Homeless people are most often associated with urban areas and the phrase usually conjures up the mental picture of freeway overpasses, park benches and cardboard boxes.
And rightly so to some extent, since studies show that homelessness is far more prevalent in the city than in the country. But while most people don’t typically think of places like Texas County as areas to find homeless people, the reality is they’re out there.
Just ask staff members of the Texas County Food Pantry — the homeless prevention assistance headquarters of the state’s largest county.
“It’s a problem,” Pantry Executive Director Sister Clare Reinert said, “even though most people don’t think it is.”
To qualify as homeless, a person doesn’t necessarily need to push their only possessions around in a grocery cart or sleep in a parking garage. The Missouri Housing Development Commission (MHDC) has homelessness guidelines that include a lack of heat or running water, making the label relatively widely applicable.
Reinert and the pantry provide financial assistance to numerous people who fall into the category of having a home, but still being “homeless.” But getting a bead on just how many people live in those conditions is difficult because of all the factors involved, such as transience and “doubling up” (more than one family sharing a space designed for one).
Finding comprehensive current statistical information about homelessness on a national level is also difficult, and any existing statistics are only estimates due to the nature of the subject. But lots of numbers are available from studies done in the latter part of the 2000s.
In 2008, the United States’ Department of Housing and Urban Development reported that an estimated 671,888 people in the country were homeless on one night in January 2007. About 58 percent of them were living in shelters and transitional housing, while 42 percent were unsheltered.
However, estimates from several sources indicate that the number of people using transitional shelter of some sort during any 12-month period is well over twice that figure.
According to a 2007 study done by The National Alliance to End Homelessness (an organization based in Washington, D.C.), homelessness is most prevalent in many western states, with the highest rates found in Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island and Washington. Washington, D.C. also made the list.
The Alliance also concludes that homelessness is, in fact, more common to heavily populated areas, with 71 percent of homeless people living in central cities, 21 percent in suburbs and 9 percent in rural areas.
Twice a year, several government and non-profit organizations are involved in taking a census of people whose situations match MHDC homelessness guidelines. Known as Point in Time (PIT) counts, each one is conducted over a 24-hour period, once in January and again in July.
This year’s winter PIT count took place beginning at 9 a.m. Wednesday, Jan. 26.
Statistics compiled are gathered from 101 rural counties that make up the Missouri Balance of State Continuum of Care and are used by the MHDC to help to determine how much funding should be set aside for homelessness prevention assistance (other counties in the state are part of metropolitan areas, each of which has its own Continuum of Care).
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development mandates that states conduct homeless counts at least once every two years, but the MHDC prefers the semi-annual counts for the sake of accuracy.
PIT count statistics are posted on the Missouri Association of Social Welfare (MASW) website (www.MASW.org) under the Homeless Missourians Information System header, and are broken down geographically by region, county and demographics.
Last July’s count indicated there were 1,966 homeless people in Missouri (1,371 sheltered and 595 unsheltered), with a virtually even percentage of male and female.
Texas County is in the nine-county Region 8, which reportedly had 134 total homeless people — 88 sheltered and 46 unsheltered. Texas County itself was listed as having eight homeless (six sheltered and two unsheltered), although Reinert recalls the count being somewhat higher.
She also figures all the counts fall far short of actual totals — since the nature of the subject makes it difficult to account for every possible entry — and she said she dealt with about 50 homeless people in 2010.
In any case, Houston and Texas County are not without a population of true homeless and Reinert said she knows of some specific places where they can usually be found, including parks, bridges and a few abandoned houses. She also said they can sometimes be found keeping warm by walking around Walmart in the middle of the night or hanging out in a 24-hour convenience store.
“These cold nights can be very tough for them to deal with,” she said.
When a truly homeless person requests assistance, Reinert often helps them get set up in one of several different southern Missouri shelters, including United Gospel Rescue Mission in Poplar Bluff, Samaritan Outreach in West Plains and Victory Mission in Springfield for men, and Christos House in West Plains for women.
Sometimes the pantry will pay for a night of lodging for a homeless person, with the stipulation that the recipient will come in the following day and talk with Reinert about a plan of action. A lack of cooperation in that area means an equal lack of further assistance.
“I helped a man stay a night in a motel recently, but he didn’t want to come in and make a plan,” Reinert said. “So two nights later he was homeless again.”
In 2010, the food pantry distributed $46,500 in “homelessness prevention” funds to utilities companies, landlords and other sources. Reinert said she sometimes spends $1,000 in a day for homelessness prevention; all it takes is covering a couple of rent checks and a power bill or two.
While the people that money assists may have a roof over their heads, many of them have little else.
“I known of a family in Cabool that has no heat source in their home,” Reinert said. “They’re literally freezing.”
Still other people might not have a home of their own but don’t add to homeless statistics because they live in a friend’s home or have some other temporary arrangement for shelter.
Sometimes Reinert assists people in getting set up locally. One available refuge is Mike Whittenberg’s eight-room Bel Nor Motel in Cabool.
There, people can begin their journey down the road to recovery for a nominal fee that includes utilities. Reinert has directed people to Whittenburg for about four years now, but he states he is not in the business of proliferating a problem; he insists people who move in as homeless show initiative in looking for work and use his rooms more or less as transitional housing.
“I don’t want people coming in here and doing nothing,” Whittenberg said. “They have to get up and go look for a job, and I think Sister Clare specifies that before they come here.
“This needs to be a stepping stone for people who don’t have a place to stay because maybe their house burns or they’re just having bad luck because of the economy or whatever.”
One such man is 55-year-old Lenny Carter of Cabool, who lost his job as a cook at a local restaurant and was to the point last summer of having little or nothing to his name.
Thanks to the help and direction he received from Reinert, Whittenberg and a few other instrumental people, Carter is moving forward again. As a “zero income” applicant, the pantry helped him get set up with Whittenberg and provided him a couple of months worth of rent late last year. Then through the Experience Works program, he obtained a position working in the kitchen at Cabool’s Pineview Heights Nursing Home.
“I was really hurting and couldn’t find a job,” Carter said. “This more or less saved my life because I was down to nothing. I was in pretty bad shape, but I kept fighting and fighting and with guidance from Sister Clare and Mike and the pastor at my church, I kept my head up and didn’t lose hope. Eventually it all broke loose and it has all worked out real well.
“It’s a tall ladder, but I’m moving up the steps.”
Cabool Senior Center administrator Angela Nordquist said Carter’s presence is a win-win situation.
“He’s been here about a month and people really seem to enjoy him being here,” Nordquist said. “Of course, our funding is being cut all the time just like the schools, so volunteers and programs like Experience Works really help us get by. And when you get a good one like Lenny — who you know sincerely wants to better themselves — that just makes it better.”
Whittenberg expressed empathy for the situation some of his tenants are in.
“I may be on Sister Clare’s doorstep one day myself,” he said. “The way things are these days, you never know.”
While unemployment is a common reason for homelessness among people Reinert deals with, she said it’s not the primary cause.
“Domestic violence is probably the lead issue,” she said. “We have a lot of that — it’s a significant problem.”
Reinert lists eviction due to property violations or lack of rent payment as another main factor, but also noted that some homeless people are just generally transient, going from place to place as they perhaps deal with a loss or a negative change in their lives.
A 2008 U.S. Conference of Mayors study stated that two of the leading reasons for homelessness among U.S. families were unemployment and a lack of affordable housing, while three main reasons for singles being homeless were substance abuse, lack of affordable housing and mental illness.
Food pantry intake specialist Melanie Self said there are now many more people who fit the technical description of homeless than when she started working at the pantry last August.
“The economy and unemployment are the underlying reasons,” Self said. “But it’s remarkable how many more people are going without heat or are getting assistance for it. I can’t even open the top drawer of the file cabinet, which is alphabetically arranged, and were not even to March yet.”