(Reading time: 9 minutes)
This past week’s snowfall, slight and unexpected though it was, signaled not just the start of winter but of the resumption of an annual human pinball game.
This is the season in which our area’s homeless population bounces around from one sleeping facility after another, only to be turned out at 7 a.m. each day to cope with whatever the weather throws at them. There are 19 churches participating in the WARM shelter program this year, scattered across Waynesboro, Staunton and Augusta County, each providing at least a week of nightly refuge starting this Monday and running though the end of March. Heartwarming, isn’t it?
But there are two ways to frame this helpfulness. One is to commend the generosity of spirit that moves so many disparate congregations to share their facilities with those less fortunate; the other is to sigh over such a Rube Goldberg approach to a community-wide problem that has yet to get the kind of concerted attention it deserves. From the point of view of most of those being helped, sleeping on a cot in a church basement is better than huddling in a nylon tent while the outside temperature dips below freezing; on the other hand, there’s something cold—in every sense of the word—about having to haul off your scant belongings each day before sunrise and not knowing, from one week to another, where you’ll sleep next. Or how or where you’ll spend the intervening 11 hours in an ongoing effort to stay warm and dry.
At least two observations seem pertinent. First, there’s the logistical problem of collecting and delivering several dozen people each day from wherever they’ve spent the day to that night’s designated shelter, as well as the related problem of then dispersing the overnight population the following morning. WARM’s program is a low-barrier approach to sheltering, which means it doesn’t screen for sex offenders or people with criminal histories or other issues that churches might find problematic when they open their facilities to day care centers or worship services or other activities. So: 7 a.m., and everyone must be gone.
The WARM solution is a shuttle bus that can move up to 15 people at a time (at this writing, 28 have already signed on), depending on how many personal possessions—which can include walkers—they’re carrying; what it doesn’t have is sufficient drivers. Two prospective hires have backed out even before the season begins, presumably because they decided that $13 an hour for split shifts spanning a 12-hour day just wasn’t worth it. That leaves one unpaid volunteer and the program’s coordinator to cover 14 driving shifts a week, which seems unsustainable over a four-month period. Raising pay might attract more drivers, but of course that takes money, and WARM simply is not getting enough: its income last year, from gifts, grants and contributions, was just 58% of what it received in 2022 and was the lowest it’s been in four years, according to its tax filings. Its annual fundraising effort this year, as seen on the WARM website, has reached just $30,000, or less than half of its $70,000 goal.
Second, there’s the free ride that Staunton gets out of this. WARM, after all, is an acronym for Waynesboro Area Refuge Ministry, and while the “area” in that acronym is broadly construed to include Augusta County and Staunton, neither of those governing bodies shows up on the program’s list of community partners. Seven of the WARM participating churches are in Staunton, and a considerable number of its homeless clientele also are from Staunton, but the city itself is AWOL from the effort even as it provides no shelter alternatives of its own.
How shameful is that?
WHAT BRINGS ALL this to mind is a story in the Augusta Press on Nov. 20 that detailed how local governments have been spending their American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds. The local governments in this accounting include Harrisonburg, Staunton, Waynesboro and Augusta County, which received nearly $60.5 million in the aggregate. Harrisonburg got the largest share, but Staunton didn’t do too badly, at just under $13 million. But just what has Staunton done with this windfall?
Pretty much what you might expect from a kid turned loose in a toy store with a bunch of money and apparently few if any constraints. Although a chunk of the approved expenditures is going to significant capital improvements, including $3.8 million for the new courthouse and $2 million each for a regional radio system and two new fire trucks, much of the itemization reads like a bucket list of unrelated and scattered purchases, from new fire house doors to the recycling center, from a Staunton Crossing marketing plan to wifi hardware. And then there’s the mysterious “Thermal Application Control system upgrade,” priced at $350,000 with nary a word of explanation of what it means or does.
Nowhere on that list is there an allocation for housing of any kind, or of responding to the needs of the city’s homeless or of the private sector agencies trying to help them. Harrisonburg—which, to be fair, received significantly larger ARPA funding of $23.8 million—nevertheless set aside nearly a third of its windfall to “expand accessible, affordable housing,” including $5 million for a Homeless Services Center and $2 million for a housing development fund. Staunton, on the other hand, apparently forgot the many, many times it has lamented its lack of affordable housing and how this has become a priority issue for the city
Indeed, as I wrote in September, the city has a long-standing history of ignoring housing needs. I pointed out at the time that one recurring reason for this is that housing needs in general, and the problems of our homeless population in particular, don’t have a seat at the table when budgeting requests are made and funding priorities are established. No doubt there are strong arguments to be marshalled for most, if not all, of the projects for which ARPA funds will be dispensed, but there is no sense from that list of how—or if—those projects were prioritized, or even how they were selected other than someone thinking they’d be nice to have.
Meanwhile, as I wrote when I critiqued the West End revitalization plan, there is a certain smug attitude among at least some city staff, when pressed for a program to help homeowners “improve their properties’ sustainability, health and affordability,” that “several programs already exist” and therefore additional city help is unwarranted. Similarly, when the Staunton housing strategy group was recently presented with a list of 60 possible programs to improve housing, not one addressed the issue of “housing and supportive services for persons without housing or temporary housing,” despite that being among the six housing strategies the group supposedly is addressing. Then again, that same blind spot could be found in the West End revitalization plan, which likewise never acknowledged the area’s homeless encampment.
The airy belief that non-profit agencies are filling the gap left by Staunton’s repeated absence from critical housing issues can prevail only as long as the city doesn’t take a close look at what’s actually happening. The WARM shelter program’s struggles are just one example of the tenuous reality many non-profit agencies already face, even before a harsh new governing “philosophy” sweeps Washington, D.C. and gives new meaning to trickle-down economics by closing off any number of funding streams. United Way’s decision to close up shop in the SAW area speaks to a similar drying up of funds, this time from the private sector. Staunton really can’t afford to fiddle while Rome burns.
THE GOOD NEWS, such as it is, is that it’s not too late to change course—at least somewhat.
The City Council, at its November 14 meeting, had a preliminary discussion about reapportioning ARPA funds; moreover, it should be noted that more than half of its ARPA funding has not been spent yet, since the second tranche of $6,477,913 was received less than two months ago, and therefore presumably more of that money could be reapportioned as well. Meanwhile, the money that already has been cleared for reapportionment, amounting to more than $600,000, is to be discussed at a public hearing December 12, with a possible council vote January 9.
In other words, it’s not too late to question how ARPA funding has been allocated, nor is it too late to change those decisions. It’s not too late, or unreasonable, to ask the city council to explain how it solicited spending proposals or how it prioritized the requests it received. Nor is it unreasonable to ask the council to put its money where its mouth is by addressing issues of homelessness and inadequate affordable housing, the possibilities of which are demonstrated by Harrisonburg, if not quite on the same scale.
Yes, WARM can use financial help and should get some, but that’s not the only option. As described earlier, the whole emergency shelter response in the SAW area is a rickety construct that could use shoring up—but there also is absolutely no program of any kind to provide daytime shelter for the homeless, pushing them into fast-food restaurants, public libraries or interminable rides on a Brite bus in search of warmth. When will Staunton have a serious discussion about building a drop-in warming shelter for those with nowhere else to go? If not now, when?
However the ARPA funds are allocated, they must be spent by the end of 2026. That’s a two-year window in which the city has an unmatched opportunity to address a problem it thus far has repeatedly ignored—and yes, winter is coming, as if to drive the point home.
Looking askance 