Polonsky: How successful is cots in helping its clients get jobs and find permanent homes?

Records: There are different definitions of success in this work. Sometimes it’s just getting a mentally ill man who’s living in the bushes to come in for a shower. We take people as we find them. More than half of our clients do find employment and permanent housing, but it’s unrealistic to expect that result for all of them. Homelessness is like being down a deep hole. Our programs provide a ladder to use to climb out of the hole. If somebody was born with a learning disability, abused as a child, given drugs and alcohol in elementary school, sexually active at age twelve, and living on the streets at age fourteen, then that person has to climb a long way to get out of the hole. And if they’ve been thrown back down repeatedly by an abuser, then they might not even dare try to climb out again.

A person’s rate of progress can depend on a lot of things, because there are so many causes of homelessness: economic, biological, and psychological. One young woman at the shelter had a learning disability. After having been raped by her father, she’d gotten heavily into drugs and alcohol, which had made her situation even worse. But ultimately she was able to turn it around, and now she has a great life. Another client was a contractor whose life had fallen apart after his wife had died of cancer. For him it was a big deal just to come and eat in our soup kitchen. He’d been eating out of dumpsters for years, yet it was humiliating for him to accept free food from a person across the counter. For him that was a first step out of the hole. This man now has his own home and pulls other chronically homeless people off the streets and into cots. But I would say success is simply moving up the ladder, whether all the way or a single step.

Polonsky: What kinds of jobs do your clients get?

Records: It’s a very broad spectrum, depending on people’s aptitudes and previous work experience. One man became a truck driver making fifty or sixty thousand dollars a year. One woman went to work for a medical-equipment company in town. At the other end of the spectrum is fast-food employment and Wal-Mart. But being one of the working poor is a step up for our clients.

Polonsky: How do you help people find housing?

Records: We invite landlords and property managers to come in and teach our clients what their rights are and what landlords’ expectations are. We also teach clients to budget, fix their credit rating, and develop a portfolio that includes letters of reference and a cover letter explaining why they would be a good tenant. And the property managers and landlords who volunteer get a whole new picture of homeless people. They see how earnest our clients are. They’re used to having prospective tenants misrepresent themselves, whereas we encourage people to be honest and explain what’s really going on.

Polonsky: Is it frustrating to work with people who don’t seem to make much progress?

Records: It hurts sometimes to see people making what seem like avoidable mistakes. I work with clients who have led terribly hard lives, and a few have a chip on their shoulder, but that attitude might be all that’s left of their dignity and self-respect. I can understand that. The prayer of Saint Francis is essential to my perspective: “Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy.” The amount of despair, darkness, and sadness in the world is just staggering. So regardless of whether you can help someone put his or her life back together, there is darkness you can light, despair to which you can offer hope. It doesn’t really matter whether you think someone can be helped. It’s great when it works out that way, but that’s not necessarily why you do it.

One of our program participants recently died in her sleep. She was in our transitional-housing program. I spent a little time with her body, to help send her on her way. She had an old Pooh Bear and a Piglet doll in her bed with her. I thought of the little girl she once had been, the comfort and love she had needed, and I was glad that she had at least died in a bed in a dorm room rather than on the street.

Anytime we see an adult who is homeless, we can think about the child they once were and what might have happened to them. Anytime we see somebody who is pushing a shopping cart and talking to themselves or apparently drunk on the sidewalk, we know they didn’t start out that way. They were once every bit as adorable as any other child; there was every bit as much hope in their eyes, every bit as much beauty in them as in our own children. Something happened to them, probably something awful, probably more than once, that broke them and brought them to their sorry state. They were once children who didn’t get a fair break. So let’s honor who they were. Let’s at least give them a fair break now.

Polonsky: What are some places in the system where homeless people continue to fall through the cracks?

Records: There’s a big gap in an area we call “permanent supportive housing,” which is long-term shelter for people who cannot reasonably be expected to make it on their own. We feel that people who can work should work, so we try to support them in finding employment. But some are unemployable. We have a client, for example, who has dementia. He’s a nice man with lots of great qualities, but he’s very hard to work with. He would not go along with us to apply for benefits or for a medical evaluation. We lost him for a while, but now he’s back again. There appears to be no good place for him, but he shouldn’t have to live in a shelter all his life.

So we’re working to develop housing that doesn’t expect residents ever to move on. Some people feel strongly that you shouldn’t provide housing unless there’s some incentive to work. But let’s acknowledge that there are people who don’t have the capacity to make it on their own, no matter how hard they may try. We should at least find them a place to live and keep them stable. It’s the compassionate and rational thing to do — and certainly no more expensive than letting them cycle through the emergency medical system and the criminal-justice system over and over.

We really do know how to help people, but as a society we don’t want to spend our money that way. We wind up taking funding away from programs that help people with mental illness or chemical dependencies. If they were to get help, these people could be a benefit to society instead of a burden, yet we deny help to them.

This work requires patience and an ability to persevere when there are so many things wrong with our system and not enough resources for people in dire need. Our work requires us to make the best of what we’ve got, to be creative and find alternative ways of helping people, and sometimes to beat on the door to get more resources. Right now we’re facing a crisis because the economy is in such bad shape. Donors and sponsors are saying, “Sorry, I can’t help out right now.”

Polonsky: It must be hard to keep going. Do your spiritual beliefs help motivate you to do this work?

Records: COTS doesn’t espouse a theology or belief system. It’s a secular organization. But I think we are a vehicle for the expression of grace in the world. If you open yourself to grace working through you, then grace works on you and in you as well. Grace is what has kept me going.

There was a boy named Steven who was in our shelter at age thirteen. We gave him and his family the usual support, and they moved on in due time, but Steven came back a few years later to visit. He was getting good grades in high school and volunteering in a veterinarian’s office. He planned to go to college to learn to be a veterinary technician. And he brought gifts for the children at cots — toys he and his siblings had purchased with their own money.

When I see the miraculous changes that take place in the lives of homeless children and adults, I am humbled and awed to have played a role in that.

A Good Deal. A Great Gift. Give The Sun as a holiday gift and save up to 30%.

PRINT

E-MAIL

SHARE

PDF

WRITE TO THE EDITOR

SUBSCRIBE