http://www.marinij.com/ci_11189827?source=most_viewed
By Richard Halstead
Posted: 12/10/2008 06:56:30 PM PST
Stephen “Walker” Bonspille tends to wake up in the early morning hours near dawn, the coldest part of the night.
That’s because Bonspille, who has been homeless in Marin for the past six years, sleeps outside with nothing to keep him warm but a sleeping bag. Marin temperatures dipped into the 30s Tuesday and Wednesday.
“I wake up a lot during the night,” Bonspille said. “That’s part of the experience of being homeless.”
At last count in January 2007, there were 1,337 homeless adults in Marin. Some of those people are housed temporarily by friends and family, some sleep in their cars and some stay in one of the shelters operated by the Novato nonprofit, Homeward Bound. But Homeward Bound offers same-day shelter to fewer than 90 individuals and turns away anyone using drugs or alcohol. As a result, many homeless people, like Bonspille, do the best they can, outdoors.
On Wednesday, the Marin Organizing Committee – a coalition of local churches, synagogues and nonprofits that formed earlier this year to address social injustices – staged a candlelight procession in downtown San Rafael to draw attention to its call for a new, 80-bed emergency shelter. The committee is advocating that the shelter be open to anyone, regardless of sobriety, as long as the individuals behave in a way that do not endanger themselves or others or disrupt shelter operations.
Homeward Bound’s Mill Street Center in San Rafael has 40 same-day beds for adults and 14 same-day rooms for families. Family rooms can accommodate up to five people. Adults can stay for up to six months in Homeward Bound’s 80-bed New Beginnings Center in Novato. Homeward Bound tries to move people out of these facilities as quickly as possible into transitional housing by helping them find jobs.
But Suzanne Walker, associate director of the St. Vincent de Paul Society of Marin and the lead advocate for a new emergency center, said the system is failing to percolate. Walker said many of the Mill Street beds are occupied by people who are staying there for weeks while they wait to get into New Beginnings.
“The whole system is clogged up because the county doesn’t have enough affordable housing,” Walker said.
Mary Kay Sweeney, Homeward Bound’s executive director, said the Mill Street Center typically gets eight or nine calls a day that it can’t accommodate due to space. Sweeney said there are 18 to 20 families on a waiting list for a room at the center. The Marin County Office of Education estimates there are at least 1,093 homeless children in Marin.
Sweeney said the collapse of the real estate market is forcing more Marin residents into homelessness. Renters were displaced due to no fault of their own when the owner of the house or building they were living in defaulted on their mortgage, she said.
“That’s a different phenomenon than we have experienced before,” Sweeney said.
The Marin Organizing Committee is in serious negotiations with a Marin property owner who owns a building where a temporary emergency shelter could be opened this winter, said Meredith Parnell, a spokeswoman for the Rodef Shalom congregation in San Rafael.
The committee estimates its partnership of nonprofits could operate the shelter this winter if they could come up with $135,000. The committee estimates the opening of the permanent new emergency shelter would require another $192,000 in renovations and $377,000 a year in ongoing operational costs.
At the meeting of the Marin County Board of Supervisors Tuesday, Supervisor Susan Adams floated the idea of having the county donate an unspecified amount to the project. The committee also envisions attracting state grant money and donations from Marin cities, charitable foundations and individual donors. Walker said the committee has not yet asked the Marin Community Foundation to help support the project.
The Rev. Paul Gaffney, a Marin Interfaith street chaplain who ministers to the homeless and helps them secure services, sees a real need for an emergency shelter. In June, the chaplaincy held a memorial for the 135 homeless people who had died on Marin streets over the past 11 years. Since then, another four or five have died, Gaffney said.
The most recent homeless person to die was Zachary Baxter, a 27-year-old man who got up in the middle of the night while camping and fell off a cliff into Kent Lake, where he drowned, Gaffney said.
A majority of the homeless die, however, due to complications from long-term illness such as diabetes, heart disease or liver disease, Gaffney said. They often receive medical treatment, he said.
“But then because they’re still living outside, their ailments never really get a chance to heal,” Gaffney said. “People run out of their medications or can’t afford to refill them or lose them.”
A consultant hired by the county of Marin to advise it on homeless issues reported earlier this year that about 300 people a year are discharged from Marin County hospitals with nowhere to go. HomeBase, a San Francisco-based public interest law firm, also reported that over the past 28 months, 732 homeless people in Marin were jailed a total of 1,186 times.
Bonspille said he was once cited for camping in Marin and ended up spending a night in jail as a result. He said it’s getting harder for him and other homeless people who camp illegally to find secluded spots where they can sleep undisturbed from police. Gaffney said the fact that police roust homeless people in the middle of night, even if they’re sleeping in a parked car, makes it more difficult for them to marshal the energy to change their lives.
“It’s hard to put up a tent anywhere,” Bonspille said. “It’s hard to find a place to be.”
