Homeless census restores dignity

Paula Anderson started the 2012 Pierce County Homeless Survey with a list of three encampments, a church, the Puyallup Library, two motels and a Walmart parking lot.

Also on the list were two Puyallup parks where, days after the recent snow and ice storms, fallen and falling branches had left them too dangerous to enter. Anderson shivered at what it might have been like for anyone staying there during the storms.

Anderson, chairwoman of the Puyallup Homeless Coalition, knew people who meet federal homelessness guidelines were living or spending days in each of those spots.

She and her team of volunteers took the first shift of the two-day count in East Pierce County. They’d done their prep work, making a list of places homeless people were trying not to be noticed.

The trick would be to find them and persuade them to respond to a one-page questionnaire. The data collected are used to apply for government and nonprofit funds, and to figure out what services are needed where.

“The information we learn is a source of income for Pierce County,” Janet Leonard told Wendy Jones, who was staying with her three young daughters at Puyallup’s Northwest Motor Inn, compliments of Open Hearth Ministries.

Leonard is a volunteer for Open Hearth. In cold weather, the nonprofit gets parents with kids a brief stay in a motel.

Jones, 31, lost her job as a cashier. Her first husband took off years ago and doesn’t support his daughter, Cheyenne, 8. The father of her two youngest daughters, Kayleigh, 2, and Alexa, 1, was deported.

The family has stayed and over-stayed its welcome with family and friends, and every shelter she called was full.

“I ran out of options,” Jones told Leonard. “Because of me trying to find a place to stay, I’ve been having a hard time looking for work. I’m stressed.”

The motel is emergency housing for only a few days. She’s hoping to be accepted into transitional housing with social services, including child care and job training or placement. She wants to get stable, then independent.

Thursday morning, she drove Cheyenne to her school in Spanaway.

Getting the family settled near the school would be better for everyone, Leonard said. Because the child is homeless, federal law requires the school district to keep her in her school, even if it means paying for a taxi or a bus for transportation.

BANDAGE VS. SOLUTION

In Sumner, Daffodil Elementary School was the lifeline for Jennette Gordon and her 9-year-old daughter.

The family had lived in a nearby apartment with bad plumbing, exposed wires and a mold problem. The owner lost it to foreclosure, and the new management refused to make repairs. Gordon, who did not know about landlord-tenant laws, withheld her rent to force the repairs. She did it improperly and was evicted.

“After that, I’ve been bouncing around,” Gordon said. “I’ve lived underneath the bridge, even.”

She found a relative to keep her daughter at that point, and will do the same if she doesn’t find a place before her Open Hearth stay runs out today.

Though she works 20 hours a week as a custodian at Daffodil Elementary, and might get more hours, that eviction makes her difficult to place, said her Open Hearth visitor, Fifi Petersen.

Petersen sees a better way. Money poured into motel stays and rides to school buys a bandage, not a solution. It would be better spent on an emergency shelter for families, she said.

Anderson said the coalition is looking at incentives for developers to include affordable housing, for landlords who will rent to families who are on a social services plan, and for grant money.

There’s a good volunteer base in East Pierce County for services already in place.

Puyallup churches collaborate on the Freezing Nights program for people without children. From Halloween through March, a different church every night opens as a shelter with a home-cooked dinner.

Mark Padelford is one of the 35 to 48 people who sleep there and enjoys what he calls gourmet food plus friendship. After he lost his construction job, he moved in with his parents. Then his mother died, and his father lost his leg, then the house.

Padelford kept track of camp sites he heard about, and volunteered for last week’s two-day census. He led Anderson to a spot near Alderton where a farmer told a homeless friend he was welcome to build a camp in the trees.

Those trees turned dangerous in the ice storm. Branches fell on the living and storage tents.

PROTECTING DIGNITY

They did the same on a camp toward Orting. Deep in the woods, big branches had come down on tents. The team hiked in and found a camp fire smoking, but no one answered their calls.

It’s an open secret that young people, mostly unaccompanied minors, hide in Wildwood Park, and that other people live in Bradley Lake Park. The team could not get in because of debris from the storm.

Police told Anderson that people were breaking into a derelict house, and possibly a mobile home on land set for development. The team slogged in, called out, then peered inside. No one answered. She’d send another team back Thursday night.

At the nearby Puyallup Walmart, the flimsy “No Unauthorized Parking” sign was broken. But staff told Edwards that four groups of people live there in cars. With lights and without trees, it’s a safe place.

These residents are not a problem, so no one sends them away. In the cold, they are as welcome in the store as any other shopper.

Volunteer Malcolm Edwards was moved by that kindness.

“This is like protecting dignity with dignity,” he said.

That is what he, too, was doing, working on this year’s East Pierce County Homeless Survey.

Kathleen Merryman: 253-597-8677
kathleen.merryman@thenewstribune.com
blog.thenewstribune.com/street