Yakima County's homeless: How local agencies try to balance accountability with compassion

When it comes to addressing homelessness in Yakima, there’s significant disagreement — including among homeless people themselves — on how to do it best.

Service providers require varying degrees of accountability and participation from those seeking help, dictated largely by each organization’s specific philosophy.

Do homeless people need Jesus, therapy, or a roof over their heads? Depends on whom you ask.

Regardless of philosophy, the fact remains that winter is coming. Tent City will be closed in two weeks, and scores of people are still living on the streets.

Structured services

Union Gospel Mission offers emergency shelter beds for families, single women and single men – 15 family rooms, 16 beds for women, and about 100 beds for men. Live-in volunteers and long-term recovery programs add a few dozen more.

Far fewer women come to the mission seeking services, directors say, largely because more financial assistance and community programs are available to mothers and families than to single men.

Men take a Breathalyzer test in order to spend the night, while women must pass a urinalysis drug test, an added safeguard designed to protect children who may also be staying at the shelter. Staff may be more lenient toward mothers with children, or men who have been drinking but are behaving calmly.

To eat lunch or spend the night at the mission, guests must first attend chapel, which lasts half an hour at midday and an hour in the evening.

“We try to feed their soul as well as their stomach,” said Marv Lindley, Men’s Program coordinator.

Prior to the brief sermon delivered last Tuesday afternoon, staff played a DVD of upbeat praise music on a projector screen. A few people sang along; most waited quietly in their chairs. One man appeared to be sleeping.

A man who showed up near the end of chapel was denied entry for arriving too late.

Guests who hang around the mission during the day are expected to do some light chores, such as cleaning up after meals. Some become live-in volunteers.

Lindley says the mission never turns people away for space issues. Even at the end of last month when it got more crowded, Lindley said the men’s shelter had around 20 empty dorm beds per night, plus space among the two dozen or so mattresses on the floor of the intake room.

Usually 60 to 80 men stay in the shelter on a nightly basis.

“It’s not that there haven’t been available beds,” said the mission’s executive director, Rick Phillips. “The issue typically is, we’re here to help anybody who wants help. We do have a structure.”

Prohibiting any alcohol or drugs on site “has been a barrier to a lot of people,” he said. “We want to help people that want to move forward. We’re not about enabling them to live in addictions.”

No one is required to accept the mission’s faith position, he said, though the yearlong New Life addiction recovery programs are faith-based.

Mission staff help men and women develop a “life plan,” detailing what they need to do to get back on their feet. That plan can include requirements or goals such as anger management courses, drug treatment or job training. The majority of families cooperate with that, Phillips said.

“And as a result of collaborating with other agencies in the Valley, we’re able to get them back out into the community,” he said. The mission serves around 1,250 people a year in that capacity.

However, he said, a smaller subset of people has taken on “an entitlement mentality.”

“There is a residual chronic homeless group of people that, if you look at their history, you’d see that they have used every free service they can find and they’ve burned a lot of bridges as well,” Phillips said.

The homeless individuals who stay at the mission share a lot of Phillips’ frustration with folks who don’t want to submit to the rules.

“You just gotta humble yourself to come in here,” said David Wentz, 53. “A lot of people don’t like this place. ... They want to come in here and do what they want; they don’t want no set structure.”

And participating in chores is “more than fair,” says Dennis Newcomb, 55, who helps volunteer around the shelter wherever he can.

“What ain’t fair is half these people don’t want to do anything for the mission,” he said. “There’s a lot of young people (at Tent City) that could get a job. ... They just don’t want to work.”

Whether it’s at the mission or any other agency, Phillips said, people are going to have to jump through some hoops to become self-sufficient.

“You’re going to have to sit down with a counselor; you’re going to have to list out what your issues are in order for people to help you,” he said, “and there are some people who just aren’t at that point where they’re willing to admit they need help.”

‘When they’re ready’

Yakima Neighborhood Health Services agrees with that premise but advocates a harm-reduction, housing-first approach to homelessness.

“We believe that we have to meet them where they are,” said Rhonda Hauff, chief operating officer at Neighborhood Health, which is contracting with the Yakima Valley Conference of Governments on a housing grant for 30 homeless individuals.

That means building relationships and giving people the information and tools they need to protect themselves — whether from domestic violence or substance use — before outreach workers can help them move away from destructive behaviors and become more self-sufficient.

It’s not as simple as someone not wanting help, says Annette Rodriguez, homeless housing services director.

“They really want the help; they just don’t know how to get there,” she said.

Homeless people may have been turned away from services in the past, or even been arrested for trespassing after an outburst at a clinic or service agency. Psychiatric issues may make it overwhelming to sit in a crowded waiting room.

Personal preference plays a large role, too.

Jennifer Leonard, 44, has been staying in Tent City for months and is increasingly frustrated by the delay in housing assistance. But she says staying in the dorms at the mission, sharing close quarters with strangers, robs her of her sense of privacy or safety, even though she acknowledges the streets aren’t safe, either.

For anyone, not just homeless people, Hauff said, wanting to change doesn’t mean it happens overnight.

“How many of us have been told we need to lose weight because it was good for our health, and how easy was that to do?” she said. “We’ve had many instances where people said they’re not interested in help today — but tomorrow’s a different story. We’ve had those success stories where, when we first met them, they had no interest in reducing or quitting.”

Long-term support

It takes “hand-holding” and ongoing case management by staff to help make those changes and get people to stay in drug treatment or mental health counseling, Neighborhood Health leaders say. Staff ferry willing clients to Comprehensive Healthcare, Triumph Treatment Services, the mission and other appointments.

But all the services in the world won’t fix the underlying problems if people remain homeless, they say. That’s why Neighborhood Health works with people who are still active drug users.

“They’ll be more successful if they exit the treatment programs back into housing,” Rodriguez said. “If they exit and go back into the street, they’re going to start using again. If you go from treatment to housing, you’re going to save a lot of work with the client, and you’re going to save dollars in the community.”

Even permanent supportive housing, with no end of services in sight, is cheaper in terms of law enforcement, corrections and health care dollars saved, Rodriguez said.

Neighborhood Health has 80 people in permanent supportive housing right now, Hauff said. The program’s average cost per resident, including a one-bedroom apartment unit and case management time, is about $11,000 per year.

By contrast, Hauff said, studies from the nonprofit National Alliance to End Homelessness put the average cost of a homeless person remaining on the streets, using up emergency room and police resources, at $30,000 to $40,000 a year.

At Tent City, Cherrie Smith, 42, is hoping Neighborhood Health might be able to offer housing assistance to more people, maybe even motel room vouchers.

“I want to go to school; I want to go to work,” she said. “But I need a home.”

Low barriers

“Housing First” is the evidence-based model recommended by the federal U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness.

Steve Berg, vice president for programs and policy for the National Alliance to End Homelessness, said the model simply aims to first keep people safe from inclement weather and bodily harm, and then to help them not be homeless anymore. That means low-barrier shelters and collaborative support systems.

“Generally, 85 to 95 percent of people who are homeless and get housed, stay housed — with supportive services appropriate to their needs,” Berg said. “There’s a lot of homeless people that, if they get housed, they’ll just take care of the rest of their problems themselves and won’t need a lot of help.”

He cited Utah and Wyoming as conservative states that have invested significant dollars in permanent supportive housing because “it’s cheaper to just rent somebody an apartment than to actually have them living outside and to bear the cost that follows from that.”

In terms of personal responsibility, Berg said, the programs that are effective do have high expectations for homeless people.

“But it’s working with them, figuring out what they are capable of doing, and figuring out what motivates people,” he said. “And even people with really severe mental illnesses can respond really well to that.”

In Wapato, Noah’s Ark has been a low-barrier shelter for nearly a decade.

“The vision always was to offer this ‘radical hospitality,’ as we called it, and seeing that as transformative,” said director David Hacker, who owns the building.

He doesn’t want to be another gatekeeper in a system that lacks the resources to care for everyone, he said.

“It seems like there’s not enough options for people,” he said. “Not enough housing options; not enough commitment at the state level, or county level, to really provide enough beds for people, or affordable housing for folks — housing that meets the needs for all sorts of vulnerable populations.”

Like the Mission, Noah’s Ark asks that people who want to hang around after breakfast do some chores to keep the place clean.

And in the last year, staff have developed a new case management plan, requiring guests to prove they are working toward their goals in order to stay indefinitely. That might mean signing up for Social Security or Medicaid, getting help from an attorney, starting counseling or drug treatment or just finding a job.

Otherwise they’re limited to 90 days at the shelter, social worker Evodio Reyes Jr. said.

He wants to empower clients, not enable them, he said. People can still come in drunk or high, as long as they’re not endangering others, but they need to contribute.

“People have really been rising to the occasion,” he said.