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.
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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-
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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
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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.
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