The Current

Issue date: 3/18/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Carrie Fasiska Mike Ruzycki, freshman, undeclared, and Laura Riley, graduate student, biology, build a multi- person condo during the Homeless Shantytown event on March 14 outside the Millennium Student Center. The event was hosted by the Catholic Newman Center in observance of Social Justice Month.

Media Credit: Carrie Fasiska

As students created cardboard beds to sleep in to recreate the feeling of homelessness last Thursday night outside the Millennium Student Center, about 1,000 people in the St. Louis region were doing the same for real.

"As you huddle under your boxes … there will be somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 people in the St. Louis metropolitan area who the federal government would consider to be homeless," said Tom Mulvihill, director of special initiatives and projects at St. Patrick's Center. "They're not all living out in boxes. They're not all in shelters."

Mulvihill said the homeless cannot be labeled.

"If I were to ask you to conjure up in your mind a picture of the homeless, a lot of us would think about the folks we see downtown … huddled under [boxes]," Mulvihill said.

The reality is that about one-tenth of those people are "chronically homeless."

"So it begs the question, who are the other 9,000 people?" Mulvihill said. "Well, frankly, they look a whole lot like us." These 9,000 other people are what Mulvihill called episodically homeless.

Mulvihill was a speaker at Shantytown, part of the Catholic Newman Center's social justice month, where students learned about homelessness in St. Louis and centers that helped the homeless.

"The goal is to understand what it's like to be homeless better and to put yourself in their shoes for one night," said Julie Schneider, senior, psychology, and president of CNC.

Mulvihill and other speakers from St. Louis shelters talked about how their organizations help homeless individuals. Attendants also watched a movie, participated in a candlelight vigil and some who braved the cold weather slept in cardboard boxes overnight.

Becoming homeless can result from living in overcrowded conditions, being kicked out or lacking of stability or family backgrounds.

Thomas Burnham, director of Shelter Services at Peter and Paul Community Services, told the story of "Million-Dollar Murray," a man Reno, Nev. police arrested many times, costing the taxpayers about $200,000 a year to ignore him.

"The cops realized that if they put him in housing with around the clock nursing care for him, it would've been cheaper," he said.

Burnham, who works in a men's shelter, said for shelters to receive federal funding, their clients must meet Congress' definition of chronically homeless, which states, "an individual with a disabling condition who has been on the streets for one year or four episodes in three years."

"It's a stupid definition," Burnham said. "By that definition, Congress will tell you there is no such thing as a chronically homeless child." He added that the "narrow" definition means federal funds make up 50 percent of the resources spent on helping the chronically homeless.

"I think some people have this notion that homeless people are lazy," he said. "It's a lot of work being homeless. It takes place every hour of every day."

Burnham said certain people look at the homeless and ask what is wrong with them.

"Sixty percent of the men in the shelter I run are working, making minimum wage. They're not able to afford housing," he said.

St. Louis city has lost several single occupancy housing units that could be used for the homeless, Burnham said. He suggested coding and zoning reform that would create part of the solution to the problem for the homeless population.

In the city and county, about 25 people living on the streets die every year, Burnham said.

However, happy endings exist for some homeless people, like Frank, a fictitious name of a homeless person who came to St. Patrick's Center for help, Mulvihill recounted.

"Every single day, for 19 years, Frank stood up for lunch with two black trash bags. … Now you and I go through those bags and we say, 'Frank, why worry? There's nothing in there of value.' But for Frank it's everything, it's his entire life," Mulvihill said.

When the center put Frank in a small apartment, he showed up to the center nine days later, held his hands up and yelled, "Look, no bags!"

"By taking the bags out of his hands, we changed that man's life," Mulvihill said.



Things to consider:

-Some of the causes of homelessness are lack of affordable housing, low-paying jobs, mental illness, domestic violence, unemployment and changes and cuts in public assistance.

-Between 5,000 and 10,000 people living in the St. Louis metro area are considered homeless by the federal government. One-tenth of those are considered "chronically homeless."

-About 25 people living on the streets die each year in St. Louis city and county.

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