Tag: Staunton City Council

Why a day center is not a shelter

(Reading time: 4 minutes)

The story in the Augusta Free Press last week was buoyantly misleading. “The City of Staunton will open a day shelter for unhoused persons in the fall,” it announced.

Would that it were so.

Prompting the article’s optimistic declaration was a presentation to city council Sept. 11 by Alec Gunn, director of the Waynesboro Area Refuge Ministry (WARM), who had been invited to outline WARM’s plans for a “day center” for unsheltered homeless people. Gunn’s presence followed a reminder to city council a couple of weeks earlier that that it still had $50,000 in a discretionary fund that needed spending. As I wrote Aug. 24, city manager Leslie Beauregard noted that the council had discussed possibly appropriating $30,000 of that amount for a WARM day shelter for the homeless—perhaps the subject could be revisited? Yes, yes, good idea, council members responded. But first, let’s hear a concrete proposal and budget.

And so Gunn spoke, and from the outset illuminated several problems. Staunton city council’s interest in a day shelter had been triggered most recently by the severe cold we experienced last winter, with homeless people who had been housed overnight by WARM’s network of church-based emergency shelters typically turned out at 7 a.m. the following morning. With nowhere else to go, they resorted to frequenting area libraries, fast-food restaurants, Brite buses and any other accessible public place where they could get out of the wind and cold—frequently to the discomfort of other patrons. Could they not be provided with a refuge of their own?

Yet as Gunn repeatedly stressed—although council members did not obviously pick up on the distinction—WARM was looking to create something different. What he envisioned, Gunn said, specifically was not a “homeless shelter” but rather a place in which people could “work themselves out of” homelessness, through some unspecified combination of classes and workshops. Indeed, “shelter” seemed a word better left unsaid, with all the negative baggage it carries. It was all “center” and “day center” and “welcoming environment.”

Definitions or goals aside, Gunn’s sketchy outline—calling it a “proposal” is too generous—seemingly was aimed more at securing the $30,000 that had been bandied about than at detailing just what the day center would do.  As if by coincidence, $30,000 was exactly the amount WARM envisioned for “support staff,” although how many staff members would be employed or what they would be doing was left unsaid. An additional $18,500 would be needed for utilities, supplies, transportation, insurance and so on, including $1,500 for those undefined classes and workshops. Where would the additional money be found? Unknown.

Meanwhile, although Gunn said this would be a year-round program, he conceded under questioning that at least initially the center would be open only two or three days a week, so definitely not a “shelter” as that term is generally understood. Eventually, he added, WARM hopes to expand operating hours to five days a week—so still not a shelter, which should be accessible every day. And while discussions earlier this year about a day shelter had included proposals for building showers and a laundry facility at the First Presbyterian Church, where all this supposedly is happening, Gunn said last week that he “hopes” Habitat for Humanity will make available a mobile shower system it sometimes uses.

Creating a program to help homeless people get out of their unsheltered circumstances is admirable and necessary, but it’s not at all clear that WARM’s unfocused efforts will accomplish that. Worse yet, there’s a real danger that an uncritical acceptance of WARM’s proposal will convince city council members that if they approve the $30,000 Gunn is seeking they’re actually providing a day shelter that can get homeless people off the streets, just as the Augusta Free Press assumed in its reporting. So far the city council hasn’t done that, but the broadly approving comments from council members after Gunn’s presentation suggest such an appropriation may be in the works.

What the unsheltered homeless population in Staunton, and the SAW region generally, lacks is not complicated: a readily accessible place they can go seven days a week, from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., in the heat of summer and the freeze of winter. A shelter without preconditions, such as having to participate in a well-intentioned program of one kind or another, and without any expectation that those seeking such shelter will spend their time working themselves into or out of anything. A refuge.

That would be something. Don’t hold your breath.

What if ‘urgent care’ was like this?

(Reading time: 6 minutes)

When it comes to the problem of housing affordability—which is to say, to the insufficient supply of such housing—those without a home at all tend to get the shortest shrift. Most of the public fretting is about people being forced to pay 30% or 40% or more of their already meager incomes for shelter. Or about the shelters themselves, which despite their high price tags too often are poorly maintained, inadequately insulated and ringed by sketchy neighbors. Meanwhile, those who sleep in cars, or in tents tucked into patches of vegetation behind shopping centers or supermarkets, simply drop out of sight and out of mind.

Consider, for example, the Staunton Housing Workgroup, which labored mightily over the past year to produce a list of “strategies” to put the city on the “pathway to affordable housing and housing for working families.” We apparently must gird ourselves for a long and arduous trek. As explained by city planner Rebecca Joyce when she presented the group’s strategic vision to city council a few weeks ago, “This is a plan for a start, not a plan for completion”—and oh, by the way, an additional strategy had been added belatedly to the original ten, to provide services for unhoused persons.

Why the late insertion? Because homelessness had not been discussed by the workgroup, despite such a condition being the natural consequence of unaffordable housing.

Just how sluggish and tone-deaf the city can be on the subject can be seen in the workgroup’s proposed timetable for meeting the needs of the homeless, laid out in a six-step approach divided into neat three-month segments. Step one, to run through the end of September: “Compile current list of resources and organizations that serve unhoused community members in the City.”

That should make for a busy morning.

Meanwhile, step six, scheduled for October through December of 2026, proposes to “conduct assessment of current state of needs of unhoused community members in the City and create an action plan of next steps.”

One might think that talking to the people you want to help would be a first step, not the last, but as the rest of this “strategy” makes clear, the city’s focus is on helping organizations, not individuals. As step two explicitly prescribes, for example, “Survey organizations that serve unhoused community members in the City regarding their most pressing needs [emphasis mine].” Steps three, four and five , which are identical, are all about helping organizations apply for funds.

Another example of kicking the can down the road was exhibited at the city council’s last meeting, when city manager Leslie Beauregard reminded everyone that the last budget had appropriated $50,000 for the council to use “at its discretion.” The council had been so discreet that none of the money had been spent. Perhaps the council should revisit the matter and use the funds in a productive manner? Perhaps, as had been previously discussed, some portion—$30,000 had been mentioned—of that unappropriated fund could go toward a WARM day center for the homeless “as part of a broader housing strategy”?

As summarized in the session’s minutes, “Council members agreed on the urgency in supporting the day center but questioned the need to allocate funds immediately,” which suggests the council has a creatively relaxed definition of “urgency.”  The council instead tabled the proposal and “expressed desire to invite a representative from WARM to present a proposal and budget for the day center at a future council meeting.” One can only hope that “desire” will translate into action.

The underlying problem all this illustrates is a lack of urgency or assertive leadership by city officials and staff in addressing a problem that has festered for years. Staunton’s default position is one of passivity rather than initiative, waiting for someone to bring up an issue rather than proactively intervening in something everyone knows is awry. Somnolent staff can propose an 18-month timetable for the city to reach out to “unhoused community members,” and council members uncritically accept that as reasonable.  Meanwhile, WARM will start operating its emergency overnight shelters in less than three months, but the “urgent” need for a day center will have to wait for the thinly staffed and inadequately resourced agency to get an invitation from the council to appear in its chambers.

Would it be too much for the city, having recognized a problem, to reach out to WARM directly? This week? To sit down with WARM staff and find out what’s needed, how much it will cost and who will be running the show?

Staunton’s laissez-faire approach to social needs is just as pronounced on the supply side as it is on the demand end of things. Lydia Campbell, at the Valley Community Services Board (VCSB), has been peppering the internet with emails pleading with local municipalities and social service agencies to apply for a Homeless Reduction Grant. Such grants, which date back to 2013 as part of Virginia’s Housing Trust Fund, are intended to “ensure homelessness is rare, brief and non-recurring.”   Eligible projects include “rapid rehousing for literally homeless households, innovative projects for unaccompanied homeless youth or older adults experiencing homelessness, and rental assistance and stabilization services for chronically homeless households residing in permanent supportive housing.”

The response has not been encouraging.

True, as such things go this is not a wealthy program, disbursing just $12.9 million across all of Virginia in 2023, the most recent full accounting available. But that amount underwrote 69 projects that year, serving 3,997 people. Among them was (and is) Hope House, a rapid rehousing project in partnership with the Shenandoah LGBTQ Center that serves unaccompanied homeless youth, ages 18-24. On the other hand, over the past five years only one other program application has been filed (albeit not awarded) in our four-county region, according to Campbell.

In other words, when it comes to free money to address homelessness, local governments, non-profit organizations, housing developers (yes, developers, both profit and non-profit alike) and single purpose organizations—all of whom are eligible to file applications—can’t be bothered.

The current application period has a Sept. 12 deadline, but to date Campbell has not received any requests for a letter of support, which the state requires from VCSB to prevent duplication of services. Given the late date, that seems unlikely to change, although it’s always possible that Staunton staffers have been working feverishly but unobtrusively to . . . nah. Just kidding.

Here’s a final irony. Staunton’s 2023 legislative program, an annual exercise in which the city’s governing body communicates its priorities to the Virginia general assembly, urged an increase in funding for permanent supportive housing. “The Governor’s Housing Trust Fund should become a consistent funding stream for these individuals,” council members contended.

“Just don’t make us ask for it,” they could have added.