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| Living in temporary housing situations, dozens of area families
don’t know when the welcome mat will be pulled out from under their feet. |
You live with uncertainty. You work 40 hours a week, knowing it won’t be enough to pay the bills.
Especially the rent. Maybe you’re newly divorced or separated. A victim of mental illness. Your children are too
young to help.
At any time, the welcome mat can be swept out from under your feet. You could stay a week
with your friend here. A week with your uncle there. You share a two-bedroom apartment with another family, only
your name isn’t on the lease. You bend occupancy codes. Maybe, you can find someone to put you up in a motel for
a night. You can always stay in your car and use a gas station bathroom to wash if it comes down to that.
You are homeless in Union County.
If owning your own home is living the American dream, then dozens of Union County families
are living the American nightmare. An annual, federally mandated count of homeless individuals in our community
conducted by The Salvation Army on January 29, 2008 revealed 57 homeless people on that date. An additional 44
were deemed at risk of becoming homeless. It would be worse if programs established in part with United Way collaboration
and funding five years ago were not in existence today. It can be better if the 10-Year Plan to End Homeless
in Union County succeeds with its goal over the next decade.
Hidden Homeless
So where are these homeless people, anyway? You don’t see them huddled in back alleys, or clanging cups begging
for change. You don’t see make-shift tent neighborhoods or cardboard boxes set up in area parks.
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If owning your own home is living the American dream,
then dozens of Union County families are living the American nightmare.
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The overwhelming majority of those identified were being temporarily housed with family or friends.
“They have a roof over their heads, but it’s not theirs,” said Don Smith, Chairman of the Union County
Affordable Housing Coalition. “They are living there by the graces of a friend or family member who is helping
them out. They’re sleeping on the couch. They have no say as to how long they’re going to be there. They can have
an argument with their friend at dinner and by 8:00 at night be out on the street. There’s no assurance of any
long-range stability in that arrangement.”
Smith is an attorney serving low-income residents through the Legal Aid Society, a United Way Member Agency. He says that convincing
people that there is a homeless problem in Union County is step number one. When the general population isn’t greeted
daily on the streets with the stereotypical homeless image, they instinctively perceive that there is not a problem
that needs addressed.
“That’s the problem you have with rural homelessness,” Smith said. “When you’re ‘temporarily housed,’ you’re not
on the streets.”
The January 29 “Point-in-Time” study
also found seven individuals living in transitional housing. Two were being put up in a local motel that day. Three
people were living on the street or in their car. Those numbers might be higher if more social service providers
would have participated in the study, if the study would have spanned a longer time period than just one day, or
if the study weren’t conducted in the middle of winter.
Root Causes
45 of the 57 people classified as homeless on that date and 33 of the 44 at-risk individuals are residing in Marysville.
64 of the 101 respondents were female. 36 of the 101 had jobs. Almost half said they’d been homeless before, most
for longer than one month at a time. The primary reasons they had to leave their last permanent home included having
little or no income, becoming recently separated or divorced, or suffering from mental illness.
| A lack of affordable housing units in Union County compounds matters
for those who are homeless and puts more families at-risk. |
A lack of affordable housing units in Union County compounds matters for those who are homeless
and puts more families at-risk. The Salvation
Army reports that there are only 12 subsidized rental complexes in Union County
receiving some type of government funding to assist those living there. Four of those 12 have a limited number
of units available. The rest are occupied. With no local housing authority to funnel federal money into our community,
129 Union County residents have applied for Metropolitan Housing assistance through Delaware County. They are low
on the priority list because they don’t live there and can expect to wait between three and four years. So families
are forced to choose an apartment or home with a monthly rent or mortgage payment they cannot comfortably afford.
“Most of those people are living in housing above their means and they’re struggling,” said Beth Fetzer-Rice,
Associate Social Services Coordinator with The Salvation Army. “They’re robbing Peter to pay Paul. They’re making
choices about paying for food or paying the rent.”
The National Low Income Housing Coalition says that a household should spend no more than 30% of its income on
rent. A typical two-bedroom apartment in the Marysville area rents for $640 a month. To cross that 30% threshold,
a full-time employee making minimum wage would have to work 96 hours a week. It would take two and a half full-time
minimum wage earners per household to do likewise. The ratio of affordable housing options has not kept pace in
recent years with the growing number of low-paying retail and service industry jobs that have proliferated as a
result of commercial growth in Union County.
“I have clients who can literally account for every dollar they have, and it’s going to mandatory expenses,” said
Smith. “There is no discretionary income and there’s not enough to cover those mandatory expenses. Then medical
issues or bills crop up, they lose their job or their hours are cut back, and they don’t have money to pay the
rent. When partners separate, we’ve typically seen that the mother is a stay-at-home mom, and all of a sudden,
there’s no income.”
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| Turning Point, the domestic violence shelter that serves our community,
housed 19 Union County residents in 2007. The shelter also handled 102 crisis calls from our community. |
Where do you turn if you have an eviction notice and find yourself on the brink of homelessness?
There is no homeless shelter located in Union County. Transitional housing opportunities operated through the Mental
Health & Recovery Board exist for those suffering from mental illnesses. Emergency shelter exists in Marion
through Turning Point for victims of domestic violence. But what if that’s not why you’re homeless?
Five years ago, there wasn’t much help available for everyone else. New and growing programs funded in part by
the United Way of Union County are providing short-term help to those in emergency situations and long-term hope
toward finding solutions that will end the problem. In fact, United Way is investing more than $80,000 on programs
for the homeless and at-risk in our community this year alone.
But existing programs are reaching capacity. High foreclosure rates, unaffordable rent, and an increasing number
of low-wage, retail jobs in our community are increasing the numbers of people requesting assistance. The Union
County Department of Job & Family Services reports that 4,500 people are on the Food Stamp Program. That’s
nearly 10% of the population, which is consistent with the state average. Agencies providing emergency and basic
needs in our community, such as the food and personal needs pantries are stretched and cutting back on what they
can provide.
“It’s constantly busy,” said Fetzer-Rice. “It’s controlled chaos. It’s a growing number of people coming in and
saying, ‘This is the first time I’ve ever had to ask for help.’ Gas prices and food prices affect all of us. But
it hits the people we serve harder. People are making decisions about whether to buy food or pay the rent.”
Homeless Prevention
When The Salvation Army established a goal for its Homeless Prevention program at the end of 2006, they hoped to
serve 160 households over a two-year period. In 2007 alone, they served 261 households! Two-thirds of those households
included children.
| 90 percent of participants obtained the financial and support services
necessary to maintain permanent housing. |
The program was born in 2004 when United Way invested $11,500 as a local match to bring The
Salvation Army to our community. Now, the program pools $330,000 in United Way, Salvation Army, state, and federal
funding to keep families with children and individuals from losing their current housing. Eligible participants
receive assistance to cover rent and utility payments. A case manager addresses the factors that contributed to
the housing crisis in the first place. The program is successful. 90 percent of the participants obtained the financial
and support services necessary to maintain permanent housing.
”We wouldn’t be here without United Way’s involvement,” Fetzer-Rice said. “And if this program weren’t there coordinating
the pots of money, a lot of that money wouldn’t even be available. You would have longer wait lists for folks,
more confusion about where to go for help, and help that wouldn’t be provided at all.”
Last year, The Salvation Army introduced a new Direct Housing piece to help families with children who are already
homeless. 18 families were relocated to permanent, affordable housing in the program’s first year. They are supported
with up to six months of follow-up case management that includes budget counseling and job readiness.
A Last Resort
In 2007, 17 people from Union County were willing to make the 40-minute trip to Marion to live in the emergency
homeless shelter that serves our community. With no such facility here, United Way established a partnership with
the Marion Shelter in 2003 to accept local residents. The shelter now serves Marion and its contiguous counties. But
no contiguous county sent more people to the shelter last year than Union County did. Since the relationship was
established, 47 people from Union County have used the shelter.
“That sends a red flag to me,” said Mark Lovett, Director of the Marion Shelter Program. “The people we
see are people who have burned their last bridge and have no other options. Think about the hundreds of people
who haven’t burned that last bridge.”
It’s not convenient. But it beats the alternative of spending the night on the streets. Lovett says when people
refuse to come to the shelter when referred, they’ll often use the distance as an excuse. And while viable in some
instances, he says it’s more likely because they have not yet exhausted all of their other options.
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| United Way volunteers plant flowers outside the Marion Shelter on
a recent Community Care Day. The homeless shelter served 17 residents from Union County last year, more than any
of the contiguous counties in their service area. |
The shelter operates a pair of clean facilities in a residential neighborhood on the north side
of Marion, including a newly opened home for families. Here, residents live in rooms with beds, a kitchen, and
living room. There are requirements that residents look for work daily and save money they earn to get back into
their own permanent housing. The average stay is 22 days. Besides giving homeless people a place to stay and food
to eat, the shelter provides a structured environment to learn social skills, job skills, and money management
skills.
Why don’t we have a homeless shelter in Union County? Primarily because transitional housing is available to support
a special needs homeless population and there haven’t been enough chronic homeless in our community to warrant
a full-time operation.
“What we need is housing that people can afford,” said Fetzer-Rice. “In looking at best practices for dealing with
this issue at the national level, communities are moving away from emergency shelter and moving toward building
housing that serves the need of low-income residents. And that’s a slow process.”
Hope on the horizon: 10-year Plan to End Homelessness in place
“We’re just not going to be able to wave a magic wand and BOOM, there’s the transitional shelter or facility we’re
looking for,” said Smith. “We have to do it in steps. It’s something we have to grow into.”
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New affordable housing options will be created in
our community.
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The first step taken by the Union County Affordable Housing Coalition was to join forces with
the similar coalition in Delaware County in drafting a 10-year Plan to End Homelessness.
Again, United Way provided a grant of $10,000 that has been leveraged for an additional $118,750 from the Osteopathic
Heritage Foundation and the Fannie Mae Collaboration – an 11-fold return on your charitable investment! The money
will be used toward the overall goal of creating long-term housing stability for homeless or at-risk families and
individuals.
A program coordinator will be hired to work specifically on the Plan’s four major objectives:
- To identify and develop housing and programs;
- To increase housing stability skills;
- To increase coordination of service providers to ensure quality, customer service;
- To raise awareness of the issues of homelessness and the housing crisis.
If all goes according to Plan, new affordable housing options will be created in our community.
Additional resources will be added to existing prevention programs. A mentoring program will be established to
help at-risk households increase their stability. Human service agencies and community members will participate
in homeless forums and trainings to better serve this population. The community will receive a yearly status report.
“The three biggest factors that lead people to homelessness are systemic issues: poverty, lack of affordable housing,
and a lack of a living wage,” said Fetzer-Rice. “Right now, we can respond to the problems that these issues create,
but we can’t change the issues themselves. What we need is systemic change.”
The hope is that the 10-Year Plan will create that change, especially in the area of affordable housing. But it
can’t be done without your support.
“Our local homeless problems seem to be receiving more attention from outside our community than within,” said
Shari Marsh, Executive Director of the United Way of Union County and member of the local Housing Coalition.
“The need has been documented and recognized by significant funders from outside our community. The grant money
from state and federal resources being earned by the existing programs prove it is being acknowledged at those
levels. Locally, our community needs to take a hard look at this issue. It’s been ignored for too long.”
| By the Numbers |
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$640
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The cost of monthly rent for the average two-bedroom apartment in Union County. |
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30%
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The maximum percentage of monthly income that households should be spending on rent, according
to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. |
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96
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The number of hours a full-time employee working a minimum wage job would have to work each
week to afford the average two-bedroom apartment in Union County. |
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4
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The number of government-subsidized rental complexes in Union County with rental availability. |
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129
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The number of Union County families who have applied for Metropolitan Housing Assistance through
Delaware County because our community has no housing authority. |
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3 to 4
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The number of years these families can expect to wait for that government assistance. |
TIMELINE
United Way of Union County is investing more than $80,000 on the issue of homelessness and its root causes in 2008.
We’ve been tracking this issue and addressing it for the last five years. Click on any of the links below to read
archived articles about this emerging issue.
May 22, 2003 – Board grants $4,500 to Marion Shelter
Program
October 15, 2003 – United Way opens door for
Salvation Army Housing Assistance Program in Union County
April 21, 2004 – The Salvation Army becomes United
Way’s 24th Member Agency
June 7, 2004 – United Way extends partnership with
Marion Shelter Program, awards grant to The Salvation Army
Winter 2005 – Housing programs continue to expand
May 23, 2005 – United Way adds Marion Shelter Program:
Homeless shelter becomes 25th Member Agency
Summer
2005 – Why the Marion Shelter is a part of the solution for Union County’s homeless population
Fall 2005 – The
Salvation Army keeps roof over families’ heads
Summer
2007 – By the Numbers
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