Nov. 13, 2012. The day Herb Hursman became homeless. Living a life of hardship from his high school years to mid-60s, homelessness became an added burden to Hursman’s life. He had already endured an abusive stepfather, the Vietnam war and incarceration. After his seven-year prison sentence ended, Hursman moved to Columbia with brighter ambitions.
“I wanted to come here and get my disability started back up,” Hursman said. “I didn’t know that you had to keep your prison papers so they’d know when you got out. I talked to them at the VA [Harry S. Truman Memorial Veterans’ Hospital] and they faxed what was necessary to St. Louis. St. Louis is where your disability comes out of if you draw VA disability which I do. I thought I could get right away and get my own apartment but I didn’t plan on being homeless, but that’s how it happened.”
Between 2009 – 2011, an average of 166 people were homeless during the winter in Boone County, according to the Point in Time Count Summaries, with an average of “five or six people being RBHS students,” Director of Guidance, Betsy Jones said. Boone County conducts these PITS twice a year, one for summer and one for winter. These summaries count how many people reside in shelters and how many do not. From the 166 people, 140 are sheltered in the winter while 26 are not.
“The count of the unsheltered is said to be an undercount as it is impossible to find everyone,” said Steve Hollis, the Human Services Manager at the Columbia/Boone County Department of Public Health and Human Services. While homelessness is “an issue in our community, but not as a big issue in some communities,” as Hollis said, the Columbia/Boone County Department of Public Health and Human Services, however, still makes sure every homeless shelter can provide some room for anyone who asks for it.
“A big part of my job is to buy social services from agencies in the community that the city wants these services to be available if it is not within our core of competencies to provide,” Hollis said. “So my job is to buy those services from appropriate providers and so we are buying services from Salvation Army, True North, Welcome Home, Rainbow House, Reality House are a few. We provide funding, contract with these agencies to provide service so that way when a homeless person needs a bed to stay in, the agency can keep its doors open to provide that service.”
According to the “Homelessness” Powerpoint released by the Columbia/Boone County Department of Public Health and Human Services, Columbia is able to provide temporary and year-round shelters because of federal, state and local funding, The multiple year-round shelters serve either men, women, families or a combination of them all. Since homelessness can occur anytime during the year, the homeless always have a place to go because of these shelters.
According to the 2008 U.S. Conference of Mayors study, the three main reasons why families turn up homeless is because of lack of affordable housing, poverty and unemployment. For singles, other than the lack of affordable housing, two other causes for their homelessness are substance abuse and mental illness. Besides these situations, people occasionally turn up at homeless shelters because of family issues.
“Sometimes they have some problems with their families and sometimes they need to be a way for a little while,” Charles* said, a worker at the New Evangelistic Center, a shelter for men. “This gives them an opportunity to step away from what might be causing a problem for them, re-access the kind of problem they are having and then maybe re-approach it and maybe they can solve some issues with their families later on down the road but they need a little space, a little time for right now.”
Even though they have time to think over their problem areas, many of the shelters don’t let their residents just sit around. In an effort to solve their residents’ situations as quickly as possible, the New Evangelistic Center and the Salvation Army Harbor House structure their residents’ days around programs that they offer. In the Evangelistic Center, residents are required to leave the shelter at 8 a.m.
“It is necessary for them to go about and do their daily activities in other words, some of these men might be looking for a job, some of these men may have to patch up things with their family, some of these men may have to take care of legal issues,” Charles said. “In essence, we don’t condone that they come here and just lay in the bed and hope that things will get better. They must actually actively get up and pursue improvement in their lives.”
The Salvation Army Harbor House requires residents to participate in the workers, alternative or recovery program according to their website http://www.usc.salvationarmy.org/. These programs are for residents who are capable of working, residents who have a mental illness and thus unable to work and for residents who have an addiction problem, respectively.
While some homeless shelter believe that requiring their residents to leave the shelter for a certain amount of time is in the resident’s’ best interest, some of residents themselves do not believe so. Because Hursman is applying for disability, he finds no need to look for a job and so it is a struggle for him to find places he can stay at for the hours he is required to be gone.
“[Life in the winter is] not too good, no places to go except maybe the library,” Hursman said. “If it is Sunday, the library doesn’t open to 1 [p.m.] and we are at a shelter where we got to get out at eight in the morning so you know we are cold and everything and we have to wait around for the library to open until nine and that is not too good. Other than that, places to feed, that’s good. They got a couple places close. [For] the rest of the day, if you don’t go to the library you are out in the cold and then the library closes up at 5 [p.m.] and we are not able to go back into our shelter 15 until 7 [p.m.].”
Even though the shelters’ system doesn’t apply to Hursman, he is finding a way to deal with it. However, once he gets his disability, he intends to be free of this system and, in general, homelessness once and for all.
“I plan on getting my disability and getting me an apartment and maybe later finding somebody that’s got a house in the country, that’s got livestock or something,” Hursman said. “In order to get insurance on a home, you know if it is vacant you can’t get insurance so I can get a hold of somebody in the country or a farmer or somebody else that needs somebody to stay and get free rent and maybe help take care of their livestock for awhile because I am country and I have grown up all around that.”
According to http://www.nhlegalaid.org, “there are many myths and stereotypes about the homeless.” Whether they from overgeneralizations from a single experience or just ignorance of the facts, the homeless are thrown under the bus multiple times. Senior Rachel Volmert discovered this when she gave food to a homeless person that frequently camped outside her former school, Columbia Catholic. After talking with the man, she discovered that he was “nice enough” and that certain conceptions about them were not always correct. This same thing could be said for Hursman.
“Although there are stereotypes how that they got themselves in that situation, it is not necessarily true,” Volmert said. “Other things could have contributed to why they are there. I think everybody says they need a hand. After interacting with the CCS homeless person, a lot of them are good people. There are stereotypes for a lot of them … but there are some good people who are just down on their luck.”
*Last name withheld upon request.
By Stazi Prost