The
Invisible Families: the number of homeless families
is rising.
As temperatures dipped into the 20s on Christmas night,
about 90 homeless women scrambled to find a safe place
to sleep in Portland. With 30 beds reserved for women
and a convenient downtown location, the Salvation Army's
Harbor Light women's shelter seemed to be the easy call.
But only 18 women made it. The others took their chances
on the street, and 12 beds remained vacant.
On previous nights, more beds at Harbor Light have
been filled. But the shelter has never filled all 30
slots.
For some advocates, the continued presence of empty
mats at Harbor Light represents their ongoing frustration
with Portland's largest social service provider and
symbolizes the city's inability live up to assurances
it made last summer, when homeless women began showing
up dead in Forest Park.
"I put my reputation on the line to get the funding
for the women's Harbor Light shelter," said Chuck Currie,
outreach director at the United Methodist Church and
Goose Hollow Family Shelter, "and I really feel like
they are failing to live up to their promises."
When Lila Fay Moller, Stephanie Lynn Russell and Alexandria
Nicole Ison were murdered and their bodies dumped in
Forest Park last summer, the city responded quickly.
In July, within two weeks of being approached by a loose
coalition of homeless advocates, including Currie, Commissioner
Erik Sten announced the city would provide $149,000
to the Salvation Army for a year-round, 30-bed women's
emergency shelter at its Harbor Light location at Southwest
2nd Avenue and Burnside Street.
At the time of the murders, only one agency, Jean's
Place on East Burnside Street, provided emergency shelter
for single women who were not victims of domestic violence.
That shelter had just four beds available on a first-come
first-serve basis.
"We had what looked like a crisis brewing," says Sten.
"So we found a little money to provide women with a
safe place off the streets--and it really isn't anything
more than that."
The lack of initial planning and of continued oversight,
however, created flaws in the Harbor Light program that
are now apparent. "It was a knee-jerk reaction by the
entire community," says Doreen Binder, executive director
of Transition Projects Inc. and one who initially pressed
for the program.
Currie and Binder believed they had a verbal agreement
with the Salvation Army to provide showers, real beds
and some counseling services. Instead, homeless women
got mats on the floor, no counseling and, until two
weeks ago, no showers. In addition, the shelter is only
open from 8 p.m to 6 a.m.--a schedule that, in winter
months, means the women must wait until after dark to
get in and must leave before dawn--a somewhat frightening
prospect in Old Town.
Several women told WW that the lack of showers
and inconvenient hours were the primary reasons they
would not use Harbor Light facility; they'd rather spend
the night on the streets.
Frankie, a woman with spiky pale hair who has been
homeless since the days of Baloney Joe's, summarized
Harbor Light this way: "They don't have squat."
Other service providers think the Salvation Army could
be providing women more services with the city funds.
"If it was my program, we'd get more for the money,"
says Sister Cathie Boerboom, program manager of Rosehaven,
a drop-in shelter for women located in Old Town.
Rachael Silverman, coordinator of Homeless Services
for the Bureau of Housing and Community Development,
insists the Harbor Light budget is not "fluffy." But
other service providers say paying Salvation Army a
flat rate for the program regardless of whether or not
its beds are full provides little incentive to upgrade
its performance. It took pressure from the city to get
Harbor Light to make showers available to women. Major
Neal Hogan, director of homeless services for Portland's
Salvation Army, says the organization is delivering
on its promise to provide basic shelter. Showers were
made available, he says, once Salvation Army became
aware of the need for them and after utility costs came
in under budget. He says extending the shelter's hours
will be evaluated sometime in the future.
Many homeless advocates and service providers are wary
of criticizing the Salvation Army. With a budget that
makes it, in Currie's words, the "Microsoft of charities,"
Salvation Army doesn't depend on city contracts or vouchers
from other programs. In fact, most other programs depend
on being able to send their overflow to the Harbor Light
facility. "I don't want to knock them because they are
all we've got," said Sister Cathie, "and I don't expect
them to do everything, but I wish they could do a good
job providing basic shelter."
In a way, the city is partly responsible for the pressure
now being put on the Salvation Army. In 1993, at the
behest of former Commissioner Gretchen Kafoury, the
city traded quantity--masses of beds in "warehouse"
shelters--for quality: small, specialized shelters that
transitioned people into permanent housing.
Jean's Place illustrates both the strengths and the
weaknesses of the city's Shelter Reconfiguration Plan.
Built in 1996, it has the cheery functionality of a
slightly sparer-than-usual college dorm with bunk beds,
homemade name tags on doors and communal kitchens. Residents
have access to housing and job-placement specialists,
yoga classes and journal-writing sessions, drug and
alcohol treatment, in-house case managers and a year's
follow-up after they leave. Of its 55 beds, however,
only four are available for emergency shelter on a first-come
first-serve basis.
Athena Zacharapoulos, residential supervisor at Jean's
Place, estimates she gets 15 to 20 calls a day for the
four emergency beds she has and has a six- to eight-week
wait for program beds. "As soon as I know a bed is coming
open," Zacharapoulos said recently, "I can occupy it
within two to three hours."
For many women, that means another night on the streets.
Since 1993, the number of single women turned away from
shelters for lack of space has increased by 203 percent.
It wasn't supposed to be like this. A soon-to-be-released
report commissioned by the Bureau of Housing and Community
Development shows that the city's plan underestimated
the number of homeless women and overestimated the availability
of basic shelter to them. While the number of homeless
women in Portland has boomed since the early '90s, the
number of shelter beds available to them has not kept
pace.
According to a one-night count of those seeking shelter
in November 1998, only one in 10 men were turned away
from emergency shelter for lack of space, while a third
of women went begging. "Women have not been served as
well as men," says the BHCD's Silverman, "but historically
there have not been as many of them."
With Todd Alan Reed's arrest in late July for the murders
of Moler, Ison and Russell, public outcry over a lack
of shelter space was silenced. Reed's arrest, however,
did little to assuage homeless women's fears and the
dangers they face. "It's scary on the streets," said
Linda, a middle-aged woman dressed in purple slacks
and a newly acquired overcoat. "Any day somebody might
knock you on the head, rob or rape you."
Although the allocation of funds for the women's program
was a one-time-only shot, most advocates for the homeless
hope the city will again come through with funds and
that with additional oversight the Salvation Army will
come through with better services for homeless single
women. "The Salvation Army has the ability to provide
excellent service," Currie says. "So they can turn Harbor
Light around. They have to want to, though. They have
to look at this as providing service for homeless women
who are often in danger rather than as padding for their
budget."
THE
INVISIBLE FAMILIES
While this summer's Forest Park murders focused attention
on homeless women, families are often referred to as
the "invisible homeless."
Worried that they will be deemed unfit and lose custody
of their children, parents often try to keep them out
of sight. They sleep in cars, edges of parks, relatives'
floors and, when they can, shelters.
Only three homeless shelters in Portland provide 24-hour,
year-round servics to homeless families: the YWCA's
SafeHaven, Salvation Army's Door of Hope and Metropolitan
Portland East County Inter-Faith Hospitality Network.
For the estimated 622 families homeless at any given
time in the Portland area, there are just 129 beds available
in the winter and 84 year-round. Almost half of the
children in homeless families are under age 6.
Multnomah County, which is responsible for homeless
families in the area, has seen a 38 percent increase
in the number of homeless families since 1993 and a
90 percent increase in the numbers turned away from
shelter.
Jean DeMaster, director of the YWCA, estimates that,
countywide, four families are turned away from shelter
for every one that gets in.
--Rachel Graham
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Willamette Week | originally
published December 28,
1999
