successfully graduate, explained Brown,
“and three years later, 80 percent of women
and 75 percent of men are still
independently sustaining housing.”
Helping Hands has been able to achieve
this high rate of success at a cost of just $13
to $15 per person per day.
Its founder, Alan Evans, said this is
possible because Helping Hands survives on
foundational grants and donations so it can
be somewhat unconventional in how it
administers assistance.
“Federal dollars have too many strings
attached,” said Evans. “We’ve been looking
at it from the bottom up rather than the top
down from the very beginning, and we will
not change that. We are very good at what
we do, and we will not limit that service for
a dollar.”
Before he founded Helping Hands, which
began as Thugz off Drugz in 2004, Evans
was homeless and addicted to
methamphetamine.
“I lived on the streets from 13 until 38,”
he said from the swivel chair behind his
desk at Helping Hands’ Seaside office. “I am
a survivor. I’m a sexual abuse survivor. I’m a
physical abuse survivor as a child. I’ve been
in and out of the system, in and out of the
penitentiary. I’m the panhandler - I’m the
aggressive guy on the corner.”
He said social workers he crossed paths
with during those years never saw that he
was broken on the inside. He finally got off
the streets when a police officer who
arrested him decided to take a chance on
him and found a home were he could stay
while he got on his feet. He got a job, saved
his money and opened an eight-bed shelter
in Seaside. Now his program has 11 facilities
and 190 beds across Clatsop, Lincoln,
Yamhill and Tillamook counties.
He’s based his programming on
pinpointing and fixing each individual’s
unique challenges, rather than trying to
squeeze everyone into a one-size-fits-all box.
The core of the program is addressing a
person’s underlying trauma.
The average stay in one of Helping
Hands’ re-entry programs is 90 days, but
those with tougher cases stay up to a year.
Participants must pass random drug
tests, attend classes they’ve been assigned,
and they must complete 10 volunteer hours
per week in the community, in one of
Helping Hands’ thrift stores, or in the
shelter where they live.
n Tillamook, an old naval command center
has served as Helping Hands emergency
shelter and reentry program for the county
since 2015.
In April, Street Roots visited the large,
two-story shelter that sits between the base
of the Cascade Range and Tillamook’s Air
Museum. It was the site manager’s 57th
birthday the day we visited.
“They’re probably making me a cake that
I can’t eat because I’m diabetic,” said Gary
Carlson.
He said Helping Hands came to him when
his drinking habit landed him in Astoria’s
hospital six years ago. He said he was
drinking himself to death, but the program
gave him a reason to live.
“I haven’t touched a drop of liquor in six
years. Basically it gives me purpose, helping
others so they don’t fall in the same trap I
did,” he said.
Across its programming and facilities,
Helping Hands has only three full-time and
six part-time staff. It gets by with the help of
200 active volunteers who teach classes,
cook meals and counsel, and house
managers such as Carlson, who are all
graduates of the program themselves and
work for free room and board plus a $500
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See SHELTER, page 11