Reprinted by permission from the News of Orange
By KERI SPRENGER and CASEY FERRELL
Marilyn Ghezzi stepped out of the back seat of the patrol car with her clipboard and approached the man with the scraggily, dirty beard. She introduced herself and then got right to the point.
“Do you have a place to sleep tonight?” she asked.
The man, with somewhat slurred but coherent speech, answered that yes, he has a place to sleep. He has some kin that live right around the corner, and he sleeps there. But not always.
The man tells Ghezzi that he doesn’t have a home, that he sometimes doesn’t have a place to sleep. From the tattered appearance of his clothes, it’s not hard to imagine the man’s been through some rough nights outdoors.
After a few more questions, the man accepts the gifts of socks and crackers Ghezzi offers him and heads down the road to where food is being served at Fairview Baptist Church.
The man is one of Hillsborough’s homeless. And he’s not the only one.
Ghezzi is part of a volunteer force that canvassed the county on Jan. 24 trying to count them all.
THE POINT IN TIME COUNT
Vanessa Neustrom observes daily the devastating effects that homelessness can have. She’s the housing coordinator for Orange Person Chatham (OPC), an area non-profit.
It’s not an easy job, and this year it was made even tougher when she was tapped to lead the Point In Time count, an annual tally of the county’s homeless.
Each year, a verification is needed in the county of all those who are considered homeless according to guidelines set forth by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD. HUD defines the homeless as those living “in places not meant for human habitation, such as cars, parks, sidewalks, abandoned buildings or tents” and those in emergency or transitional shelters.
Thus there are two categories of homeless — the emergency homeless, who live on the streets, and the sheltered homeless, who stay in homeless shelters.
For the Point In Time count, the county is divided into three different sections. Those sections are Chapel Hill/Carrboro, Hillsborough and unincorporated areas of the county. Some volunteers look for the emergency homeless, while others head to the shelters to interview the people staying there.
The count is conducted in January, Neustrom said, because the cold weather helps push the homeless into shelters where they’re more easily counted. If it was done when the weather was nicer, many of the homeless would be spread all over the county, living outdoors where they are harder to find and count.
Neustrom said police officers usually identify sites in the county where people have been spotted hanging out, including underpasses and any abandoned trailers. In past years, information from hospital officials and hotel clerks has aided the volunteers in their efforts of identifying those in need.
Once sites are identified, volunteers accompany police to interview people. The count’s integrity rests on following a prescribed format and asking as many questions as possible. Some of the people interviewed said they wouldn’t have considered themselves homeless but, according to materials provided by HUD, they fit the definition of homeless. Questions asked in regards to physical health, mental health, substance abuse issues and employment status help in this determination.
There is a reason for asking for more information than just whether or not the person is homeless.
“We’re trying to gauge where that person sits in the range of homelessness,” Neustrom said.
The overall numbers, which won’t be released until Feb. 13, will give what the agency hopes is an accurate representation of the sheltered and unsheltered homeless populations,
The information gathered will then be sent to the North Carolina Inter-Agency Council. OPC staff members will also report the information on their continuum of care application to the federal government. Money received from those grants is converted to housing funds OPC can use to help families in the area.
They currently serve 22 customers with the funds they have. But there are others still in need, those that are in danger of becoming homeless as well.
“We get phone calls once a week at least of [people looking for help],” Neustrom said.
STRIVING FOR ACCURACY
Despite their best efforts, Neustrom knows there are more people out there without a home. The numbers the agency will derive from this count do not incorporate those who are “doubled-up,” or living with friends and relatives whenever there’s room.
“Not every homeless person will be counted, and all the information we strive to gather during the count cannot be gathered in its entirety,” Neustrom said. “Unsheltered individuals are more difficult to locate and/or identify, or perhaps they were not accessing services on the day of the count. Also, information cannot be gathered in its entirety because once a person is identified as homeless on the day of the count, he or she still does not have to provide any information about themselves or the factors related to their homelessness if they don’t wish to.
“Some information is better than none, but the data is inherently incomplete.”
On the night of the count, a pair of volunteers canvassing Hillsborough interviewed about five people, most of whom would be considered the emergency homeless.
Hillsborough Police Department Capt. Judy Jacobs said she thought that five was an accurate number.
Jacobs, who along with Sgt. Irving Davis accompanied the volunteers on the count, said this is the third year she has helped identify sites where the homeless might be sleeping.
“Last year, the count was higher than this year,” Jacobs said.
She acknowledged that there could be more people inside of homes, staying with friends. The temperature was about 10 degrees colder than last year.
Jacobs said she was a little apprehensive about volunteers just walking up and asking people straight out if they were homeless or not. But she also saw the value in it.
“It appeared that they wanted help,” she said.
In the three years that she has been coordinating efforts with volunteers for this count, Jacobs said she has changed her tune about who is really homeless.
“My definition is someone who has nowhere to go,” she said.
Now that she has been “schooled,” as she calls it, she looks at the problem of homelessness in a new light.
“It’s been an eye opener each year,” she said.
Jim Martin, a volunteer who works with the Caring Family Network, said his task was to count the emergency homeless, which he felt they were able to do on a night when many would seek shelter with friends or at the homeless shelters in Chapel Hill or Durham.
“It seemed like we were checking reasonable places,” he said.
After the interviews, Martin and his volunteer partner Ghezzi, handed out the care packages that included socks and crackers.
Neighbor House’s Food For All program, begun in November 2005, has been serving between 300 and 350 meals a week at Fairview Baptist Church and at Southern Comfort Inn in Daniel Boone Village. Other Point In Time volunteers were conducting counts at the food distribution sites, so the number of Hillsborough’s homeless will be determined by the combined totals of all the teams of volunteers who counted that night.
COMING TOGETHER
Martin said that he felt like volunteering was a good way to help his fellow service providers.
“In order to keep getting the funding, we need the data,” he said.
Neustrom said that when she put out the call that volunteers would be needed for the count, agencies around the county stepped up to the plate.
“I was encouraged throughout the process because every agency we contacted came through with enthusiasm,” she said. “It made me proud of Orange County.”
No comments:
Post a Comment