ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, October 19, 1996 TAG: 9610210032
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NORFOLK (AP)
SOURCE: MIKE KNEPLER THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
DOZENS OF PEOPLE - mostly single men - go to St. Columba for coffee, sandwiches, showers and other free services.
Four mornings a week at 8 o'clock, volunteer Johnnie Williams lopes into the St. Columba Ecumenical Ministries' drop-in center for the homeless and heads for the 80-cup coffee maker.
He's already done all the preliminaries the previous afternoon - inserted the coffee filter, loaded the grinds and poured in the water.
``All I have to do is plug it in,'' said Williams, a 75-year-old retired cook and restaurant owner. ``So when they get here at 9 o'clock, the coffee is ready for them.''
The ``they'' are dozens of homeless people - mostly single men - who go to St. Columba for coffee, sandwiches, showers and other free services. The nonprofit agency provides one of the area's few drop-in centers for the homeless.
``Just the basic needs,'' said Alice Taylor, director of St. Columba ministries. ``Shower, washer and dryer, coffee, sandwiches, telephone. We take all these things for granted.
``But if you're on the street, you don't have a telephone for calling about jobs and a way to get messages back to you. If you're on the street, where do you go to get yourself looking presentable to look for a job?''
St. Columba's leaders believe the numbers of single homeless men and women are growing - and so are their needs.
Taylor said St. Columba served 143 men and women from July through September. There were 97 the previous three months, she said.
``One of the things we're noticing is that while unemployment has dropped, the number of people with food stamps has risen,'' said Claudia Gooch of the Planning Council, a regional nonprofit social-service research and development agency. ``So the jobs they're getting are not lifting them out of poverty, or there are certain populations not being reached by the upturn in the economy.''
The trends could hit homeless single adults harder than those living in families. And St. Columba's clients are mostly single men.
``This is a hard population to serve, one that doesn't get the sympathy that families with children get,'' Gooch said.
Also, many of the homeless served by St. Columba have police records, or histories of drug and alcohol abuse - drawbacks when seeking work.
St. Columba, Taylor said, wants to improve its ability to help homeless single adults by doing skills and needs assessments, referrals to employers and other services. But the center would need to hire a counselor to provide those services, she said.
Ananias Dowe, a 37-year-old unemployed bricklayer, was the first to enter through St. Columba's back door one recent day.
``Sometimes I stay with friends,'' Dowe said. ``Last night, I stayed in an abandoned building.''
In fact, Dowe said, he slept in an abandoned house in the Park Place neighborhood over the three-day Columbus Day weekend.
St. Columba's drop-in center, he said, offers respite from life on the street and help in looking for steady work.
After showering, Dowe scours newspaper help-wanted ads and is able to use the St. Columba telephone to inquire about possible jobs.
Other men and women drift in, some stopping by a rack of donated clothes before picking up their sandwiches. They eat at a large table near the check-in desk.
Some who come, like a 39-year-old man named Walter, share job information with others.
Walter, who like many of the homeless preferred not to give his last name, has been working odd jobs at a local shipyard and thinks the company may be hiring. He passes a phone number to Victor, a 40-year-old who has been coming to St. Columba for about two weeks.
Some, like Gordon, 39, look for things to do to help at St. Columba. Gordon recently repaired the coffeemaker and gave haircuts to four other men at the drop-in center.
Taylor would like to develop a more systematic way of linking the men and women at St. Columba with employers.
St. Columba is holding an open house Sunday and hopes to make more friends among its neighbors in Norfolk's Fairmount Park. So far, the response to the program has been mixed.
H.A. ``Butch'' Schupska, a former president of the Fairmount Park Civic League, said there have been complaints about trash near the drop-in center and strangers wandering the neighborhood. But he plans to attend the open house ``with an open mind'' toward developing a partnership with St. Columba.
Taylor acknowledges that people being served by the drop-in center may have littered on occasion but ``not any more than anyone'' else.
On the other hand, she noted, St. Columba has cleaned and maintained a vacant lot next door, leasing it for a $1 a year from its private owner.
Here, too, Johnnie Williams, the stalwart volunteer, leaves his mark. He's grown a vegetable garden, which he works after St. Columba closes its doors at 3 p.m.
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