Rationed refuge
Iowa City homeless shelter can’t meet demand, seeks expansion site
By Jim O’Neal
The Gazette
IOWA CITY – Clients tote bulky baggage into the cramped foyer of Shelter House.
They trudge up the worn steps at 331 N. Gilbert St. shouldering backpacks stuffed with what clothes and gear they’ve managed to marshal on their tough journeys.
They come bearing pink slips and eviction notices, illnesses, hungry kids, ravenous addictions. They come dragging debts and prison records.
They haul the hope for refuge, for an inn on the road to a less temporary home.
But in an average month, a hundred of them are turned away, left to sleep in their cars or in parking ramps.
The city’s fire code allows the shelter to house only 29 people. Additional folks drop in for dinner or a shower, but they must leave by 10 p.m. so the lucky 29 – the shelter is full nearly every night – can catch some sleep on chockablock beds, bunks, couches and mats in a structure built to house a single family.
In an effort to better serve Johnson County’s homeless, the Shelter House board of directors has planned a shelter that could put up 70 people at a time. It would include men’s and women’s dormitories, family guest rooms, counselors’ offices, a playroom and a dining area that could be used for teaching.
As planned, the new shelter would cost roughly $1.75 million, including an estimated $350,000 for the land, says Crissy Canganelli, executive director of Shelter House.
Shelter House has $230,000 in Community Development Block Grant funds to put toward the land purchase.
The board has expressed interest in a city-owned lot in a commercial/light industrial area north of Highway 6, but business owners also are vying for that property.
Canganelli expects fund-raising, design and construction to take about 18 months once the land has been obtained.
In the meantime, churches are planning a program to provide auxiliary shelter.
Canganelli is careful to assert that the larger shelter envisioned by the board will not be a deluxe complex that will lure more homeless people to Johnson County or entice clients to stay longer.
“We’ve tried very hard to make this not too nice,” she says. “People will still be compelled to leave.”
Some shelter clients only want to stay overnight, but most stay longer – up to 90 days – while they find jobs and save the three months’ rent landlords often require of tenants they deem risky.
Shelter staff and the STAR (Supported Training and Access to Resources) program help clients find addiction treatment, health care, job skills training, transportation and public assistance as they work toward independence.
Kenny Lundberg says the shelter has been a lifesaver.
“They’ve helped me immensely,” says Lundberg, who has stayed at Shelter House since being released from prison on an OWI conviction 2 1/2 months ago. “This is a hand up here, not a handout.”
Lundberg, 52, is being treated for heart disease and crippling arthritis. The Supplemental Security Income payments that were suspended during his prison stint will soon resume, and shelter staff have helped him line up a shared apartment.
The number of families housed at the shelter rose by 180 percent from 1999 to 2002.
Canganelli blames the growth of the homeless population largely on an economy that she says exploits unskilled workers, locking many hard-working people out of affordable housing.
“The working poor are homeless,” she says. “What happened to valuing the American worker?”
She also points to deep cuts in publicly funded housing, detox programs and long-term care facilities.
“Shelters across the nation have become the dumping ground for people who are poor and sick,” she says.
The nationwide reduction in the number of hospital beds for mentally ill people has driven up homelessness and addiction, she says.
“For folks who are out on the street, if you have a mental illness, you’re going to self-medicate,” she says. “Of course, there are people whose primary problem is substance abuse, but how many are masking a mental illness?
“Whatever it is, you’re a human life that’s out there on the street that we as a society with great resources don’t seem to value enough to do something about other than have a Band-Aid approach.”
Not that Band-Aids aren’t appreciated.
As the dinner hour waned one cold evening last week, a man dashed across North Gilbert Street toward Shelter House, shouting to men on the porch, “They got food?”
“They might have a slice of pizza left for you,” Kenny Lundberg said. “Just some vitamin-fortified cardboard.”
“It beats a blank,” the new arrival said as he bounded into the house.
“Yeah,” said another man on the porch. “It’ll fill a hole.”
This story was published in The Gazette of Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, Iowa, on Jan. 20, 2004.
Caption:
A homeless man who arrived in Iowa City on Thursday evening waits to hear if a bed has opened up at the Shelter House. The Shelter House in Iowa City is Johnson County’s only general-purpose homeless shelter and serves a maximum of 29 people a night. Other shelters serve adolescents and victims of domestic abuse.