FOR LIZ MATTHEWS, THE BEST PART OF WORKING FOR BETHANY HOUSE SERVICES IS HEARING KEYS JINGLING. When it’s time for a guest to leave the shelter and move into a permanent home, Matthews — the shelter’s lead social worker — will ask them to come back and jingle the keys to their new place for her. When they do, a smile breaks across her face.
“I know they’re thinking, ‘It’s over! I don’t have to be here any more. I can move!’ ” she says.
For many families in Cincinnati, the prospect of securing affordable housing seems like a dream. As the gap between housing costs and the average family income continues to widen, more and more families in the community are at risk of homelessness. In 2014, more than 660 families found themselves living in emergency shelters in Hamilton County, and these are only the families who received help. Nearly 70 percent, or more than 1,500 of the families who sought assistance and housing in 2013, were not assisted, according to the 2014 Cincinnati Family Homelessness Services Study by nonprofit Strategies to End Homelessness. These are families who called 381-SAFE, the number for Central Access Point, Cincinnati’s family shelter hotline.
“The sad part is, we don’t know what happens to that 70 percent,” says Susan Schiller, executive director of Bethany House. “We have no way of tracking it.”
As the need for assistance to homeless families has increased, the organization has also expanded to fill a larger role in Cincinnati’s nonprofit world.
At the beginning of this year, BHS took over operations of the Mercy Health – St. John Social Services housing program. It was another step in a big growth streak. BHS has expanded from one cozy shelter in South Fairmount with 29 beds to a total of four shelter locations stretched across Cincinnati, with buildings in Over-the-Rhine, Mount Auburn and Walnut Hills.
Schiller joined BHS two years ago after many years spent in the nonprofit sector, including time with the United Cerebral Palsy, Habitat for Humanity and Boys and Girls Hope. Since she started, the BHS housing program has grown by 35 percent as they’ve taken over the city’s shelter diversion program in addition to taking on the Mercy/St. John services.
This unprecedented growth means BHS has become the largest family shelter in the Greater Cincinnati area; this year, the organization expects to see its number of guests triple, Schiller says.
Already, BHS serves a whopping five out of every 10 homeless families in the city, according to the shelter.
“It’s our mission — we know what we’re doing, we’re the best in the community,” Schiller says. “Why would we not take it on?”
Officials with the nonprofit say they’re not done evolving. In order for BHS to serve an influx of new clients, they need to be under one roof. With operations spread around the city, the time it takes alone to drive between each can become a drain on the time and resources of Bethany’s staff. Recently, Schiller organized a committee to find BHS a new home that is one location and is big enough to house all of their operations. But the process could take months.
In the meantime, as the winter months approach, BHS has signed a lease for two apartment buildings within two miles of Bethany’s offices to pull their shelter operations closer.
“It became obvious to us that we weren’t going to be able to find a location, build a building and do a capital campaign in the timeline that we needed to,” Schiller says. “We needed to get out of the apartments that we were in.”
For Schiller, there’s no slowing down as long as there are families in need of homes. The challenges go beyond brick and mortar, she says.
“One of our biggest obstacles is awareness. People don’t realize what a big problem family homelessness is, and I think people should be outraged about this. We are committed to moving these families from homelessness to homes, and we know we can do it with the community’s help.”
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THERE ARE NO TWO GUESTS AT BETHANY WITH THE SAME STORY.
One young woman, Alison (whose name was changed for this story to protect her privacy), found her way there after sleeping in her car for months with her three children. She was living in an apartment when her sister became homeless. Alison took her sister in, but she brought her large pit bull with her. One night, the dog got loose and badly bit her neighbor. Alison promptly received an eviction notice from her landlord and was forced out within two weeks.
During her intake meeting, Alison sits across from Matthews at a wooden desk topped with papers and case files. With each of Matthews’ prompts, Alison reveals the details of her life without a home.
“Where did you sleep last night?” Matthews asks Alison.
“In my car,” she answers. “I’ve been sleeping in my car since we’ve been evicted.”
“How long has that been?”“Almost a month.”
With nowhere to go and nowhere to keep her three kids, Alison had them stay with their father while she slept in the car. One day after work, she went to pick up her kids from school and was waved over by a teacher, who complained to Alison that their behavior had declined, that they were fighting with other kids and falling asleep in class. Alison explained they’d been staying at their father’s house. The teacher nodded in understanding, she says, and handed off the kids.
Matthews listens quietly to Alison’s story as she fills out her intake forms, but at this point she interjects.
“They would rather sleep in that car with you than for you to take them somewhere and you aren’t with them,” she says. “Your children don’t care as long as they’re with you. They’ll go through whatever it is that you have to go through, and you just have to try to keep them safe. They can adapt.”
The average homeless family, at least on paper, has two children under the age of 6. In Cincinnati, 80 percent of the families are led by a single mom, according to a 2014 survey by Strategies to End Homelessness. In order for city homeless services to be able to serve the large population of homeless children, Hamilton County Commissioners set aside $1 million to fund child care coordinators for Bethany House, the YMCA, Interfaith Hospitality Network and the Salvation Army.
“It takes a community to raise a child, and I think the more people in the community that are aware of the problem of homeless children, the more we could get done,” says Janice Clay, a case manager for BHS who joined during the Mercy/St. John acquisition. “We’ve got to stop looking at it as an adult problem and start looking at the children. The children are the root of the family, and if we can help them, we can help the families as a whole to be more successful.”
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STABILITY, STRUCTURE AND SUPPORT ARE THE PILLARS THROUGH WHICH MATTHEWS SAYS SHE RUNS THE SHELTER.
“We try to instill structure in them so that when they leave, they’ll have a routine,” she says.
After 18 years of working for BHS, Matthews has become the mother hen of the shelter: managing guest intakes, assisting the shelter directors, making sure the guests are following the rules. Most importantly, she cooks all the food as head chef. (The night after Alison’s intake, she made taco salads, a popular request among the guests.) Matthews says in this line of work, you learn all about other people, but it helps you learn about yourself, too.
“Working here, I’ve learned that I’m a caregiver; I’m not here for the paycheck, I’m here to help the people,” Matthews says. “You get attached here; when you’re here for so long, it almost becomes home.”
The original shelter is a Victorian house painted a deep shade of coral on a quiet road in the city’s South Fairmount neighborhood, which has struggled with high poverty and unemployment rates. Walking through its doors feels like going back in time. The wood paneling and high ceilings welcome you into the entryway of the shelter, and before you can process the beauty of the dark-stained crown molding, a newborn’s cries pierce the quiet air like a rooster crowing on a farm. This is followed by the drumming of footsteps down the spiral staircase, the chatter in the common room and the clamor of pots in the kitchen, all signifying morning time at the Bethany House shelter.
With nearly 30 beds packed into the 14-room house, the space is surprisingly organized. Bunk beds are pushed against each wall with perfectly tucked, diamond-patterned quilts on each mattress. Two or three beds sit perpendicular in the center of the room like a corn maze. A box at the end of one bed holds plastic fire trucks and well-loved teddy bears, along with clothes and toiletries.
The beds fill any available room but leave space to walk in between. Multiple families will share this room during their stays at Bethany, and each will leave when the time is right. They will be replaced with another family in need of a bed and a place to stay safe at night.
While the families are with Bethany, they each have their own chores. Whether it’s cleaning up the common area, helping with dishes after dinner or making their beds, each guest practices the life skills and structure they will need when they move out.
“We try to get them back to doing the ‘normal’ things,” Matthews says. “What we find is that when people are bouncing from house to house, they lose the little things that they think aren’t important — having their kids brush their teeth, cleaning up after themselves. They lose the small things and they don’t realize how important those are.”
Bethany social workers and case managers work to ensure that each guest who leaves receives the information and skills they need to live independently, including classes on budgeting, nutrition and parenting. There are also educational programs for the children so they can learn basic health and safety practices. Matthews says the structure is critical to the success of each guest in the Fairmount shelter and, most likely, the main reason for the great outcome numbers BHS reports.
In 2014, BHS sheltered 438 individuals, more than half of whom were children, according to its annual report. Of the families who stayed at Bethany, less than 7 percent returned to a homeless shelter within a year.
“By the time these families get to us, they’ve exhausted all other avenues, and they think a shelter is the rock bottom. And it’s not,” Matthews says. “As long as you’ve got a roof over you head and somewhere to sleep, it’s never a bottom. This is the beginning to something totally new.”
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WHEN ASKED WHAT THE PRIMARY CONTRIBUTING FACTOR IS TO THE RISE OF FAMILY HOMELESSNESS IN CINCINNATI,
Bethany staff unanimously answered “a lack of affordable housing.” Even where there are openings, this doesn’t mean that the landlord will take them in. With multiple evictions on her record, Alison could have trouble finding a place with enough room for her and her children that she can afford.
“There’s a stigma associated with people being homeless, and there’s a stigma associated with taking in a family that’s coming on subsidy,” says Kevin Finn, president and CEO of Strategies to End Homelessness. “There are a lot of landlords out there who might have affordable units, but they won’t take families coming out of these situations, or they won’t agree to participate with these housing programs.”
In an effort to proactively address the needs of homeless families in the community, as well as to identify the key ways to prevent at-risk families in the community from becoming homeless, Finn, along with the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and the Family Housing Partnership — including BHS, the Interfaith Hospitality Network of Greater Cincinnati, The Salvation Army and the YWCA of Greater Cincinnati — released the Solutions for Family Homelessness Plan.
The plan puts an emphasis on prevention efforts, a streamlining of the policies and services used by the different service providers as well as the education of landlords on the rapid re-housing programs used by shelters to place families into homes and apartments.
Prevention is the most cost-effective strategy to reduce homelessness, the groups say. St. Vincent de Paul, the largest provider of emergency assistance for homeless in the region, reported that nearly 90 percent of families can avoid eviction for at least six months if they have received an average of $200 of emergency assistance.
In an effort to be at the forefront of homelessness prevention efforts, Bethany has hired a social worker to function as a diversion case manager, Mary Singer-Richey.
“Entering shelter can be very traumatic for the children and families, so we try to keep them out of that kind of environment,” Singer says. “It’s very expensive to have families in shelters and it’s less costly to actually just be paying people’s rent, and that also opens up a shelter bed for a family who needs to stay here.”
Shelter diversion and prevention efforts have received a big push in the community. Diversion programs can help at-risk families avoid homelessness altogether by helping with the cost of utilities, rent and other expenses. Diversion efforts cost a bit over $1,000, but once a family becomes homeless, the cost to serve them skyrockets to more than $3,000 per person.
The capital project in the plan is to get BHS in one location. Finn recognizes this is the key element holding Bethany back from keeping up with the growth after the Mercy/St. John acquisition.
“I think that has been more of a burden on them than they realized before they agreed to take it on,” Finn says. “Staff only has so much time and so many resources, and they’re burning up their time driving between buildings when they could be sitting face to face with families.”
The announcement of the strategic plan comes on the heels of a $100,000 allocation from Cincinnati City Manager Harry Black and Cincinnati City Council’s end-of-the-year surplus to go directly to support BHS’s growth, though the process of moving into a new place will require much more than that — likely millions of dollars. Purchasing some of the buildings around Bethany in Fairmount could cost upwards of $1 million, with that number reaching to above $3-5 million to repair and renovate an existing space to hold all BHS services and shelters.
“We can make a much bigger impact on family homelessness if we get ourselves in one place,” Schiller says. “It’s not only about getting them homes, it’s making sure they stay housed. We don’t want them to become homeless down the road.”
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ALISON REPEATS OVER AND OVER DURING HER INTAKE
that she’d never experienced anything like this. She confides that she had bought dollar-menu meals all week for her kids, and that she ran out of food stamps weeks ago. Despite Alison’s difficult situation, Matthews finds a way to have her smiling through the intake, and soon they are laughing while they fill out the forms.
“You can’t always be serious in this job or you’ll get burnt out,” Matthews says. “I just want to make it so the families are happy when they walk in the door, not frustrated.” Alison responds that a bit of laughter is just what she needs after the last month. With a wide smile and a knowing nod, Matthews says, “Well, you’re with us now, darling. You’re going to be OK.”
Sometimes, before an intake can even begin, Matthews has trouble keeping guests from crying. “I just say go ahead and cry,” she says. “Just cry and get it all out. Sometimes I’ll wonder if they cry because they see that it’s not a big room with everyone packed together sleeping in it, and they say to themselves, ‘I should have done this sooner.’ ”
When a Bethany House guest gets back on their feet, they are, of course, happy. But there’s also a certain fear to leaving. “All this time I’ve been working here, I never imagined people being scared to leave,” Matthews says. “And so I ask them, ‘Why are you scared?’ and they say, ‘I’m scared I’m going to fail again.’ ”
Matthews tells them not to be scared, because no matter what, Bethany House will be there for them. “I tell them, ‘If you just use the tools we gave you while you were here, you will be OK.’ I still want to encourage them,” Matthews says. “And if they get to that point again where things are getting shaky, they can call and we will always be here to help them.”
After a year of big growth, there are still many changes to come for the organization.
“We like challenges; there really has not been anything as long as I’ve been here that we’ve had that we said we can’t do. We’ve done it, and we’re still doing it,” Matthews says. “I think that’s what makes our name and our reputation as good as it is, because we take on challenges. We welcome challenges, and we conquer.” ©
This article appears in Dec 9-15, 2015.