With a bleak winter sky as the only roof over her head, Sandra Coates took shelter Thursday afternoon on a sofa in the downtown Roanoke library.
She agreed to put down her book long enough to answer some questions from Ricardo Valdivieso, a case manager for the city’s Homeless Assistance Team.
How long have you been homeless?
Coates counted on her fingers: October, November, December, January.
“Four months, ” she said.
Why are you currently homeless?
“I came up here from South Boston, ” Coates said. “I didn’t have a place to stay there, and I came up here to find a job.”
How long have you been in Roanoke? How do you get around? Where did you sleep last night?
It was a drill repeated hundreds of times last week as a team of interviewers visited the library, homeless shelters, soup kitchens, recovery centers, jails, the City Market, parks, streets, alleys and overpasses.
Their mission was twofold: to get the latest head count of the city’s homeless, and to gather information to be used in the never-ending effort to make next year’s count lower.
“What we’re tying to do is get a snapshot of homelessness in the Roanoke Valley, ” said Carol Tuning, who as the city’s human services coordinator heads Valdivieso’s group, better known on the streets as the HAT team.
That snapshot — captured through a 27-question survey that covers demographic and personal data as well as information on how homeless people travel, care for their children and obtain medical treatment — was taken last week in communities across the country.
Each participating locality follows a model set by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which uses the data in doling out grants to homeless service providers.
Two of the region’s largest local providers, the Roanoke Rescue Mission and the RAM House day shelter, are faith-based programs that rely on private donations. But for the HAT team, Total Action Against Poverty, TRUST House and other groups, getting an accurate count of the homeless this year could well determine how much federal money they get next year.
A final tally for the Roanoke Valley is weeks away. But if the current trend continues, it will exceed last year’s count of 566 — which was an increase of 363 percent over the past two decades.
Roanoke too generous?
Usually, the homeless census attracts little attention outside the circle of city agencies, nonprofit groups, ministries and volunteers who look out for the region’s less fortunate.
This year is different, in large part because of what happened at a Nov. 5 meeting of the Roanoke City Council.
After getting a report on the 2007 homeless census, some council members complained that the city gets stuck with caring for a disproportionate load of the region’s homeless people because of an overly generous support system that lures them from surrounding localities.
“It’s about the fact that we’re letting people come here because we’re too daggone nice, ” councilman Bev Fitzpatrick said. Mayor Nelson Harris agreed that providing more services is a “no-win” spiral that will only draw more of homeless people.
Coates, a 35-year-old mother of two, said she came to Roanoke to find a job, not a bed in a homeless shelter.
But mired in increasing personal problems — she said her mother died of cancer, someone stole her driver’s license and other personal identification, the job search went nowhere — Coates said she is grateful for the help she found at the Rescue Mission.
“If we didn’t have a place to hang out, I believe there would be a lot more deaths, ” she said. “Because it’s right cold out there.
“I don’t think that’s being ‘too nice.’ ”
Outside the library, Terri Carter was more direct as she smoked a cigarette and clutched her overcoat against a razor-sharp breeze that sent the wind-chill factor well below freezing at midday.
How does Roanoke treat its homeless? “Like crap, ” Carter said.
“My take on that is we really get treated like dogs, ” she said. “I called my lawyer the other day and I told him: ‘I wish you hadn’t got me out of jail because I would rather be in jail.’ And that’s a sad thing to say.”
Carter said hard economic times and family troubles forced her from her comfortable apartment in the Copper Croft complex across from Tanglewood Mall.
“I’m a Southwest County kid, ” she said. “I’m not used to this.”
Homeless people not left on streets
Although homelessness has been an issue of late, it’s rare to see someone in Roanoke sleeping on a heating grate or pitching a tent in a city park, as they often do in larger cities.
“You don’t see that in Roanoke because we do take people in and put them on a mat instead of leaving them outside, ” said Joy Sylvester-Johnson, director of the Rescue Mission, the city’s largest homeless shelter.
“Rather than turn somebody away in cold weather, we make room. Because we see this as a life-or-death situation, and we see ourselves as an emergency shelter, just as if there had been a flood or a hurricane or a fire.”
If the number of people staying at the Rescue Mission is any indication, this year’s homeless count will show another increase. In January 2007, the census counted 267 people at the mission, nearly half the region’s total. On Thursday night, 303 people were there.
Just over one-half of 1 percent of the people living in Roanoke are homeless.
That’s the same ratio as in Richmond, according to the Council of Community Services. Lynchburg’s homeless percentage is 0.4; Norfolk’s is 0.2. The statewide estimate is 0.14 percent.
Many of the smallest cities in Virginia have no homeless shelters.
“In those communities, you have to live underneath a bridge, or you come here, ” said David Cordell, who showed up at the Rescue Mission on Thursday afternoon for a hot dinner and a night spent in a large room filled with bunk beds.
A delivery truck driver convicted of failing to pay child support, Cordell said he lost his job, and then his home, after he lost his driver’s license as a result of his legal troubles.
As Cordell stood in the mission’s intake area — a large room full of plastic chairs that looked and smelled like a locker room — men in bulky coats and stocking caps began to file inside. Members of the HAT team were there too, carrying clipboards and asking questions.
Determination is the ticket out
As with any census, this one naturally focused on data. But behind the numbers were personal stories that touched on nearly every social ill: poverty; alcoholism; drug abuse; mental illness; lack of affordable medical care; domestic violence; broken families.
Bob Copplestone, a HAT team member who was conducting surveys at the mission, said he recognized many of the people, and remembered their stories, from his regular outreach work.
“I almost know the answers to the questions before I ask them, ” he said.
With people moving in and out of the homeless cycle every day, it’s not hard for an expert to spot the ones who won’t stay for long.
“If someone is homeless who doesn’t want to be homeless, determination is the one factor to get them out of that situation, ” Copplestone said. “I’ve seen people with hardly any education, but a whole lot of determination, and they end up getting out of the homeless situation.
“I’ve seen people with master’s degrees who are just all messed up mentally, and they are not able to get themselves out of that situation.”
Kevin Davis, a resident of the Salvation Army’s homeless shelter who was surveyed at the library Thursday, said he hopes to be one of the short-termers.
“This place [Roanoke] is really good for a homeless person to get on their feet, ” he said. “The shelters are good for the people who need to use it as a steppingstone.
Nobody wants to be homeless forever.”