Blog

A VSH Volunteer Shares Her Thoughts

This blog was written by Lauren Porter, Account Manager for Snag-a-Job and VSH volunteer extraordinaire

For years, I passed homeless individuals in my car as I went about my daily life. I remember thinking that it would be great if there was some type of program or organization that would assist people who wanted to get off the streets and reenter society with a job and a home. My heart would reach out them, but I didn’t know what I could do to help.

Then in 2008, I was introduced to Virginia Supportive Housing through Affordable Housing Week. I signed up for a landscaping event and was able to help out a couple families living in VSH housing by revitalizing their yard. Through this event, I learned about VSH’s mission of providing permanent housing to chronically homeless folks and helping them find jobs so they could contribute to society. It was great to find an organization working to help this under-served population, and I decided I wanted to serve in any way I could.

Since that first volunteer event, I have had the privilege of participating in and hosting other landscaping events, painting projects, and job-searching educational events, which have been some of the most rewarding moments of my life. I think so often there are preconceived notions about why people are homeless – that it is their fault, that they deserve to be there and if they wanted to be off the streets they could be. But the truth is that most of them are just like us – one lost job, one bad decision and it could be you or me without a home.

In my latest volunteer opportunity with VSH, I was able to meet an awesome individual named Tony. Through our time together, I got to hear his story about how he became homeless, as well as what his goals were now that he was trying to get on the right track through VSH. I loved how funny and personable he was even while he was dealing with the difficulties of finding a job and a recent diagnosis of diabetes. And I was just overwhelmed when I thought that if there wasn’t an organization like VSH, he wouldn’t be where he was today.

People are normally quick to help out volunteer organizations that involve children or special needs groups, and there is nothing wrong with that. They need volunteers too. However, I think too often we shy away from helping adults that need a second chance. All I can say is give it one shot – if you volunteer with this organization, it will change your life. And while it’s changing your life, you will be helping change someone else’s life, as well as our community and our country. Can you imagine if we were able to get the majority of our homeless population in the U.S. self-sufficient and contributing to society? Imagine what that would do for an economic rebound! And imagine what it would do for the city where you live! All I can say is thank you to VSH for all you do, and I look forward to continuing to support you however I can.

To serve as a volunteer for our upcoming 1000 Homes for 1000 Virginians campaign or for other ongoing service opportunities through VSH, just click here!

Tweeting Their Way Into Our Lives

This blog was written by VSH’s summer PR intern, James Denison

Recently, a CNN article brought the idea of homeless individuals using Twitter to national prominence. When they became homeless, Rd Plasschaert and AnnMarie Walsh started Twitter accounts as ways to release their feelings and search for information. However, their tweets eventually led to permanent housing when they caught the eyes of case managers and concerned individuals. Mark Horvath, who has experienced homelessness himself and who helped Plasschaert find housing, later started WeAreVisible as a way to inform homeless folks about social media and give them a platform to share their stories.

WeAreVisible inspired three interns at a New York advertising agency to create Underheard in New York; they gave four homeless men prepaid cell phone and taught them how to use Twitter. In a month of tweeting, the four men each gained about 2,000 followers; they were also showered with encouragement and gifts. One man, Danny, even used social media to reunite with his daughter and grandchildren, whom he hadn’t seen in more than a decade.

These stories are inspiring; everyone can be glad that Danny was able to find his daughter and that Plasschaert and Walsh are housed now. And with the advent of WeAreVisible, more and more homeless folks will probably start accessing social media as a way to share their lives with others. As Danny told one of the Underheard interns, he always had wanted to tell his story, but he hadn’t before because he thought nobody would be interested.

But these social media initiatives emphasize an underlying irony. Danny’s story was waiting to be told the whole time. Twitter gave him a way to package and publicize his feelings, but it didn’t change the content of his story in the slightest. Why is it that we want to hear about him now that his thoughts are neatly packaged into 140-character limits? Why is it that we walk past destitute individuals on the streets without even acknowledging them, but we offer encouraging words and job tips to homeless folks over the Internet? Is Twitter a nice, sterilized way to deal to homeless people without actually having to meet them, or smell them, or touch them?

Twitter is a powerful tool that can give homeless people a voice and allow them to network and make connections. But we as a society should already be listening to these individuals; they shouldn’t feel like they need a Twitter in order to be heard. For every tech-savvy homeless person who uses Twitter to share his feelings, there are dozens of others who lack the know-how or access to social media. We can – and should – always bring a listening, meek spirit when we interact with homeless folks, whether we’re on Twitter or on the street corner.

For a year, VSH has been using Twitter to connect with homeless individuals and service providers, including WeAreVisible. To find us on Twitter, click here. We also provide a wide range of tangible assistance to homeless individuals, including housing, mental health support, and financial workshops. Whether through social media or physical housing, our goal is to transform and give a voice to formerly forgotten lives.

Volunteers Bring Care And Hope In Trying Economic Times

This blog was written by VSH’s summer PR intern, James Denison.

In the last few years, America’s economic recession has put the squeeze on everyone. However, for homeless shelters and housing services, the recession has been a double-edged sword. With more people out of work and a drop in federal and corporate funding, many non-profit services are struggling to stay afloat.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the national unemployment percentage is 9%. 6% of Virginians are out of a job, as compared to less than 4% in 2008. Since the recession, the Virginia General Assembly has cut its health and human services funding by $360 million. And according to the Giving USA Foundation, national charitable giving fell by 6% in 2008, which was the first drop in giving in more than 20 years. Put these facts together, and you can easily see why many soup kitchens and homeless shelters are facing hard choices. As Chuck Bean, executive director of the Nonprofit Roundtable of Greater Washington, says, “A downturn in funding accompanied by a surge in demand means a homeless shelter, food pantry, or job-training program is going to feel it first. Then you get into the tough decisions: Do you thin the soup, or shorten the line?”

Numerous homeless shelters and soup kitchens have been forced to shut down because they couldn’t cover their costs, leaving impoverished people out of aid. Some shelters have begun charging residents to stay there in an attempt to save money and remain in operation. Yet even in these unsteady financial times, many communities have rallied around their local non-profits. In Danville, Virginia, after the House of Hope, which had been in operation for 15 years, closed due to a lack of funding, city citizens held a drive to raise money. After an anonymous donor gave $20,000, residents reached into their hearts and wallets and doled out $23,000 to more than match it. Now the House of Hope and its 20 beds is open again to serve homeless folks in Danville.

For more than 20 years, Virginia Supportive Housing has cared for the most underprivileged individuals in the Richmond and Hampton Roads areas. We’ve worked to provide housing and support services to folks dealing with chronic homelessness, substance abuse problems, and mental illness. But we need your help to keep doing it! Whether you donate resources or take a weekend to help move a client into his new apartment, you are giving specific care and attention where it may never have been felt before. You are saying to a formerly forgotten person, ‘I’m investing in you because I see the person you can be, not who you are now. Your life has value to me.’

To learn how you can donate to VSH, click here. To learn about volunteer opportunities at VSH, click here. To learn about our upcoming project 1000 Homes for 1000 Virginians and how you can get involved, click here.

For Individuals Experiencing Mental Illness & Homelessness, VSH Brings Stability & Security

This blog was written by VSH’s summer PR intern, James Denison.

According to a 2009 study from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 20-25% of America’s homeless population suffers from some sort of severe mental illness. That means one out of every four homeless individuals is struggling with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or another paralyzing mental instability. Statistically speaking, one out of every four homeless persons may be hearing voices, having hallucinations, or suffering from mood swings.

For some of these individuals, their mental illness is severe enough to warrant a temporary detention order to a psychiatric hospital. Because of the “danger of imminent harm to themselves or others”, they could legally be committed for inpatient treatment. Yet all over Virginia, psychiatric hospitals are turning hundreds of patients away each year, simply because they don’t have room for them. If they don’t have family to stay with, these individuals end up trying to fend for themselves on the streets. Without the care and treatment they need, they exist in constant danger of harming themselves or being victimized by others.

How did things end up this way? Mental institutes are downsizing, but that is not the heart of the problem. Smaller, community-based facilities were supposed to pick up the slack as a more humane way to treat patients with mental illness. However, that hasn’t happened, and persons with mental illness are paying the price. At Virginia Supportive Housing, though, we’re striving to ensure that individuals experiencing homelessness are properly cared for before they reach a point where they need to be committed.

At VSH, we believe it is unacceptable for anyone to be homeless, especially someone suffering from mental illness. Our program, A Place To Start, provides stable housing and comprehensive mental health services to chronically homeless individuals in the Richmond area. Thanks to a committed team of clinicians, case managers, a nurse, and a psychiatrist, APTS has housed 62 clients since December 2007. All but one of APTS’s clients have not returned to homelessness.

APTS has shown how compassion, empathy, and determination can bring people off the streets and save Richmond money to boot. In addition, the greatest benefit of APTS comes from watching our clients move from instability and fear to security and peace. As our psychiatrist Jeannette Schoonmaker put it in last week’s blog: “The thing that makes my day is when I’ve seen people come into the program who are really desperately depressed, hopeless, and don’t know where to turn. And in a few months, I can ask them how they’re doing, and they say, ‘I’m happy. Life is good.’ That’s flat-out amazing.”

A Place To Start Brings Care and Comfort to Forgotten Lives

This week’s blog was written by Dr. Jeannette Schoonmaker, a psychiatrist with Virginia Supportive Housing’s program A Place To Start.

I’ve worked in many places. I have a good deal of experience with mental health services in many different forms. So my coming to A Place To Start was because I saw it as being more efficient, more comprehensive, and a better program than others. The major difference we have is the piece where we provide housing at the outset of the program.

Providing housing up-front as quickly as we can brings us the opportunity to have people where we can find them, hopefully day after day. We can start to access what their needs are and start to build a relationship with them. If you don’t have housing, so many obstacles pop up. For instance, if you’re trying to make an appointment with social services, odds are they’re going to ask for your address, and you’re not going to have one. So you need a place to get mail, and transportation too. It’s amazing, the basic needs that can’t be met without an address, an ID card, and a birth certificate. If you don’t have a birth certificate, you can’t get an ID card. If you don’t have an ID card, you might not be able to go to the Daily Planet and get clothes or a shower. So many basic services rely on these three essentials, plus transportation. We come in at the ground level and start with basics. Once we’ve got those established, we focus on the things clients have not been able to access or may need, like medical or psychiatric services.

Bad luck is an equal-opportunity handicap. And if you talk to our clients, they’ve had bad luck at every different stage of their lives. But nobody chooses to be homeless. If you’re in a shelter, you’re out at 5 or 6 walking around all day and trying not to be noticed. It’s a long day to walk around and try to be invisible. Homeless people try not to be noticed because other people are often not comfortable around them, and often policemen will arrest them for “trespassing”. When you’re on the street you’re not safe. And you certainly aren’t feeling secure when you’re wandering trying to stay out of everyone’s way all day long and hoping you can find somewhere to sleep.

In this program, it takes a lot of contact with clients. We need to convince them, for one thing, that this program isn’t like all the others, where you get dropped for missing one appointment, or when you give your info and they say, “We’ll call you”. What homeless person has a phone with minutes on it? That’s one of the advantages of our program, we have enough manpower to truly take care of and service people’s needs. We can stay with them, make things happen for them, and build that sense of trust, that trust that there is something better to be had.

Some of the people we see have been not treated effectively, and we have to try to get in there and make that better. And if they’re reluctant to take their medication, we’ll go to their apartments and help them take it there. We all become family pretty quickly. A lot of these patients, they do not have a lot of family support left, so we tend to fill in and help them learn to use community resources. So there’s a lot of educating, a lot of walking with people to help them find resources.

One thing that’s different about our program, again, is that we stay with the person, we don’t give up. We are very persistent and very sincere in saying we will not give up, we will stay here with you. Everyone makes mistakes, everyone has bad luck, everyone makes poor choices, and there are consequences. But we’ll be with you through that. We don’t walk away when things get tough. And I think that constancy of availability of someone to be with you and listen and try to be helpful is crucially important. And that’s something I’ve seen more in VSH than in other places I’ve worked.

It’s probably because we have that access at the housing level to get them set up, with furniture, with groceries, with medication. So it becomes more comprehensive and more effective. Case managers are out every day picking up clients, bringing them here and to social services, to the food bank, wherever. Whatever it takes. A while back, one of our clients became interested in computers. So our clinician spent a day with him going to Best Buy, picking out a computer, and helping set it up. And that’s the ultimate goal, that we can get them out there, teach them, and watch them fly off. After 3 years, we’ve got 2-3 in school, probably 6 working part time, and others who are volunteering and want to work. Folks just want to get back in the mainstream.

The thing that makes my day, is when I’ve seen people come into the program who are really desperately depressed, hopeless, and don’t know where to turn. And in a few months, I can ask them how they’re doing, and they say, “I’m happy. Life is good.” That’s flat-out amazing.

APTS is a good program, and it works, and I hope we can have more and more people come into it. Hopefully, there will be more and more people in the area not having to look forward to another day on the park bench, wondering where they’re going to be tomorrow.

To learn more about how A Place To Start helps its clients and its community, click here