WARM – Page 2 – Looking askance

Don’t expect much from United Way

(Reading time: 5 minutes)

The past week’s announcement that United Way of Harrisonburg and Rockingham County (UWHR) is expanding into the SAW region doubtless was greeted with relief by many local social service agencies. The demise last fall of the SAW United Way eliminated a relatively small but not insignificant source of funding for some non-profits in the region, at a time when demand for food, housing, mental services and other basic needs is rapidly growing. And with political turmoil in Washington squeezing or eliminating much critical federal funding, any fresh source of financial support is to be welcomed.

But the news isn’t all that rosy. The fact is, only a small fraction of the money collected by United Way ever makes it to the people and programs on whose behalf it’s raised. Most of what’s collected stays with United Way, for salaries and other payroll expenses, office overhead and rainy-day savings accounts. And while the SAW United Way closed its doors amid allegations of fiscal improprieties, that was only one layer of a nearly impermeable filter that already exists between United Way donors and its recipients.

Consider, for example, that the SAW United Way raised $589,152 in contributions for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2023, the last time it filed its 990 federal tax form. Of that amount, only a third—$196,405—was disbursed to area social service providers, while payroll expenses consumed $258,617, including a $83,250 salary for chapter president Kristi Williams; the balance went to office expenses and travel. Among the recipients of the chapter’s largesse that year was Renewing Homes of Greater Augusta, awarded a whopping $7,167, and Valley Supportive Housing, which got $15,000.

UWHR is not beset by similar hints of financial hanky-panky, but the imbalance between contributions to the agency and contributions made by the agency is even more pronounced than it was in the SAW region. According to UWHR’s most recent Form 990, for the fiscal year ending April 30, 2024, the Harrisonburg-Rockbridge chapter received $691,655 in cash contributions, in addition to reaping $24,538 in investment income, for a total of $716,193. Cash awards made that same fiscal year? Just $92,139, spread among six daycare and early learning centers.

UWHR payroll expenses, meanwhile, despite CEO Amanda Leech’s more moderate salary of $65,919, amounted to $335,864. Office and other expenses claimed another $223,317, which means that the agency kept 80% of all the money it took in for itself. At that rate, the working poor are destined to be with us for a long, long time.

These stark contrasts may explain, to the extent that the public knows such things, why UWHR’s fund-raising has plummeted over at least the past five years, albeit with a minor bump up in 2023. Contributions received in 2019 amounted to $1.3 million—then steadily ticked down with each passing year, to $905,000 in 2020, $767,000 in 2021 and $653,000 in 2022, or a plunge of roughly 50% over four years. In 2023-24 the inflow rebounded a bit, to $691,655.

Given those numbers, it may come as a surprise to learn that UWHR is sitting on a pile of cash, with $201,301 in savings and $987,436 in securities, or substantially more than it receives in annual contributions. Aside from generating some investment income, the purpose for this nest egg is unclear. It isn’t mentioned in any of the agency’s public-facing documents, and Leech did not respond to my inquiries about her plans for those reserves, or why she thinks it’s appropriate for a charitable organization serving the working poor to have squirreled away more than a year’s worth of revenues.

Assuming that UWHR operates in the SAW region much as it has in its own backyard, it’s clear that local social service providers should rein in any expectations about what they’ll get. Moreover, note should be taken of one other aspect of UWHR’s decision-making, a so-called “focused” approach to dispensing funds. As already noted above, for example, all six of its current major recipients are devoted to young children: First Step, Generations Crossing, Harrisonburg-Rockingham Child Day Care, Plains Area Day Care Center, Second Home and Connections Early Learning Center. All those recipients undoubtedly need those funds, but that focus also means any non-child oriented social service agency can only hope that its focus aligns with UWHR’s the next go-round.

Of the dozen or so recipients of the now-defunct SAW United Way’s last funding cycle, only three would have been eligible for UWHR grants this year. Leech has said that the United Way will hold listening sessions over the next few months to figure out how to best serve its expanded region, so it’s possible UWHR will take a different approach in the SAW region—if local agencies make themselves heard. Even 20% of a donated dollar is better than nothing. On the other hand, potential donors are best advised to just cut out the middleman and make their contributions directly to the social service agency of their choice. Renewing Homes of Greater Augusta and Valley Supportive housing are good places to start. So is WARM, the Waynesboro Area Relief Ministry, which is SAW’s only provider of emergency shelters for the homeless during winter months and which was hit especially hard financially by this past season’s bitter cold.

Winter is coming

(Reading time: 4 minutes)

In another sign that the universe has a dark sense of humor, the Valley Homeless Connection announced last week the results of its annual Point in Time (PIT) survey of the local homeless population. That was on Tuesday. Three days later, the Trumpian chainsaw approach to government slashed funding to an additional half-a-dozen federal agencies, including the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness. The council, Trump said, was “unnecessary.”

As government agency budgets go, this won’t save more than pocket change: $3.6 million a year. But as far as meeting a social need, the cut eliminates the only federal agency charged with implementing “the federal strategic plan to prevent and end homelessness.” And yes, there actually is such a plan, adopted Dec. 19, 2022, one that sought to reduce homelessness by 25% by this year. That it has failed to do so is as much a statement about the size of the problem as it is about the government’s effectiveness in addressing systemic issues without adequate funding or political buy-in.

The local PIT count underscores the point. The annual snapshot of how many people are sleeping in homeless shelters and on the streets, in one capacity or another—tents, cars, cardboard boxes—found little change from a year ago, when the 2024 PIT found 157 homeless people in the SAW region of Staunton, Augusta and Waynesboro. This year’s survey, conducted on one of the coldest nights in many years—the temperature in Waynesboro dropped from a high of 22 to just 4 degrees—counted 146 homeless adults in the SAW region (another 10 were counted in Lexington and Rockbridge County). Nine of the adults also had custody of 16 children younger than 18, adding to the total.

The good news is that a greater percentage of the PIT-counted people this year were in emergency shelters, with 82 staying at the Valley Mission, 40 in the overnight shelter operated by WARM, and five staying at the New Directions Center, a shelter for survivors of domestic violence. All the children were sheltered, as well, and two people in the SAW region were put up in motel rooms paid by social agencies. That left just 17 people in the SAW region toughing it out in the cold, compared with last year’s 30 or more. Then again, as observed by Lydia Campbell of the Valley Homeless Connection, the severe weather may have forced any number of homeless people into other alternatives, such as couch-surfing with family or friends. And as always, there’s the question of how many unsheltered people were simply missed in the count, with the extreme cold forcing people to burrow in more tightly wherever they were.

Among the PIT findings that Campbell highlighted was an increase from 51 in 2024 to 71 in 2025 of people who reported they were homeless for the first time. “That is a wild thing,” Campbell said, reflected in such vignettes as the woman who sleeps in a car parked outside her husband’s Verona workplace while he works inside. Indeed, the PIT found “lots” of people sleeping in their cars in the Sheetz and Walmart parking lots, as well as at Cracker Barrel, Martin’s and Lowe’s. Meanwhile, as the number of newly homeless people suggests, the pipeline is filling up faster than it can empty out: the national plan to end homelessness reports that on average, 908,530 people became homeless each year between 2017 and 2020, while 900,895 exited homelessness each of those years. That’s a remarkable turnaround from the period of 2010-2017, when national homelessness declined 14%.

Meanwhile, meeting the national plan’s goal of a 25% reduction in homelessness would require that this year’s PIT count not exceed 437,000, down from the 582,462 counted in the 2022 PIT census. The trend, alas, has been precisely in the opposite direction, topping out at 770,000 in 2024—and if the local numbers are any indication, the national 2025 PIT results are unlikely to have improved. But because it takes many months to compile all the national data, just how much worse things have become nationally won’t be known until late this year.

Locally, the outlook is grim. The advent of spring inevitably pushes away concerns about people freezing to death, and the leafing out of the landscape tends to obscure homeless encampments: out of sight, out of mind. The slash-and-burn practices that are hollowing out—if not completely eliminating—social service budgets and agencies are still to be fully felt locally, but Campbell says Housing and Urban Development funding for permanent housing is already drying up, and an array of services to help people cope with joblessness, substance abuse and poor health is evaporating. Even those who don’t lose sight of the problem can feel hamstrung and helpless to respond in any meaningful way.

Yet as often intoned in Game of Thrones, “Winter is coming.” Even now, on the verge of the spring equinox. What then?

PIT count: more inconvenient truths

(Reading time: 11 minutes)

Key takeaways:

Based on last year’s PIT census, the local homeless population grew almost 29% in one year, outstripping the national increase.
The SAW area rate of homelessness as measured by the last PIT was roughly 12.8 for every 10,000 people, exceeding the 11 per 10,000 in Harrisonburg and Rockingham.
The SAW region has only one year-round homeless shelter, but because of a severe shortage of affordable housing, its average length of stay has more than doubled over the past few years and demand for beds greatly exceeds supply.
Without adequate support services, most homeless people will cycle in and out of homelessness over many years. Each time they do, their mental and physical health deteriorates more.

LESS THAN A MONTH after the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development released its 2024 Homelessness Assessment Report, based on information gathered last January, the annual census is about to be repeated for 2025. The Point in Time survey, familiarly and perhaps ironically referred to as the PIT count, is scheduled for Wednesday, Jan. 22—a day forecast to be one of the coldest we’ve had in this area in several years. Can there be a more painful juxtaposition?

Described by HUD as “a snapshot of the number of individuals in shelters, temporary housing and unsheltered settings,” the PIT census is frequently criticized for producing significant undercounts of the homeless population, both because of its methodology and because of the transitory nature of homelessness. The National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, for example, cites estimates that the annual number of homeless individuals is 2.5 times to more than 10 times the number counted on any single night, as people cycle in and out of homelessness. Advocates for the homeless also take issue with HUD’s exclusion of otherwise homeless people “residing” in jails, hospital beds or detox centers on the night of the count, of people who are couch surfing with friends or family, and of other coping mechanisms that homeless people use. Still, the PIT is one of the few ongoing measurements we have of an extraordinarily vulnerable population, and so deserves our attention.

But there are other caveats. The fact that it took HUD nearly a year to release the results of a one-night count dilutes the PIT’s usefulness as a planning tool, even as it acts as a smokescreen for public officials reluctant to deal with problems of homelessness. Staunton, for example, defaults to the PIT count whenever it’s called on to provide estimates of homelessness in the city, asserting that separate data for the city itself is not available—a statement absurd on its face, since the data for each PIT count is obtained on a local level. Instead, the city observes in HUD filings that Staunton is a member of the Virginia Balance of State Continuum of Care, which is responsible for overseeing the PIT, and that the Balance of State CofC’s findings are as good an estimate as it can provide of local homelessness.

The Balance of State CofC, it should be noted, consists of 71 counties and cities from one end of Virginia to the other, so not exactly “local.”

Just how bad is the homeless situation? Here are some numbers to mull over. Nationally, the Jan. 20, 2024 PIT count found a 7% increase in unsheltered homelessness compared to the previous year, amid an 18% increase in overall homelessness. That’s grim, but much of the jump was attributed by HUD to a rising number of asylum seekers—with waves of border crossers being dumped in Denver, New York and other northern cities—and of several natural disasters, notably the Maui fire in Hawaii. Since neither of those causes had a significant effect on Virginia, it therefore may come as a surprise to learn that the Balance of State CofC clocked an even higher gain in homelessness, of 22% year-over-year.

If there’s one bright note in the 2024 Balance of State CofC PIT, it’s that the increase in unsheltered homelessness was a bit lower than the national increase, at 5.3%. This suggests that even though a greater percentage of Virginians became homeless last year than was true nationally, at least the counties and municipalities in the Balance of State CofC were able to shelter more of their increased homeless populations. But there’s another possibility: that the Balance of State CofC was simply less efficient at locating unsheltered homeless people, who can pitch a tent or park a car in many more nooks and crannies than a handful of volunteers can find. And with national and state land within the bounds of Augusta County, not to mention a largely rural and agricultural landscape, finding a homeless person here can be far more difficult than poking around the alleys of a big city.

HOW DO THOSE percentages translate into actual numbers, and what do we know about the extent of homelessness locally, Staunton’s obfuscation notwithstanding??

The Balance of State CofC that’s already been mentioned is actually divided into 12 planning groups, including our local Valley Homeless Connection, which consists of four counties and four cities: Augusta, Rockbridge, Highland and Bath counties, and the cities of Staunton, Waynesboro, Lexington and Buena Vista. This week’s PIT count, as was true in the past, ostensibly will cover this entire region, but in practice—either because of limited manpower, or because homeless people gravitate toward urban centers for the support services they provide—past PITs reported only a handful of homeless people in Rockbridge and Lexington, and none at all in Bath, Highland or Buena Vista.

The great preponderance of homeless people, therefore, is in the SAW region—and those numbers jumped even more sharply from 2023 to 2024 than in either the Balance of State CofC or nationally. Specifically, the area of Staunton, Augusta and Waynesboro saw a 28.7% jump in the homeless population, from 122 in 2023 to 157 in 2024. The unsheltered population, meanwhile, registered a 46.6% increase, from 30 to 44. To put that into some kind of perspective, the SAW homeless rate went from approximately 10 per 10,000 population in 2023 (based on a SAW population of 122,770) to roughly 12.8 per 10,000 in 2024; by comparison, the Rockbridge/Harrisonburg area, which recently opened a $5 million dollar emergency shelter for the homeless, has a rate of 11 per 10,000.

That the unsheltered numbers in SAW weren’t even higher is due almost entirely to WARM, a consortium of local churches that offers emergency overnight shelter on a rotating basis, and which on the PIT night last year had 48 clients, compared with just 26 the previous year. How many it will accommodate this Wednesday is anybody’s guess, but in any case WARM has a maximum capacity of 50. Meanwhile, the only other homeless shelter in the region, Valley Mission, had 62 people in its beds during the PIT count in 2023, and increased that only slightly to 65 last year. Although it has a theoretical capacity of 90 single adults, that number is divided between 60 men and 30 women, so if there are fewer than 30 women needing shelter, some beds will go unused. In addition, since half of the beds are top bunks, homeless people with mobility issues—which is not unusual—may be unable to access empty bunks that require climbing a ladder.

Homeless people unable to find shelter with WARM or the Valley Mission, or with a friend or family member, in past years have ended up sleeping in a tent or car or, in at least one case, an RV camper. The dozen or so PIT census-takers last year reported people seeking shelter behind Martin’s Supermarket and Roses Discount Store in Waynesboro, behind the Walmarts in Waynesboro and Staunton, at a laundromat and the county library and along Coal Road in Stuarts Draft. But the survey made no mention, for example, of the homeless people camping behind the Food Lion on West Beverley, and there’s no telling how many other tent camps get missed.

(Also worth noting: because WARM operates only December through March, a PIT survey at other times of the year would result in even higher numbers of unsheltered homeless people.)

The Valley Mission was for many years regarded as the area’s safety valve for this sort of problem, providing short-term shelter and supportive services for homeless people while they transitioned to permanent housing—and, by providing an alternative to the streets, removing a civic discomfort. But the Mission’s capacity has long been outstripped by demand. Executive director Sue Richardson says that when she took her position, in 2012, the publicized expectation for Mission residents was a stay of three months—but as she quickly learned, the reality was closer to five. A lack of affordable housing, even then, made short stays difficult. And three months of support services, helping clients deal with substance abuse issues, psychological problems, unemployment and undeveloped life skills, was in many cases simply insufficient.

But the real hammer blow, Richardson adds, came with the pandemic and a sudden flood of tax dollars, designed to get homeless people out of congregant shelters—because of their heightened risk of COVID contagion—and into motel rooms and other single accommodations. Although such isolation may have made epidemiological sense, it also took the legs out from under the support services most homeless people need to become truly self-sufficient. The result was that a substantial number of Mission clients with various disorders got worse. Counseling and teaching that once may have resulted in sufficient improvement over five or six months was now, in the years after pandemic relief dried up, taking 10 months or a year—or longer. And meanwhile, housing availability only grew tighter.

Today, according to Richardson, the average length of stay at the Mission stretches from 12 to 18 months; in one extreme example, a woman sheltered at the Mission for more than four years. What was once a relatively smooth-flowing pipeline for the homeless, emptying out almost as quickly as it filled up, has now become an overflowing funnel. A growing number of homeless people are piling up at the intake, while only a trickle empty out the other end. And in the SAW area, that overflow increasingly is spilling into the streets because of not having anywhere else to go.

The severity of the problems faced by this population is reflected in the PIT results, which include a questionnaire that provides some crucial insights into who is homeless, why, and how often. Of the 168 people surveyed across the four-county Valley Homeless Connection area last year, for example, 101 said this was not the first time they’d been homeless. Nor is homelessness a short-term speed bump in the road of life, as 82 had been homeless for more than seven months at the time of the PIT count, the great majority for more than a year.

How did they end up on the street? Asked for the biggest reason they believed they were homeless, 24 said it was because they didn’t have a job and 18 said they had a disability that presumably kept them from working. Fifteen had been evicted, six cited high rents and eight said they were underemployed, suggesting they weren’t paid enough to afford rent. An additional 18 were fleeing domestic violence or sexual assault, 17 said they suffered from serious mental illness or had substance use issues, and four cited general health problems. Ten had been released from prison or jail, while family issues, a robbery, and divorce pretty much rounded out the list.

In short, the homeless population spans a wide range of needs and disorders, requiring an equally wide range of support services for meaningful rehabilitation. It also is a population that is expanding at a faster rate locally than it is nationally, while the resources to meet its needs have increased far more slowly, if at all. This Wednesday’s PIT count may add some details, and it most likely will document a continued worsening of overall homelessness. But it almost certainly won’t tell us anything we don’t know already.

We all live on a knife’s edge

(Reading time: 14 minutes)

Most of us, whether we realize it or not, live on a knife’s edge of possibilities. On one side, a comfortable if not extravagant life of warm shelter, nourishing food, the fellowship of loved ones, an adequate supply of pleasurable distractions; on the other, bleak ruination. It doesn’t take much to tip us into disaster. The sudden loss of a job, an illness, the death of a spouse, a car accident or house fire . . . and just like that, a predictably familiar existence can be upended and life becomes a struggle for survival.

Many of us are lucky enough to have a personal safety net of family or close friends who can help when disaster strikes. But for those who don’t, a public safety net is essential—and increasingly more so in recent years, as pandemic-catalyzed stresses sapped an economy already weakened by years of growing income disparity and a shortage of affordable housing. Unfortunately, the same economic forces that create such problems also undermine an effective social response.

There are, after all, only two ways to fund a public answer to extreme privation: public tax dollars, or private charity. As this paper suggests, however, neither has been up to the task. Charitable giving, after a temporary boost resulting from pandemic-induced compassion, has resumed a years-long decline. Taxpayer dollars, swollen by federal programs intended to stimulate the economy, likewise have dwindled as the pandemic recedes into the past. Worse yet, there still is only the most tentative political acceptance locally of the role government should play in such circumstances.

Now, as the holidays are celebrated by those on the fortunate side of the knife edge, an increasing number of people find themselves on the opposite side, homeless or nearly so during the darkest days of the year. How will we ensure that they, our neighbors, are adequately sheltered from winter’s onslaught of ice, sub-freezing temperatures and cutting winds?

FOR AN UNDERSTANDING of how much of a political vacuum exists on this issue, consider that in Staunton there is no public spending on emergency shelters for the homeless, and only a minuscule amount funneled to a handful of non-profit agencies that provide temporary or affordable housing. This is as much a failure of political will as it is a lack of funds. For example, of the nearly $13 million that Staunton received from the American Rescue Plan Act, none at all went to housing of any kind, or for the needs of the city’s homeless or the agencies trying to help them.

This oversight was entirely in keeping with how the city has expended other federal funds, even those specifically meant to provide decent housing for low- and very low-income people. In its recent accounting of how it wrapped up spending a $1.7 million federal Community Development Block Grant, Staunton conceded it had failed to meet “its goal for housing development”—failed so spectacularly, in fact, that more than $700,000 remained unspent after five years. The city’s biggest outlay over that five-year span? $334,894 for “general administration and planning,” otherwise known as overhead.

Despite this spending shortfall, Staunton nevertheless minimizes its housing problems by asserting in the same document that homelessness in the city “is not widespread, likely because services and shelters are located in neighboring Augusta County.” This claim is both unsupported and speculative, since the city has made no effort to comply with a funding requirement for “reaching out to homeless persons (especially unsheltered persons) and assessing their individual needs.” Indeed, the city has only a vague idea of how many homeless persons live within its boundaries, much less what their needs are.

Moreover, the assertion that services and shelters for the homeless are in Augusta County is risible, given that the same document—in response to a question about the help Staunton has given to individuals and families on the verge of homelessness—cites the city’s contributions to Valley Mission, which provides short-term housing for people who otherwise would be living on the streets. It is also located in Staunton, not Augusta County, and is only a short walk from the Salvation Army, which likewise provides at least some services to the homeless. But despite the fact that it is oversubscribed and has a waiting list, the Mission received no more than $5,000 to $8,000 a year from the city’s federal block grant.

While tax dollars are in short supply, public charity is subject to the same economic constraints that put a significant segment of the population at risk. People can’t give what they don’t have. Extremely wealthy people garner headlines with massive donations to their favored causes, but as a recent New York Times article on “effective altruism” observed, some 20 million households stopped making charitable donations between 2010 and 2016. The organizations that suffered the most from this drought are community-based groups whose existence depends on small-dollar donors, rather than on mega-philanthropists.

Similarly, the Chronicle of Philanthropy reported earlier this year that fewer than half of U.S. households now make charitable contributions, and overall charitable giving dipped 3% in 2023. Yet even as small-dollar donors have been dropping away, the Forbes top 100 charities saw a 4% increase in their donations last year, leaving smaller local non-profits in a struggle “to raise money from a fatigued, overstretched base of support.”

These aren’t abstract numbers. Although tax filings for local non-profits aren’t always as current as we might wish, those that are available reinforce the notion that things are getting tight right here in our backyards. Valley Mission, already mentioned, peaked in gifts, grants and contributions received in 2020—the first year of the pandemic—at $1.8 million, which then fell off just a bit in 2021, to $1.7 million, and has since seen donations decline sharply, to $1 million in 2022 and $1.1 million last year. Valley Supportive Housing, which provides affordable housing and supportive services for those with mental illness, intellectual disabilities or substance use issues, saw its grants and contributions jump from $139,240 in 2020 to $598,165 the following year—before declining to $432,990 in 2022. How it did in 2023 or this past year remains to be reported.

Then there’s the Waynesboro Area Relief Ministry, or WARM, the only agency within the Staunton-Augusta-Waynesboro area that provides emergency overnight shelter from December through March for people who otherwise are sleeping in tents or cars. This effort, cobbled together by a score of churches who volunteer their facilities for a week at a time on a rotating basis, is like the Mission in that it is oversubscribed, with more people seeking refuge than can be accommodated. And like the Mission, WARM also has seen a decline in contributions over the past couple of years, from a high of $652,186 in 2022 to a mere $382,352 last year. Just $28,130 of last year’s revenue was from government grants—none from Staunton—with the balance chipped in by churches, foundations and individuals.

There are—or were—a couple of intermediaries in the charitable contributions arena that historically helped plug some of the holes. The local United Way, for example—which pulled in $1.2 million in 2020, or more than double its 2019 haul—contributed $15,000 to Valley Supportive Housing a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, it also burned up twice as much money for overhead expenses as it provided in overall charitable assistance, saw its receipts plunge to just $406,845 in 2021, and closed its doors a few months ago amid charges of fiscal impropriety and possible embezzlement.

That leaves the field to the Community Action Partnership for Staunton, Augusta and Waynesboro (CAPSAW) and to the Community Foundation of the Central Blue Ridge (CFCBR), with the former distributing state and federal funds and the latter dispersing mostly private contributions. CAPSAW in particular targets low-income individuals and families, “distributing public funds and providing guidance to programs that effectively address the challenges of poverty.” Last year it awarded grants totaling $431,456, marking at least four years of steady increases—although one of its grant recipients, ironically, was the United Way of Staunton, Augusta and Waynesboro. Meanwhile, only three of its 17 other grant recipients directly address housing issues, including Renewing Homes Greater Augusta, Valley Mission and Valley Supportive Housing.

Among CAPSAW’s signal achievements has been helping renters avoid eviction, starting with 110 renters assisted in fiscal year 2022, 291 in 2023 and 322 in 2024, attesting to the rising demand for such intervention. But in most other respects, CAPSAW’s attempts to assist those most in need of housing assistance have fallen short of its own goals. For example, the partnership had hoped to provide 400 homeless individuals with safe temporary shelter in 2022, but managed to reach only 165. It did much better in 2023, when it reached 296—but the need had grown so much that CAPSAW’s target also had been increased, to 520. And this past year, despite lowering its target to 480, the partnership actually saw a decline in the number helped, to 271.

Similar shortfalls were recorded by CAPSAW in its efforts to help people obtain safe and affordable housing, as differentiated from temporary shelter. Moreover, the number of deficient homes that got needed structural repairs through its funding declined sharply, from 70 in 2022 to 55 in 2023 to 14 last year. The non-profit addressing those needs, Renewing Homes, blamed the slump on a lack of volunteers and the increased cost of building supplies, among other factors.

Meanwhile, the Community Foundation of the Central Blue Ridge is in some ways the 800-pound gorilla in the local charitable funding scene, but it also has a more diffused focus. In 2022 it donated nearly $2 million to a wide-ranging assortment of 91 different organizations that each received $5,000 or more—often much more. Yet because of CFCBR’s broad mandate to “strengthen civil society by enhancing local assets,” in addition to some donors restricting how their money can be spent, a good deal of the money it distributed ended up at tax-supported or user-funded institutions, such as the $265,052 that went to Augusta County Public Schools, or the $32,270 awarded to the Staunton YMCA. Even the City of Staunton came in for a share, at $25,144, for two beautification projects.

That’s not to say that CFCBR hasn’t provided critical funding to some of the housing-assistance agencies already mentioned above: that same year, $51,000 went to Valley Supportive Housing, $11,000 to Valley Mission and $15,025 to Renewing Homes of Greater Augusta. But with its largesse broadcast widely among arts programs, animal shelters, community centers, volunteer fire departments, crisis intervention programs, athletic teams, food assistance programs and so on, CFCBR clearly is spread thin; the amount of assistance it can provide to the most at-risk segment of our population is much less than its overall size might suggest, and much, much less than is actually needed.

BLEAK THOUGH this recitation is, the outlook for the next several years doesn’t allow much room for optimism.

There are bright spots, to be sure. Over the past year or two, Staunton’s political leadership has appeared increasingly receptive to the notion that it has to play a more active role in responding to the city’s housing crisis. November’s municipal election seated several councilors who have shown a willingness to engage with housing issues, and the city is lurching toward eventual creation of a housing commission that could champion housing initiatives at budget time (a process that is just now starting for the 2025 fiscal year). And Virginia Housing last month unveiled a five-year, $75 million investment program to build workforce housing throughout the state, potentially creating as many as 5,000 new affordable housing units—although whether Staunton will qualify for some of that funding, and whether it will move quickly enough to claim a piece of it, remains to be seen.

But the larger picture is more foreboding. Much depends on how completely the new Trump administration descends into chaos, with its announced tariffs, disembowelment of regulatory agencies and overall kleptocratic approach to governance threatening massive economic convulsions. In such circumstances, those with the least to lose inevitably get hurt the most. Consider, for example, that during his first term Donald Trump repeatedly sought deep budget cuts at HUD, source not only of Community Development Block Grants but of countless other programs that altogether provide housing for more than 4.3 million people. Those efforts were stymied by a politically divided Congress, but that balance will shift in Trump’s favor in 2025, and with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy salivating at the thought of amputating huge chunks of the federal budget, HUD’s future is tenuous, at best.

If all of Trump’s budget proposals are enacted—a big if, to be sure— “you should expect large increases both in the scope of poverty and in the depth of poverty,” Bob Greenstein, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, told National Public Radio in a November report on what lies ahead. Among the possible casualties, based on past defeated efforts, is a new federal fund designed to boost the supply of affordable housing, which proponents argue distorts “the market” by raising demand. Also on the conservative wish list is an end to the homelessness policy known as “housing first,” which contends that people need safe and affordable shelter before they can begin to deal with drug addictions or mental health issues.

The bottom line, if all the promised cuts are delivered, will be a meaner, more Dickensian society that will hit communities that lack social services in depth—like Staunton—especially hard. The future already has been foreshadowed in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision last June that empowered cities to criminalize homelessness, permitting evictions from homeless encampments and confiscation of the last shreds of private property that their inhabitants still possess, including sleeping bags and personal papers. At least 120 cities have passed “anti-camping” laws in the decision’s wake, with another 50 considering as much, according to the National Homelessness Law Center. Alas, that won’t be necessary here: Staunton, Augusta County and Waynesboro already have such laws on their books. It’s only goodwill that has kept them from being fully enforced.

But goodwill is a slender reed. How quickly it can snap is on display in Georgia, where the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit a few days before Christmas against the City of Brunswick over its efforts to close The Well. Operated since 2014 as an offshoot of the United Methodist Church, The Well offers showers, laundry facilities, meals and other services, including an emergency overnight shelter in cold weather, to the city’s homeless population. Why would the city want to end such a program? Apparently because it attracts the “wrong element”—which is to say, people who have fallen on the wrong side of that knife’s edge.

To avoid going down that path, Staunton and its neighbors can no longer ignore the harsh, cascading reality about to roll over us. Our civic leaders can no longer pretend they don’t have to wade into the housing crisis because churches, foundations and non-profits are taking care of the problem—not when the reality is that such responses are increasingly strained. That will require tax dollars, to be sure. But it also will require political leadership, with both elected officials and social service organizational leaders speaking out publicly and loudly on behalf of those who are largely voiceless. It will require energetic attempts to rally community support, through public forums, neighborhood meetings, media outreach and pulpit oratory. It will mean directly engaging those same voiceless people, whether in shelters, food pantries or on the street, to learn more about how they ended up in such circumstances and what they need to get back on their feet.

It will require putting a human face on destitution, so that people who are homeless, voiceless and powerless can’t simply be dismissed as the “wrong element.” With a little bit of misfortune, any of us could be similarly cast out. Let’s try to keep that from happening.

On winter and a city spending spree

(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.