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Group homes in on homelessness in community

Community criticism after a local mental health drop-in center began providing tents and sleeping bags for homeless people triggered creation of a subcommittee to concentrate on finding appropriate shelter in emergencies.

Providing those tents and sleeping bags was right, but the community ought to be able to do better, said Sonny Consiglio, executive director of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul Society, Council of Altoona-Johnstown, and a leader of the Hope for the Homeless group.

Social service agency employees and church representatives who comprise most of the group — as well as a landlord and a pair of City Council members who showed up Friday — collectively have the resources and good will, but there hasn’t been enough organization and focus, meeting attendees said.

Church people typically are enthusiastic, thinking that with enough compassion, they’ll be able to apply a simple fix, said Kevin Dellape, who identified himself as a church person who was “embarrassed for all the stupid ideas I had.”

“The reality is, it’s ridiculously complex,” he said. “There’s no magic wand.” The criticism on social media of the H.O.P.E. Drop-In Center has been happening because the tents the center has been providing have made homeless people “visible” in a way they weren’t when they were sleeping in the woods or under a bridge, said center Executive Director Pam Townsend.

“People don’t want to see,” she said.

The center is not permitted to let people sleep inside the facility. Without that permission, “at the end of the day, we need to send them out,” she said. “It breaks my heart.”

Maybe the critics should try sleeping out in the cold “to feel what they feel,” she said.

For now, tents and sleeping bags are “the best we can do,” she said.

The people who need them sometimes have no alternatives.

“We’re talking about real people with real feelings, in real hardship,” she said.

The St. Vincent de Paul Society provides funding for hotels for people who are homeless, but the society cannot cover all the needs.

Moreover, the number of hotels available for the homeless has narrowed, because of the damage some people have caused, a meeting attendee said.

The ending of a COVID-based program also has aggravated the problem, because beneficiaries are losing their rental subsidies.

Some beneficiaries have misconstrued the program as meaning they didn’t need to pay rent anymore, said Brian Durbin, a landlord and a leader of the group.

That has led to frustration for landlords, some of whom have dropped out of the market, further aggravating the homelessness problem, Durbin said.

Landlords have mortgages and other expenses to pay, and if they don’t pay them, they go out of business, and their housing will be lost to the community, further aggravating the problem, Durbin said.

But there are also unscrupulous landlords who operate rentals unfit for habitation.

Renters in one building have been living without water service and have to fetch water in buckets to flush their toilets, Townsend said.

The situation presents a quandary for the advocates, because if they urge the city to shut down those exploitative landlords, as many as 30 renters would become homeless.

Still, “we need to make landlords accountable,” Townsend said.

Some landlords shouldn’t be in business, Durbin said.

There are vacant buildings around town that might provide shelter, but most would require significant work to be habitable. Placing homeless people there without a plan would be a disaster, Consiglio said.

High count

There are currently 279 individuals who are homeless or threatened by homelessness — including people fleeing or threatened by domestic violence — on the Blair County “by name” list, according to an employee of the Blair County Community Action Program.

Those numbers dwarf the capacity of the county’s recently opened 35-bed shelter — although there were 17 empty beds as of Friday, according to information provided by Family Services Executive Director Lisa Hann.

The vacancies are mainly due to policies that can cause a week to elapse before shelter staff can arrange for an intake, if applicants don’t answer the phone, according to Hann.

Once the shelter reaches capacity, it shouldn’t be a problem keeping it there, she said.

Shelter residents must leave after 30 days, although 14 additional days may be granted, provided residents look every day for another place to live and a job, according to Hann.

“We have had some folks come and sit in front of the TV,” she said. “When 30 days are over, we said ‘good luck.'”

Exceptions are allowed for one-night stays for individuals picked up by police, provided they pass a background check and are otherwise eligible for admission.

The solution to homelessness will need to include city and county government, including social service agencies and police, according to Consiglio and others.

Mental health and addiction issues are at the root of much of that problem, said City Councilman Dave Ellis, who attended the meeting and will serve on the subcommittee with Councilman Jesse Ickes.

One of the keys is removing “obstacles,” Ellis said.

“I’m willing to go anywhere to have this tough conversation,” Townsend said, in connection with the subcommittee. “I’m not going to be silent.”

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