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About Keizertimes. (Salem, Or.) 1979-current | View Entire Issue (July 29, 2016)
JULY 29, 2016, KEIZERTIMES, PAGE A3 Simonka Place numbers contradict homeless counts By ERIC A. HOWALD Of the Keizertimes When Dianna arrived at the doorstep of Keizer’s Simonka Place last October, she simply stood outside the shelter and cried for a while. It took most all of her re- solve to actually open the door. “I was at my lowest of lows. I never thought I would be out of a job, that I would be at a homeless shelter. It was that fear, that pride,” Dianna said. The Keizertimes is not using her last name to protect her privacy. Dianna spent four decades as a certifi ed nursing assistant before her own mental health issues, including bipolar de- pression, fi nally cost her the career in early 2015. “I had enough to keep my apartment through April, then I was living with a friend,” she said. She didn’t know what to expect as she entered Simonka Place, which is operated by Sa- lem’s United Gospel Mission (UGM), but the people she met there are slowly and surely helping her back toward inde- pendence. She said a welcoming in- take interview, a case manager “so full of energy and laugh- ter” that it put her at ease, and a newfound religious faith have all been part of her recovery. KEIZER CLASSIFIEDS REAL ESTATE Keizer – FREE June 2016 Report on Keizer House Prices. PLUS: Free List of All Homes for Sale in your Keizer area. FREE RECORDED MESSAGE: 503-967-2116, ext. 10. 7/29 SERVICES DIVORCE $155. Complete preparation. Includes children, custody, support, property and bills division. No court appearances. Divorced in 1-5 weeks possible. 503-772-5295. www.paralegalalternatives.com legalalt@msn.com ONAC HEALTH & BEAUT Y Got Knee Pain? Back Pain? Shoulder Pain? Get a pain-relieving brace at little or NO cost to you. 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CALL 1-800-918-1105 ONAC She was set up with a spot in Simonka’s dayroom with about 10 other residents before get- ting moved to a less dense area after a surgery in November. “They saved my bed for me and I didn’t expect that,” Di- anna said. “Even the other resi- dents are great. When someone is sick or having trouble, we do our best to take care of each other.” She’s now working with an attorney to begin receiving So- cial Security benefi ts. “I’m so much more peace- ful and calm, they’ve helped me with so much, right down to helping me get new glasses through the Lion’s Club,” Di- anna said. While Dianna appears to be on a path to success, her story is just one of many residents at Simonka Place could tell. And, unfortunately, the numbers don’t seem to be decreasing. A problem of scale At a meeting of the Mid- Willamette Homelessness Ini- tiative in June, Jeanine Knight, director of UGM’s women’s ministries, took issue with the purported headcount of the area’s homeless. “They were saying the to- tal number in Marion and Polk counties was somewhere in the range of 600 to 800,” Knight said. “Serving primarily women and children, I’m see- ing those numbers, and we’re a third the size of the men’s min- istry in Salem. It’s hard to get fi rm numbers, but the num- ber they were discussing seems low.” Since September 2015, Si- monka Place has provided services to nearly 700 unique visitors (584 women and 109 children). That’s an undupli- cated headcount and doesn’t include people returning to Simonka Place repeatedly. Si- monka Place has about 90 beds and averages about 10 residents a night sleeping on the fl oor. While Knight is loathe to turn away those in need of as- sistance, the sheer numbers of people needing services like those Simonka Place offers has prompted a closing of ranks. “Right now, we are trying to limit what we do to just Marion and Polk counties. It doesn’t mean we’ll deny some- one a bed for the night, but if they aren’t local and can’t com- We are Everything Except Overpriced Simple Cremation $795 mit to a recovery program, we’re really just warehousing them,” she said. On a recent trip to Portland to look at the services available there, Knight was shocked to fi nd that women in the state’s largest metropolitan area don’t have a facility offering the same types of services. “There are places for those who are dealing with addic- tions – some type of behavior that has taken control of their lives – but what do you do if you’re a woman who has lost your job, or your relationship ended, you’ve gone through whatever savings you’ve had and you’re not used to being on the streets?” Unlike straightforward ad- diction treatment programs, Knight said Simonka Place at- tempts to address its residents’ most basic needs and then ask the question, “Are you ready to commit to ending your home- lessness?” “If they can, we help them – and there is no ticking clock. If they can continue to make progress, then we will continue to work with them,” Knight said. Not an echo, a reverberation Since joining the UGM staff a decade ago, Knight said she has come to view homelessness in a new light. “There’s lots of stereotypes of the homeless, but I’ve come to see them as people who have trauma and are trying to fi gure out how to survive,” she said. Knight said the case manag- ers at Simonka Place are fre- quently able to identify addic- tion, mental health, domestic violence and physical disability issues in residents’ pasts. How- ever, unlike an echo that would diminish over time, the inner battles the residents are waging against themselves are as real as the day the fi rst volley was fi red. “For a woman who has had an abortion, the pain of that is just as real 20 years later as it was the day it happened,” she said. “The same goes for a woman who had had to give a child up for adoption or lost a child to social services. It leaves them wondering how to stop the cycle, and if it ever will.” In this regard, one aspect of the area’s homeless counts causes Knight to bristle – the actual questionnaire respon- dents fi ll out. The questions can be very specifi c and request details of the circumstances by which the respondent be- came homeless. The goal is to help identify the root causes of homelessness, but Knight has come to believe there is an un- intended side effect. “If I have to write that my husband of eight years became physically abusive and I had to fl ee, I have to relive all of it in detail. Even if I don’t write it down, it’s happening,” she said. “If I was homeless, I would be retraumatized by the question- naire.” There is also a fi ne line between portraying residents as victims and the deep level of empathy Knight wants to achieve at Simonka Place. “The reality is that probably 80 percent of women at Simo- ka have been victims of abuse in the past and it’s still affecting their present,” she said. “But, if we walked a mile in their shoes, we probably would have made a lot of the same choices. Drugs and alcohol are ways to make the hurt stop, even if it’s tem- porary.” Instead of focusing solely on the tools to reduce addictions, Knight said Simonka Place’s most successful programs start with residents being able to safely tell their stories, which can take months and is part of the reason there is no limit on how long a resident can stay. “There is hope and heal- ing and, when you can see that process through, it’s wonderful,” she said. Money matters While emotional recovery is a top priority, Simonka Place case managers place a heavy emphasis on money manage- ment. “If residents have any kind of income, they are put on a budget. That seems like a logi- cal thing, but it can be a big deal for someone who has never lived on a budget before,” Knight said. Residents meet with case mangers to examine fi nances with a eye toward debt reduc- tion and saving. At the end of the day, residents will still have total control of their money, but case managers will check in with banks to determine if the balances match the projections from the budget. “We can supply them with housing, toiletries, clothing and water, but they need to fi gure out how the money they re- ceive can be used to support them,” Knight said. “We try to be very kind, but it is a fi rm policy.” It includes counseling and BETTER THAN NEW WITH A CLASSIC TOUCH BEFORE AFTER FREE ESTIMATES 503.393.2875 remodelkeizer.com CCB#155626 EXPERIENCE • PROFESSIONALISM • TRUSTWORTHINESS training on how to manage money after residents “gradu- ate” from Simonka’s program. At a meeting of the Home- lessness Initiative in last week, members of the task force heard from local property man- agers on the issue of affordable housing who said that failure to budget was the most common reason residents of low-income housing fail to thrive. Knight said it often means having some basic conversa- tions. “If we have a resident who gets into an apartment and they want to throw a party that costs them $200-$300, there’s a good chance it’s going to af- fect their ability to pay rent the next month. And the landlord isn’t going to give them a pass because he liked the music,” Knight said. While that might seem like a lavish expenditure, having con- versations about going out to eat are just as frequent. At Si- monka Place, the case managers also try to include residents and their children with the hope of breaking the cycle for future generations. “It teaches them that mon- ey comes from somewhere,” Knight said. “Instead of going out to eat, we might help them make a better choice, like buy- ing a pie at a grocery store and sharing it at a park. It’s still a treat, but not as expensive.” The methods also appear to be working, about 150 for- mer residents have graduated into living spaces of their own in recent years. Only a handful have later returned to Simonka Place, and Knight said they are typically the individuals suffer- ing from the most severe men- tal health issues. Empower now or enable later While the conversation about homelessness is continu- ing on a grander scale in the community, Knight said raising awareness of how the commu- nity supports the area’s home- less population is still needed. “We don’t want to increase the number of homeless people in our cities, but directly and indirectly, homelessness is sup- ported by our community,” she said. Volunteer efforts and so- cial service organizations like UGM play a large role in ad- dressing the problem, but there are also costs hidden in other tax-funded budgets, like police enforcement for trespassing vi- olations and the resulting court costs. Knight said UGM is fortu- nate to operating in a support- ive Salem-Keizer community, but that those interested in do- ing more are always welcome at Simonka Place, and pre-ar- ranged tours are available. “It is often during a tour that someone clearly sees where they can make a differ- ence,” Knight said. Inexpensive Burial and Funeral Options Pre-Planning Available On-Site Crematory CONCEALED CARRY PERMIT CLASS 4365 RIVER RD N, KEIZER 503.393.7037 Se habla español 6PM AT KEIZER CIVIC CENTER MONDAY, AUGUST 8 2 PERMIT OPTIONS: OREGON ONLY ( $ 45) INCLUDED or MULTI-STATE ( $ 80) OREGON Cash or check payment will be made at the class. A driver license is all you need to bring. HONORED 3 WAYS TO SIGN UP! CALL: 360 -921-2071 WEB: FirearmTrainingNW.com EMAIL: FirearmTrainingNW@gmail.com DO NOT HONOR UT RES. ONLY Walk-Ins are Welcome Multi-state permit honored in Alaska but not Hawaii