Less Than Six Percent Homeless By Choice

Okay, my first-ever poll has closed.
Of course, this blog is young enough that almost everything is first-ever.
According to a support center for people who are homeless, less than 6 percent of the homeless are homeless by choice.
This matches my own experience at the homeless shelter I worked at for a year. We saw about 370 people, and about 20 of those were people who were not interested in programs and services. They were just stopping off on their way to no place special.
When I asked on guy where he was from, he said, “The highway.” He said he had been on the road for 50 years.
Next time someone tells you people are homeless because they want to be, you can tell them that isn't true for 94 percent of them. Even those in the six-percentile are due dignity and respect. Let him among you who have always made perfect choices cast the first stone.

'Good money' -- Money That Makes A Difference

There is good money and bad money spent on people in need.

Here is an example:

A guy is living on a front-room couch in a friend’s apartment. This is a person who can be considered “precariously housed.” He is under some pressure from his friend to hurry up and find a place of his own.

The guy has already been to the homeless shelter, and he doesn’t want anything to do with the weird ways by which this particular shelter is directed. He makes a rare find: an apartment that is available. The property manager has agreed to hold it for him for just a few days.

The problem is, to get in, he has to come up with $135 up front. He won’t get paid for 8-10 days. This is a pretty typical situation for anyone looking for a place. He is $135 away from a missed opportunity, with darn few other options.

This particular $135 is “good money.” That is, this money is going to perform well. It is going to bring a young man out of homelessness, and into an apartment so he can gain some ground and get his life settled down.

I consulted a pastor about helping me get some money to this guy. The pastor said that his church does not help people with rent. In other words, if I come up short during the month, I can’t go to this church to help me make rent. Different churches and outreach groups have different means whereby they serve the community. It will be a project of mine to try to put these together so I can match the need to the appropriate helping agency.

At any rate, I gave the pastor my “good money” speech, and he liked it. So, the guy got his apartment.

Another example: A friend who doesn’t have two nickels to rub together is lacking $40 for a physician’s physical as a requirement to get into an effective alcohol treatment program. That $40 is good money.

Other examples: The cost of a set of work clothes for someone’s new job is good money. The cost of sending a wayward kid home to his parents in the South is good money. The cost of the fee for a new birth certificate that got lost or stolen is good money. Circumstances many times place different values on money. Sometimes ten bucks is just ten bucks. Other times, it could be the difference between making or breaking someone.

The Risk Of Showing Kindness

It is difficult for me to give money to a person who asks for help without the thought, “He’s just going to buy beer,” flitting through my mind.

I don’t let this stop me, but it shows me that I am still “trained” to think along the lines of a culture that has grown cynical and weary from real abuses of kindness that all of us are aware of.
There are what are called “pros” in the begging business – some making a pretty good tax-free income by deceiving the kindhearted. There are shysters in every field. We all know stories about lawyers, doctors, ministers, loan officers, public officials, accountants, personal assistants, etc., who have used dishonest means to get into the conscience of the nice person and abuse that trust.
Anyone trying to lend a hand to someone in need is risking, to some extent, the possibility that they are being fooled.
In my own heart, I have come to terms with this by admitting that I could be ripped off a time or two, but the vast majority of people who seek help or hold signs over by Arby’s in the warmer months are not con artists. They may be stretching the truth a bit, or have their “pitch” down pretty well, but, as a matter of survival rather than trickery.
If we let the shysters stop us, kindness and compassion will freeze in our chests, and beware how dark is that darkness!

My Letter To The National Office of Volunteers Of America

I write to inform you, as a matter of conscience, that you have a blot on your record out here in Wyoming.

The VOA Sheridan Community Homeless Shelter is treating the poor and the vulnerable who seek services there with a brusque, dismissive and depersonalizing air. I estimate that about one-third of the people who enter the shelter are either kicked out or leave on their own because they can no longer tolerate the intrusion and bullying that goes on toward them by the director and staff.

I took it upon myself to advise the local board about this. The vice-president, in the local newspaper, said there was “nothing to” my concerns. The CEO of the Wyoming-Montana VOA disagreed with my statistic, and said it was more like 10 percent. He said this was “a pretty good success rate.” I fail to see how a dismissive and over-lording attitude toward 10 percent of your clientele is “pretty good” in anyone’s world.

I was fired from my job at the shelter just a few days before Christmas because I passionately objected to the treatment of others at the shelter. I am a former minister, and I can tell you that I have never seen a human service program that rides so thoroughly roughshod over its homeless residents. I was extremely bothered by this, and ended up speaking quite boldly and firmly to the director about her unseemly ways. She didn’t take it well. My concerns have been dismissed by VOA board and administration because I am now perceived as merely a disgruntled former employee.

Details about this misshapen program are available at my blog at http://www.helter-shelter.blogspot.com/ This includes the letter I wrote to the board, and many examples of poor treatment. I am not guilty of exaggeration, but even if one were to believe only half of what I wrote, it is clear you have a problem that no one in the local VOA will face.

Your own website on “Working to End Homelessness” says, “We stay with (the homeless) for as long as it takes to return them to self-sufficiency.” In Sheridan, this statement is not truthful.
Sincerely, Tim Cummings

Hoping That, As I Hurl Eggs, None Gets On WySTAR

Of course, I haven’t been very complimentary to the Volunteers of American Wyoming-Montana mis-administrators and the malanthropic tendencies of the overlord at the homeless shelter.
I am duty-bound by my conscience and my faith to call out the abuses of the needy and the abusers. The abusers don’t seem duty-bound to do anything about it, so I play my little trumpet as best as I can.
It may seem strange, then, that today I added a link to WySTAR, Wyoming Substance Abuse and Recovery Center, located in Sheridan.
When you click on the link, you are taken to a Volunteers of American website! I know! Weird, isn’t it?
As an organization, WySTAR just recently moved under the umbrella of Volunteers of America. I hope WySTAR can stay out of the rain. I fear this move may have doubled the reputation of VOA, but halved that of WySTAR.
I am familiar with WySTAR as an effective program. I am familiar with some of its staff (some of the best people I know, including Mark, Beth and Pam). I am also familiar with some of their clients, current, pending and past. I have nothing but good to say about WySTAR, and I hope that my deepest concerns about the failures at the homeless shelter and my offense taken by the smug and self-congratulatory management will not in any way be construed as being aimed anywhere else – particularly, not at WySTAR.

Homeless Vet Kicked Out Of Shelter Gets Second Chance From VA Dom Across The Street

My wife and younger daughter and I went to McDonald’s last night.
While we were ordering, one of the guys who used to be in the fancy homeless vets program at the Sheridan Community Shelter came in with a friend.
Need I mention that the director kicked him out of the shelter? Uh-huh. About three months ago.
Fortunately, the guy got shelter through the VA’s domiciliary, which is right across the street from the homeless shelter. Everybody calls it “The Dom.” Kind of makes you wonder why this duplication of services is there, especially since the specialty of the homeless shelter is kicking people out.
Once across the street and in the Dom, this guy is getting his life straightened out – something I was unable to get going with him because the director had her face in the rule book so much, she forgot the guy was a person.
I was so happy for him – he said he is on track, and things are working out with his girlfriend. He looked good, and said he felt great.
The shelter didn’t give him enough time. You have to succeed quickly at the shelter or you get the boot. Fortunately, the Dom is more patient and caring.
This guy is on his way to better things, no thanks to the homeless shelter’s short-sighted concept of care.

Local money for homeless goes to maintain high lifestyle of local VOA officials

It feels good to support causes that are important to you – the ones that pull at your heart or your conscience, and cause you to want to make a difference somehow.
This is a tremendous human brotherly impulse. Whether we personally reach out and help someone nearby, or send a check to a project, we are tapping into this very basic human facility – good will.
Many fine people in my town give money, food and clothing to the Volunteers of America Sheridan Community Homeless Shelter.
Most people don’t require that their donation go to a particular thing – like computers, or children’s toys, or new pillows. They just cheerfully give and assume that their charitable donation will be used to support the homeless.
I am afraid that the cheerful, generous giving of my townspeople would not be so cheerful and not so generous if they new the abuses of their donations.
As I mentioned in January, truckloads of physical donations (clothes, dishes, furniture) were taken to the city landfill. Ever single pair of jeans and every plate and every stuffed animal was donated by the great people in my town.
Not only by the truckload, but sometimes an armload of stuff is brought to the shelter. The nice people are thanked. After they leave, the staff joke about the “crap” people bring, and take the stuff across the street to a conveniently-placed dumpster.
On paper, the donation is written down as an “in kind” donation, which means the monetary value of whatever the items were can be used to match grant funds. In effect, the shelter converts physical donations to cash, and then toss the donation in the landfill.
It is legal, but it is hardly ethical, and lacks the character that one would expect from a religious organization that relies on its neighbors for support.
Sometimes, the shelter receives good old hard cold cash. They get $40,000 a year from some great people who operate a foundation.
Thing is, VOA pays itself $60,000 per year from shelter funds. The local VOA office skims $5,000 per month from income for the shelter. This money is “administrative costs” – not the shelter’s, but the officers of the local VOA. This particular $60,000 does not even pay the salary of one of the top five officers in the local VOA office.
It is my informed opinion that once the top five fill out their expense vouchers for travel and food, there is much more than half a million dollars of the organizational budget.
There is enough financial smoke and mirrors in the organization that it should give anyone pause before they grant thousands of dollars, or take a used pair of shoes to the shelter.