THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 17, 1996 TAG: 9603160122
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY JANIE BRYANT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 284 lines
On a rainy February night, the smell of turkey pie drifts out of the kitchen of First Presbyterian Church as the homeless pour into the fellowship hall.
Just before bowls of the bubbling hot pie are served up, one of the homeless men stands up to say a long prayer laced with Scripture.
Standing there in paint-stained work clothes, he prays for the sick and the afflicted, as well as the homeless.
He asks for jobs and he gives thanks for many things, including the shelter.
``Oh, Father God, I know that yesterday is gone and tomorrow is promised to no one. . . . ''
Six years ago, the number of homeless people in Portsmouth may not have been obvious in the suburbs, but it was very apparent to the city's oldest churches clustered downtown.
Members of Trinity Episcopal found Sterno cans under bushes around the church. And when the holly trees in the churchyard were pruned, children on their way to Sunday school spotted a man sleeping. At one point, someone had built a makeshift shelter underneath a cement stairway behind the library across the street.
The Portsmouth Volunteers for the Homeless held their first meeting at Trinity in November 1990. That winter, a church-based sheltering program was started.
Along with Trinity, First Presbyterian and Monumental United Methodist took turns opening their doors on nights considered ``life-threatening.''
In July 1991, Zion Baptist Church joined the effort by opening its morning Drop-In Center three days a week. The center gave the homeless a warm breakfast, a chance to shower and wash their clothes or get newer ones from the center's clothes closet.
By 1994, St. Paul's Catholic and Martin Luther King United Methodist churches had joined the shelter rotation. Each of the five churches started taking longer turns at sheltering, and eventually it was simpler to open every night than to try to predict and coordinate around the weather.
About 14 churches serve as support churches, preparing and serving food or providing volunteers to stay all night at the shelter. There are several hundred volunteers.
But the five core churches need more. They need other churches to actually open their doors.
``I don't think we can do this next winter the way it is,'' says Anne Long, secretary of the organization and coordinator for Trinity Episcopal.
The Portsmouth organization would like to see the kind of success a Norfolk church-run effort has had.
The NEST - Norfolk Emergency Shelter Team - program has about 30 churches, synagogues and community groups on its shelter rotation and most weeks has two locations operating.
Buses are available to take the homeless to churches not within walking distance.
The Portsmouth organization thinks that could be the answer to expanding its own efforts.
Portsmouth's program operates from mid-November to the middle of March and shelters an average of 55 people per night. Toward the end of the month the numbers can go over 70 - almost double what the shelters were seeing when they first started.
``With the numbers, we may get to the point we have to open two a night,'' says Long, the Portsmouth Volunteers secretary.
Some suburban churches have indicated they would be willing to take a turn at sheltering next year if the volunteer organization can come up with transportation.
So besides churches willing to shelter, the organization is looking for churches willing to loan buses and vans to the effort.
Long says that another concern for advocates of the homeless surfaced when the February ice storm - which left snow, cold and widespread power outages in its wake - closed some of the daytime locations that usually provide refuge from the bitter cold.
The Red Cross opened a shelter at Wilson High School because of all the homes without electricity, but Long says it was too far away for the homeless people to walk.
``My feeling was there should have been some arrangement by the city to keep something open downtown or to run a bus.''
In the end, Martin Luther King United Methodist opened its doors, and volunteers made several trips from the Oasis social ministry on High Street to the Elm Avenue church to get people there.
The church stayed open for two days and got help with food from two neighborhood civic leagues and the Prentis Park Seventh-day Adventists, Long says.
``It's really an amazing thing that happened very quickly.''
A permanent shelter could help that kind of situation, but volunteers worry about the costs of running such a facility without government funding.
Some of the homeless have drifted to the other side of the large, partitioned room and begun making up their cots with drab green and gray blankets. Five men have gathered around a table to play cards.
One man sits on a cot, a newspaper next to him opened to the classified ads. A man sitting at a table waiting for dinner pulls out a weathered photo - taken, he says, when he was a beer company supervisor in Alabama. The company moved the operation to another state, and he's been moving from state to state looking for work since, he says.
Later, a man in his mid-30s sits down and tells how he was laid off just before Christmas. He had been staying at a London Boulevard motel, which he preferred.
He doesn't like crowds, and the snoring in the shelter bothers him.
``We get a little depressed if we're not real strong,'' he says.
Minutes later he looks over at other homeless people nearby and visibly tries to shake off the image.
``I ain't trying to get programmed like that.''
Peggy Hill, a case worker for the Portsmouth Community Services Board, says her agency saw a total of 703 homeless people between July 1994 and July 1995.
The agency works mostly with the mentally ill, she says. The homeless that do not fit into that category are referred to other services such as the church shelters.
Volunteers in the church program have noticed a much younger crowd this year and are also seeing more women and even children.
Long attributes some of the increase to the many vacant buildings that have been torn down recently. Susan Fay, First Presbyterian's coordinator, points to the economy and this winter's weather.
``I suspect a lot of people are not technically homeless, but may be without utilities,'' Fay says. ``I'm amazed at how many of these people work. They'll ask us to wake them up at a certain time so they can go to work.
``Certainly there is an incredible amount of substance abuse and just general dysfunction. But there are people who are trying but just can't seem to get it together.''
Overcrowding is becoming a problem for those few churches actually doing the sheltering.
In January, Trinity housed 72 people in its fellowship hall one Saturday night. That Sunday, members showed up for church to find the toilets stopped up and the restrooms closed.
The church took the money for plumbing repairs out of the home mission fund.
Volunteers at Monumental United Methodist closed down one night after a group of men got into a fight outside the church.
Arent Sjursen, shelter coordinator for that church, says several police cars showed up in seconds and that the melee did not last long. But the glass in a church door was broken.
``When I saw broken glass, I said we're shutting down for the night,'' Sjursen says, adding that the temperatures were not life-threatening that night.
Some of the men apologized for what had happened and helped to fold blankets and put away cots, Sjursen says.
``The next day, I opened eventually.'' And everything, he adds, ended up ``nice.''
At the next Portsmouth Volunteers meeting, six homeless men showed up to apologize again and to offer their help in making sure nothing like that happened again.
They were there to tell the volunteers they needed the shelter and did not want to see it close down. They offered to organize cleanup crews to see that the church halls were cleaned each morning.
``It's the best meeting we ever had,'' Long says. ``They told us how they felt about different things, and it was well worth listening to.''
Of course, some of their comments took issue with the shelter rules and structure that bother some people used to living on the streets.
``They feel if we have too many volunteers, this threatens them,'' Long says. But, ``They've got to learn if they're going to sleep in someone's church, they've got to abide by the rules we have.''
Since that meeting, Long says, she's noticed her church has been ``beautifully cleaned up'' after sheltering. ``Some of them have really taken on some responsibility.''
Volunteers say that there have been a few troublemakers, who are now banned from the shelter, but that most of the people they serve are polite and grateful.
A man in his early 30s walks up to one of the volunteers and asks to use the phone so he can call his boss.
He comes back disappointed. The construction work is being delayed because of permits, he explains.
Even more disappointing was the phone call he placed to a sibling. Someone else answered the phone, but he could hear his brother in the background telling the person to say he wasn't home. The week before, a sister had driven by him without stopping as he walked down High Street during a snowstorm.
That day his feet were too cold to make the walk to the church shelter, he says. He crawled under a house to find warmth that night.
He laments the lack of unity in his family. He has been in need only one other time, 15 years ago, he says.
``I survived sleeping in vans and cars.''
A lot of times, he adds, ``something like this will make you stronger.''
Eddie Williams, a Navy chaplain's assistant away from his own family during the holidays, showed up to offer his help at one of the churches Christmas night. He's been back to the shelters almost every night since.
He keeps notes on the number of people who show up, including volunteers. He also records the weather and what kind of food was served.
``I think one of the advantages of the church running it is that . . . those people do get to learn and understand who the people are,'' Williams says.
At the same time, the homeless see firsthand that people in the community do care about them and are willing to exert the effort to help care for them, he adds.
Fay, the First Presbyterian coordinator, agrees.
``I feel real strongly about what we're doing. I know there are people who abuse it. But to me, if someone thinks they're scamming you to spend the night on a cot in a church, it's hard for me to get too upset.''
Fay remembers she was terrified the first time she worked in the shelter.
But, ``When you put a face on something, you don't have to be scared anymore.''
Her perception of the homeless has changed a lot.
``A lot of them are scammers and whatever, but that's how you live on the street. That's a survival skill.''
Fay says she has learned there is a dignity among many of the men and women who come through the shelter doors.
``It's like three or four that maybe cause some problems, and the rest of them are as mortified as anybody.''
She also has noticed there is a community among the homeless and that some of them naturally emerge as leaders. She suspects those are the ones who have ``just fallen on hard times as opposed to having a substance-abuse problem.
``Maybe they're able to think a little bit clearer. But they're calm. . . . They're peacemakers.''
Fay stresses she isn't ``painting a Pollyanna picture'' of the homeless.
``They're not saints. They have problems, and their lives are messy - and that's what I think makes people hesitant to get involved.
``But somebody has to do that.'' MEMO: VOLUNTEERS SERVE AS ADVISORY BOARD
Portsmouth Volunteers for the Homeless is an advisory board to
Portsmouth Community Development Group, a nonprofit community
revitalization organization.
Officers are David W. Stephenson, president; the Rev. Linda Ward,
vice president; John F. Grook, treasurer; and Anne H. Long, secretary.
The effort has benefited this year from the Foodbank of Southeastern
Virginia, which now provides free food to churches serving the homeless,
according to Long.
The organizations plan to resubmit an application for a federal
Housing and Urban Development grant to be used for a shelter that would
provide counseling and other support services and also to fund a
transitional housing and job-training program.
Meanwhile, the transitional program called CHAMPS, Community Housing
and Mentorship Program, has been started with five men who previously
stayed in the church shelters. They are now sharing a rented duplex in
Park View and are paying rent with money they earn doing renovation work
for Portsmouth Community Development.
Churches or individuals interested in helping the Portsmouth
Volunteers for the Homeless should call Margaret Lewis, coordinator of
volunteers, at 393-4600.
- Janie Bryant
HOMELESS SUPPORT
Several churches in Portsmouth independently offer meals and other
help to homeless people. Those that provide food, servers and other
volunteers toward the sheltering efforts of the Portsmouth Volunteers
for the Homeless include:
Aldersgate United Methodist Church
Church of the Resurrection
Churchland Baptist Church
Jackson Memorial Baptist Church
Park View United Methodist Church
Port Norfolk Baptist Church
Prentis Park Seventh Day Adventist
St. Christopher's Episcopal Church
St. John's Episcopal Church
St. Therese's Catholic Church
Simonsdale Presbyterian Church
Temple Baptist Church
Western Branch Baptist Church
Westside Christian Church
ILLUSTRATION: Color photo on cover by MARK MITCHELL
A homeless shelter resident rests on a foam mat in the hallway of
First Presbyterian Church
Staff photos by MARK MITCHELL
Susan Fay, shelter coordinator at First Presbyterian, talks with one
of the homeless residents. Fay sees a dignity among many who come
through the shelter doors.
A homeless man waits for his clothes to be washed and dried by a
volunteer at Zion Baptist Church. Zion also provides breakfast and a
place to shower.
``Cornbread,'' above, is one of the guests at the First Presbyterian
shelter. At left, is another resident who joins in the prayer
before dinner. Volunteers in the church program have noticed a much
younger crowd this year and are also seeing more women and even
children. Anne Long, secretary of The Portsmouth Volunteers for the
Homeless and coordinator for Trinity Episcopal, attributes some of
the increase to the many vacant buildings that have been torn down
recently.
KEYWORDS: INDIGENT HOMELESS SHELTER by CNB