Drug Court Alumni (from left to right) Brant Byrd, Daniel Elliott, Rachel Likely and her children Santiago, 5 mo., and Gracie, 9, Tessia Taylor and her children, Jade Lilly, 9, and Grace Lilly, 3, Bonnie Knappek and Tabitha Baldwin walk through downtown Centralia looking for donations for their annual Christmas party. Being from a small town, many Drug Court members knew each other in addiction and the alumni group is a way for them to have a positive community in recovery.
Forty years ago, Reliable Enterprises was founded as a work skills center for people with developmental disabilities.
Today, Executive Director Brett Mitchell explained the agency’s services could be considered a clearinghouse of birth to death services that cover populations in need. Reliable’s Reynolds Road facility in Centralia houses everything from employment and payee services to foster care and visitation support to Head Start and InTOT programs. In addition, the agency runs low-income housing, emergency foster care and a thrift store off site.
This is the new normal for many agencies assisting the community’s most vulnerable populations, Mitchell explained.
“We started with developmental disabilities and we did that for decades, now we’re responding to community needs so we started looking at other things.” Mitchell said. “The issues and whys of homelessness, they have not changed. How we deal with it has changed significantly.”
Just as homelessness cannot be solved by simply building more houses, so can homelessness and poverty not be combatted through a single pathway. A tangle of issues cause and contribute to homelessness including: poverty; education; employment; access to healthcare; housing; mental health issues; addiction; and domestic violence. Because every person’s experience with homelessness is unique, statistics are hard to come by but addiction and mental health are generally considered the largest contributing factors. Domestic violence is also a major factor and the largest issue affecting women who are homeless. The national nonprofit Safe Housing Partnerships notes that an estimated 80 percent of mothers with children who are homelessness had previously experienced domestic violence. At the federal, state and local level, there are agencies that deal with each of these issues separately.
“We have one agency that’s working on domestic violence and that’s a very different conversation from someone who has been evicted,” said Meja Handlen, housing program coordinator for Lewis County Health and Social Services.
It is very rare, though, that a clear-cut reason for someone’s homelessness is present. Richard Stride, executive director of Cascade Mental Health Care, estimates about 25-30 percent of his agency’s clients are homeless. The majority of these people struggle with addiction or mental health issues, but often they deal with multiple concurrent problems.
“People just don’t decide ‘I think it would be nice to be homeless today.’ It’s a combination of circumstances and, because of that, we have to get at the root of it. How did it start? Where did you come from?” Stride said. “We want Cascade to be sort of a one-stop shop. It really doesn’t matter what door they came through, we’ll be able to meet their needs.”
Statistics show a greater percentage of homeless individuals are addicted, struggling with mental health issues or are vulnerable to domestic violence than those who are housed. But when it comes to chronic homelessness, the factors beg a more chicken and the egg type question: which causes which?
“One guy told me ‘I have to stay high to stay awake. If I fall asleep, I go to jail.’” Said Lisa Streidinger of the nonprofit Resident Action Project and Friends Without Homes.
Many agencies find themselves exploring the needs of the populations they are serving and learning about new opportunities to bridge gaps. This can be done through wraparound services — a holistic approach meaning someone may come in for a food box but may also receive help signing up for employment services or low-income housing. At Lewis County Head Start, Director Dallas Smith said the goal is to work with each of their 173 families on an individual basis, helping them with any issues they may be facing including: parenting and family dynamics such as eating dinner together every night; finding a doctor or affordable insurance coverage; budgeting to pay off a bill that may be making them struggle; helping parents achieve their GED or other education that can lead to a higher paying job; or finding affordable childcare. These issues may not seem related to preschool at first glance, but Smith said they are all part of creating a strong framework for each child’s long-term development.
“If the families don’t move forward, children will stay stuck,” Smith said. “So that’s why we try to get as many of the players involved as we can. We try to get parents to see education as a resource for their children and themselves.”
Part of offering wraparound services is the concept of meeting people as they are and where they are, sometimes literally. The Housing Resource Center of Lewis County is one example of local agencies now offering mobile services. Executive director Ruth Gutierrez explained they know there are certain people who feel uncomfortable coming into an office and some of the homeless individuals in Lewis County are located in areas such as Morton and Packwood, which makes coming to Centralia difficult. A bilingual team from HRC goes out into areas where they know people are staying, bringing with them touch-screen tablets from which they can sign people up for services. They are also able to distribute some goods, including Narcan, an opioid overdose antidote.
“We’re interested in establishing relationships so we can get them the help they need,” Gutierrez said.
Most of all, meeting people where they are requires a level of compassion that necessitates looking at the ugly truth of poverty and homelessness: most of us are closer to it than we would care to admit. With an estimated 47 percent of Lewis County’s population at or below the Asset Limited Income Constrained Employed (ALICE) threshold established by the United Way of Lewis County, those truly in need in our community could be the barista at your coffee shop, a fellow parent at your child’s school or someone volunteering their time at a local charity. Smith gave the example that if someone found an apartment for about the median rent for Lewis County, once you factor in paying first and last month’s rent, a deposit and moving services and utilities, the actual cost to move is about $3,000. She ventured that many people living comfortably do not have easy access to that amount of money.
“I think we make judgements on people because we’d like to think we make different choices and that’s not always the case, we just have more resources to cover our bad choices,” Smith said.
Marcia Bennight, 29, a local woman struggling to get herself permanently housed, said being homeless certainly made it more difficult for her to make positive changes in her life. She was pregnant and addicted to meth while living on the streets. Her now 2-year-old son was placed into foster care with family members several hours after his birth. She said she was in and out of rehab several times within a two- or three-year period and it wasn’t until she found a more stable living condition that she was able to stick with it.
“It’s hard to do treatment classes if you don’t know where you’re going to be tomorrow,” Bennight said. “I’d be sleeping in Centralia and then I’d be clear out in Winlock or Packwood or out of the county and you have to get back for your classes. It’s especially tough to be homeless when you’re in the (Department of Corrections) system. You have to have a residence to stay clean.”
Stride said he often refers to a concept called Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It suggests that the basic needs of individuals, in order, are: physiological; safety; love/belonging; esteem; and self-actualization. So, in the instance of someone who is homeless, whose basic needs such as food, water, shelter, hygiene and personal safety are not being met in a stable way, trying to foster love and belonging is simply a moot point.
“In order for a person to be healthy, they have to first have food and shelter but it needs to be long term. Until that basic need is met, we’re not going to tackle our substance use problems, our domestic violence problems, or mental health problems,” Stride said. “I think people who have never experienced homelessness really don’t know how devastating it can be for people.”
Fay Ternan, director of the Lewis County Gospel Mission, said it is easy to stereotype and try to boil the issues of homelessness and poverty down to a single sound bite worth of advice for how to solve it. She said she certainly did not fully see how homelessness actually played out in her community until she actually began volunteering at the mission several years ago and met the people and heard their stories.
“If you were to put on that person’s shoes and see what it’s like to survive day to day without income, sometimes without an ID, without health insurance, without a place that is safe, you’d be surprised,” Ternan said. “Just getting by day to day, filling basic needs, is a difficult thing. I never realized how limited their existence is until I started working here. It’s not day to day. It’s hour to hour.”
