Homeless dilemma: survival vs. system

One day when he didn't have a place to spend the night,
he said he took a couple of pain killers, prescribed
after he showed up at a hospital with frostbite. Then
he took four more. He says he ended up taking 12 pills.
________________________________________________________________
By Abbott Koloff - Daily Record - January 19, 2003

James Verducci spends the day walking up and down South Street in
Morristown, to the soup kitchen for lunch, to the library to read
and stay warm, to the Market Street Mission to sleep. He wears a
winter coat his mother gave him. Underneath, on a cold winter
day, he wears a short-sleeve shirt.

"I don't have survival skills," Verducci, 19, who grew up in
Roxbury, said one day last week.

He said he was thrown out of Homeless Solutions, a nonprofit
shelter in Morris Township, after getting into a fight. One day
when he didn't have a place to spend the night, he said he took a
couple of pain killers, prescribed after he showed up at a
hospital with frostbite. Then he took four more. He says he ended
up taking 12 pills.

"I wanted to die," he says.

Verducci has temporary shelter but said the Mission, where he's
stayed for two weeks, has given him until the end of the week to
find another place. He had plans to meet with a caseworker from
the Morris County Mental Health Association the next day. He says
he's a good worker and wants to find a job. Even then, it's not
clear what kind of apartment, or even a room, he could afford in
Morris County.

Social service officials say an estimated 300 homeless people
live in Morris County, mostly in Morristown and Dover. Some have
alcohol or drug problems and won't go to shelters where they are
not allowed to drink. Some have mental illnesses and can't hold a
job. Some are living in the Homeless Solutions shelter and
waiting for vouchers, funded with federal money, to help pay for
an apartment - but those vouchers have been late arriving because
of staff cuts in the agency that distributes them.

"Our shelter is backed up, and we need to get people out of
here," Elizabeth Hall, director of Homeless Solutions, said last
week.

She says the biggest problem in Morris County is not a lack of
shelters, but of affordable housing, which is why she called
Morristown Mayor John "Jay" DeLaney Jr. this past week to discuss
the possibility of purchasing land where a vacant lumber
warehouse burned down on Elm Street a little more than a week
ago. Police say the fire was caused by a homeless man burning
candles.

Hall envisions replacing the warehouse with a building, funded by
government grants, that would have retail stores on the first
floor and affordable apartments on the second. It would not be a
shelter, she says, and would be open to anyone who meets the
income requirements. Officials with other social services say
some apartments might be set aside for people with disabilities.

Delaney said last week that he plans to talk to Hall about her
proposal. He added that he's not exactly thrilled by the prospect
of having yet another building at least partially sheltered from
taxes because it's run by a nonprofit organization. He said he
does not want Morristown to be "a dumping ground for the
disenfranchised."

It also is not clear whether Lawrence Berger, owner of the land,
would consider selling to Homeless Solutions. Berger and his son,
Erik, did not return phone calls on Friday.

"I think it's a long shot but it's worth asking," Hall said.

Verducci, who grew up in Roxbury, said he's been living on his
own for almost two years, since he turned 18. He has lived with
relatives at times and had an apartment that he lost because he
had trouble keeping up with the rent. He said he has had only a
few jobs and none of them lasted very long.

"I'm not disabled," Verducci said. "I don't hear voices. I'm just
a little depressed. If I had a job, I could do it."

The problem is, even when he has a job, there is little he can
afford in Morris County.

More affordable housing won't solve homelessness, but Hall said
it would help some people who live in the Homeless Solutions
shelter, which now houses 10 families, 18 men, and 20 others in
its Safe Haven program for people with mental disabilities. It
would do little for the chronically homeless, she said, people
who refuse to go to shelters because they don't want to follow
rules.

That is a relatively small group of people, social service
officials say, even as more and more people show up at the
Community Soup Kitchen at the Church of the Redeemer in
Morristown. The soup kitchen, which serves the homeless, the
elderly, the disabled and the poor, served 66 percent more meals
last year than it did six years before. It set a record late last
year by serving 212 lunches and one day last week 200 people
lined up at the door.

At the soup kitchen, some clients have a history of mental
illness, and social workers say they self-medicate by drinking or
taking drugs. Others simply are out of work. There also are
people being helped by social workers to get off the street.

Debbie Chambers, 44, was living in Parsippany when her husband
lost his job last year. They lived in a truck, letting the motor
run all night to keep warm. At other times, she said, she stayed
in an abandoned house. She said she's now separated, living in
the Homeless Solutions Shelter, and looking forward to getting an
apartment - once she gets a voucher to help pay for it.

James Sims, 46, who said he works as a cook, said he was homeless
in 1999 when he lost a construction job. He used to sit for hours
in a hospital emergency room to keep warm. He would sleep in
hallways, until people kicked him out in the morning, or in an
abandoned house. He said he's staying with someone now but has
been told by a social worker that he'd get help finding an
affordable apartment.

Jim Ketch, 45, who now has an apartment in Dover, said he was
homeless last year and lived, for a time, in an unused Dumpster
in Morristown. He said he didn't want to go to a shelter because
the rules were too strict. At Homeless Solutions, for example,
men are not allowed to fraternize with women.

"They treat you like a 10-year-old," he said.

He said he knows a lot of people, including men who slept inside
the lumber warehouse, who are happy on the street. He said he
wasn't looking for help but talked about a social worker who
apparently helped get him off the street and, he said, could help
others if they were willing to be helped.

But social service officials say some of them never even show up
at a shelter.

Last year, Hall said she considered the possibility of starting a
so-called wet shelter - a place where people could stay the night
even if they'd been drinking. The idea is to put even the most
hopeless in touch with social services. She said it never went
anywhere because it would be too expensive and nearly impossible
to find an appropriate place to put it. She also said some
homeless people would not accept even minimal rules of no
drinking or fighting at the shelter.

Even people devoted to helping the homeless are divided over wet
shelters.

David Scott, director of the Market Street Mission, said they
simply allow people to drink instead of solving their problems.
The Mission runs a temporary shelter and a long-term program that
emphasizes abstinence. He said suffering sometimes leads people
get help.

"In wet shelters, all you're doing is enabling them to die," he
said. "Let life have its consequences."

Theresa Connolly, director of the Community Soup Kitchen, said
wet shelters might allow some homeless people to at least begin
to think about making changes.

"If they're living on the street, all their energy goes to
survival," she said. "There's no energy left to consider
change."

But while experts are not sure how to help people with the
biggest problems, they are united in saying that Morris County
needs more affordable housing. Debbie Taggart, director of the
Mental Health Association, advocates putting mentally disabled
people in regular affordable housing apartments, instead of
segregating them in group homes. She said it might change
people's perceptions of the mentally disabled.

"They would be nonsegregated and nonstigmatized," she said.

One of her organization's clients was on the streets of
Morristown last week saying, as the temperature went down, that
he wasn't sure where he'd be sleeping over the weekend.

Verducci was carrying a satchel full of books last week that he
said he intends to read. He wasn't clear about why he could not
live with a relative but said he wants to make it on his own. He
also said he's under the care of a psychiatrist but wasn't clear
about whether he's been given any medication - or whether he'd
take it if it was prescribed.

He said his mind races, that he can't keep up with his thoughts,
so one day he considered joining the Army to fight Iraq. The next
day he attended a peace rally. He said he got into a fight at
Homeless Solutions with someone who was always making fun of him
because he liked to watch "Star Trek." One moment he said he
wants to make it on his own and the next said he wishes he was 17
and didn't have responsibilities.

Unlike some others who have made homelessness a way of life, he
said he wanted help. Taggart, while not talking about his case,
said there are some group homes and halfway houses for the
mentally disabled in the county. There were, at least, several
possible temporary solutions.

Verducci said he survived the night he took a dozen painkillers
because someone talked to him at the train station and kept him
from falling asleep.

"I call him my angel," Verducci said.

He said that he wants to live, but added that he is impulsive. He
is not sure what the next minute will bring. He said he didn't
think about taking the pills until he was taking them. It was
cold and he was alone.

If he had to sleep on the street for many more nights, he said he
expected to die.


Abbott Koloff akoloff@... or (973) 989-0652.
Copyright 2003 Daily Record.
________________________________________________________________
source page:
http://www.dailyrecord.com/news/03/01/19/news1-HOMELESS.htm

© The Homeless News http://egroups.com/group/HomelessNews/