LOOKING FOR THE EXIT

Brown-coated wanderers are an unwelcome contrast
to the gleaming Richmond in the dreams of developers. Can city leaders
and agencies finally help the homeless find a way out?

Daniel Thomas stands on a concrete bridge, watching the cars roll by.
He's hoping for work, waiting to see if a construction site on Cary
Street needs extra hands. But it's the day before Christmas Eve,
bright and cold. A job will be hard to find.

Thomas wears a coat with a Marlboro logo over a Midlothian Athletic
Department jacket. His hands are chapped and callused, his words
precise. He never finished school, he says, having started work at 13,
but later obtained his high school equivalency.

"I came here to take care of a little bit of business, and it really
didn't work out the way it was supposed to," Thomas says. That was
seven years ago. He's been homeless ever since. "I got personal
problems in my life," he says. "But I got to deal with it better than
I been doing."

For many on the streets, refuge from those problems comes in bricks.
"That drug called crack, it's an epidemic," Thomas says. "It hinders
you from doing for yourself."

This morning, he says, he woke desperate. "I made up my mind," he
says. "I got to leave it alone." He's tried drinking wine to kill the
cravings, he says, but lately, "it's been causing me to black out."
Not long ago he fell and scraped his face, the wound still visible
under his left eye.

Thomas says he appreciates the daily breakfast at Freedom House, the
Daily Planet's free shower and laundry facilities, and the shelters
where he sometimes stays. What Richmond agencies offer the homeless
"is a very fair and good program," he says. "I think that they're
doing just about everything they can." But here he stands on a bridge,
gazing at the traffic with haunted eyes.

Across Canal Street, another homeless man scans his surroundings.
Satisfied that no one is watching, he drops his blanket and bundled
possessions over a chain-link fence and into the undergrowth above the
highway. Safe. He walks away.

Thomas looks down. "I see some, they just prefer this kind of life,"
he says. "I don't. I don't prefer this."

The pressure's on for Richmond's more than 100 service agencies to end
the endless walk of the homeless, to solve the problems faced by
Daniel Thomas and hundreds like him who stand in the cold. The
problems are big: Addiction and alcoholism. Frustration and
complacency. Survival and despair.

Some, like Thomas, yearn to escape. Others do, in fact, prefer to
remain in the street life. Some have been taking their meals at
Freedom House for five or six years. "They're pretty much addicted to
the lifestyle of homelessness," says Susan Sekerke, development
director for Freedom House.

The problem is, agencies freely admit, that the services they provide
enable people to remain displaced indefinitely. Of the 1,600 people
who are homeless on an average day in Richmond (a number that recently
has been rising), 85 percent will find a place to live within a year.
The others stay in the life longer, often bound by drugs, mental
illness, or most frequently, both.

For a long time, agencies like Sekerke's have debated: "Do you
advocate for their right to be homeless, or do you advocate for
services to get them out of homelessness?" The answer, until now, has
been to do both.

But the nonprofit world is entering a new age. As in the business
world, accountability is in. At the United Way, the region's biggest
financial supporter of homeless services, funding is now given on an
outcome-based model, meaning agencies must prove their programs work.
Competition between them is tenser, their budgets leaner. "The money's
running out," Sekerke says.

So is time. Every city has its homeless, but brown-coated wanderers
are an unwelcome contrast to the gleaming Richmond in developers'
dreams. Sure, in Manhattan no one's fazed by the presence of
panhandlers. But when Richmond's sidewalks are empty but for the
homeless, business leaders say, it makes people reluctant to venture
downtown.

The nonprofits are optimistic that they can transform their services
from enabling homelessness to pushing people out of the street life.
And, for the first time, they're recruiting businesses and
not-in-my-backyard neighborhoods as their allies, not their foes. How
did things start to change so quickly? It started with a hand-drawn
map.

Until recently, business leaders thought the solution was simple. Move
the agencies that serve the homeless, and their clients would follow.

For years, in fact, the directors of Freedom House have been desperate
to move their meals program into a less dilapidated building than the
brick outpost at 302 Canal St., an eyesore that has long been hated by
downtown visionaries. After years of searching, however, no
neighborhood would let them in. So in summer 2002, Executive Director
Melba Gibbs announced that Freedom House, and the crowds who gathered
there, would stay put.

Business leaders and developers panicked. They responded to Gibbs'
declaration by reviving an idea that had been scrapped years ago: that
Freedom House relocate, along with the Daily Planet, to a site on 17th
and O streets near the city jail. This time, the deal was sweetened by
an anonymous donor's offer of $1 million to move there.

But the site was chemically contaminated and would cost $500,000 to
clean, and was distant from where the homeless typically walk. The
agencies turned down the offer, miffing some of their would-be
benefactors.

Gibbs, Sekerke and others realized that the business community had to
understand that moving the providers of food and shelter "further up
and farther out" was not an easy solution. Sekerke sought a simple way
to show the hidden life of Richmond's homeless. So, in August, she
drew a map.

The map was unveiled in September, at a meeting of homeless agency
directors and prominent city business leaders: Jim Ukrop, chairman of
Ukrop's Super Markets and First Market Bank, a leading developer and
philanthropist. Reggie Gordon, executive director of the
homeless-services umbrella group Homeward. Jack Berry, executive
director of Richmond Renaissance.

Sekerke's hand-drawn arrows and triangles revealed patterns in the
daily lives of the city's displaced people, showing those at the
meeting that merely moving a few agencies around like checkers
wouldn't change what they saw downtown. Those gathered at the meeting
saw illustrated the long walk that Richmond's homeless take every day
- - the wearying circuit on city streets that is for some, a restless
search for a way out and for others, a well-worn rut.

"Your whole day is consumed by survival," says Walter Jones, who's
been homeless several times in his 40 years. "You can get trapped into
that cycle .. The next thing you know, it's nine months later. Your
self-esteem is blown to bits."

It's not just the much-maligned service agencies that draw the
homeless downtown, but also convenience stores, work sites, career
centers and even peaceful places to sit. If you remove agencies from
the city center, people who are homeless will still make their daily
trek, those at the meeting realized - it'll just get longer.

They also learned that not all the wanderers were homeless. Many, in
fact, are residents of three private adult homes downtown. (One is now
closed.) The biggest is the Dooley-Madison Home, a stately brick
building on Grace Street that is home to about 87 people, most with
mental illness and nowhere else to go. There's also Tiffanie's Manor
for Young Adults, in a dark-windowed building on Jefferson Street, and
Grace Home, which was recently shut down.

There are 150 beds in these three homes, compared to about 75 in the
city's homeless shelters. Residents there habitually come to meals
provided for the homeless because, they say, they don't get enough to
eat. "Everyone got blended together," Gordon says of the walkers
downtown that many perceive as a faceless mass. "They were these gray
people, and everyone assumed they were homeless."

Ukrop realized then, he says, that even "if all the homeless people
disappeared from downtown, the perception might be that they're still
there."

There are a wealth of agencies - more than 100 - that provide services
to Richmond's homeless. "But there's no exit strategy," Ukrop
observes. "All we've been doing is servicing and recycling, but not
really providing a service that helps these people exit the problem."

How do you stop taking the Walk? That's the big question. At last,
there seem to be some new answers - and some are coming from the homeless.

alter Jones, Mike Ogden and Josef "Rasjay" Burnett stand outside the
Daily Planet one Monday morning. They're arguing good-naturedly,
paperback dictionary in hand, about whether Jones is correct to call
Burnett "narcissistic."

It's around 9 a.m., and these three, who are homeless, have paused on
the Walk. It begins early, around 5 a.m., at the moment you wake. By 6
a.m., long lines grow outside the many labor-pool offices in the city,
which recruit day laborers for low-wage jobs like warehouse work or
cleaning construction sites. Participants say they make about $30 a
day, after the company charges for transportation and equipment like
hardhats and gloves, depending on the job.

Jones, Ogden and Burnett, all in their 40s, won't waste a day on what
they call the "slabor pools." They're unemployed not because they want
to be, they say, but because they can't get work that befits their age
and skills. "I'm not mechanically inclined," says Jones. "But my mind
is not bad."

Jones, 40, wears a clean white button-down shirt and carries a slim
spiral-bound notebook wherein is neatly inscribed his thoughts on
homelessness and the climb from "self-preservation" to
"self-actualization." He has the air of a professor.

"Nowadays, you have to have some viable skill or trade, or you have to
have higher education" to be successful, he says. Many on the street
are illiterate, have only a grade-school education or are mentally
challenged. What Jones and his companions would like to see, they say,
is a concerted effort by agencies to help them develop individual
plans for vocational training, continuing education and lasting employment.

Jones recently completed his course of study at J. Sargeant Reynolds
to earn his associate's degree in applied science, community and
social services - with honors, he proudly adds. All he wants is a job
that pays $18,000, enough for him to subsist on. But "I carry baggage
with me," he says. "I'm a three-time convicted felon." He served his
time 12 years ago, he says, but who's going to hire him with a record
like that?

Ogden, 44, a man who wears a scuffed leather fedora and a gentle
smile, has experience as a carpenter and electrician. If he could
lease a trailer and buy tools, he says, he could hire and train other
homeless men to work. Why can't he get a grant to do just that?

Burnett is 42, a tall, rangy man with intense eyes and gray-threaded
dreadlocks. He's a jewelry designer by trade and used to support
himself by selling his creations on street tables. Why isn't there a
program to help the homeless become self-employed? he asks.

Agencies are listening. But mindful of money constraints, they intend
to start with the basics: teaching clients marketable skills en masse.
When Freedom House relocates its daily meal service in June to the St.
Luke's building on St. James Street (a move welcomed by the agency,
which was sparked indirectly by the September meeting), the agency
will start a hospitality industry-training program so its clients can
learn to be chefs, caterers and waiters.

Gordon plans to help Richmond's homeless providers organize their own
work force, so their clients have an option besides the temporary
labor offices. The agencies could thus become self-sustaining, he
says, and at the same time could help clients manage their money by
holding wages in escrow accounts. Some "need parenting. That's an
awkward thing to say," he admits, but money management is one of the
long-term expectations that agencies are beginning to outline for
their clients.

Jones and company just hope businesses downtown will commit to
employing them. "The people who want the change are the same people
who are in the position to get the homeless off the street," Jones
says. He urges the new convention center, the hotels and the
restaurants to make a point of hiring the homeless, so "instead of him
sitting in the doorway when you come to work, he's in the doorway
because he's coming to work."

For Jones, Ogden and Burnett, the day when they work where they want
seems far away. But it could be closer, former counselor Jack Hession
believes - they're just standing in the wrong place.

If you're homeless, the day is long. After the late-morning trek east
on Grace or north to Jackson Ward to pick up a free bagged lunch from
a church, "you've got six, seven hours of void that you have to fill
somehow," Hession says.

Many hang out at the Planet all day. Some seek out other places to
stay - parks, friends' apartments, former workplaces, malls ("hang
out, look at all the things you can't buy," scoffs Hession). A waste
of time, he says.

He chooses to spend his afternoon in the Richmond Career Advancement
Center on Broad Street, where he's eating his church lunch - luncheon
meat sandwich, fruit, snack cake, hard-boiled egg - in the small break
room. Hession pauses in his meal to explain that there is, in fact, an
abundance of employment and education assistance available that could
help those who are homeless and motivated.

Hession, 53, has spent the past seven years of his life working with
the homeless, as a counselor at Freedom House and at shelters in
Boston, his hometown. Just after Thanksgiving, he says, he was
hospitalized with pneumonia and wasn't able to pay his bills. Now he's
sleeping at CARITAS (Congregations Around Richmond Involved To Assure
Shelter) and eating with his former clients. "So I know both sides of
the street," he says wryly.

A chef by trade, Hession says emphysema and a bad back keep him from
taking a full-time restaurant job. So he comes to the spacious center
at Jefferson and Broad streets almost daily to use the computers and
the fax machine, looking for work and a grant to continue his college
education.

At 2 p.m., only a handful of people are using the Career Advancement
Center, which is federally funded and open to all. Help is available
if you're homeless, Hession says - but few people know that.

Hession is exactly right, says Gordon. "We have people who are
homeless only because of a lack of information. This is a travesty."
No single person knows every service, grant and program available, he
says. "That's why centralized intake is crucial."

No later than 2006, Homeward plans to open an intake center that's
open 24 hours daily, not only for the homeless but also for those who
fear they may lose their homes. There, a caseworker would enter
detailed information for each new client into a vast computer
database, which would help agencies devise an individual plan for each
person.

Those who need meals or shelter would also be issued a swipe card to
help agencies keep track of people and ensure that they don't get
settled in the life of free meals, free shelter and no progress.
They'll have 90 days of meals at Freedom House, for instance, and then
must shift gears into a residence or employment program. "It's Big
Brother, yes, but it's necessary," Gordon says. "It's a way to have a
conversation with people. They're no longer gray."

Homeward already has the software, but it needs to come up with
$50,000 this year to pay for it. By March, Gordon says, he should have
answers about when, where and how the intake process will begin.

Meanwhile, Hession acts as a one-on-one counselor. "I never thought
I'd be taking my own advice. I can listen, at least." He's made
several copies of a one-page guide to homeless services, titled
"Survival in the City," and distributes them to people new on
Richmond's streets. He advises those without IDs (which are necessary
for entrance into shelters, among other things) how to obtain them,
beginning with getting a library card.

Hession has no patience for people who whine about what agencies give
them. "It might get old, but it's there for you. These guys have no
right to bitch," Hession says.

He himself seems indomitable. "I can still live like a millionaire
without being one," he says, laughing, taking a swig from his Deer
Park water bottle - refilled from the Career Advancement Center's
water cooler.

But being homeless is wearing on him. "I've got my life in this bag,"
he says, looking ruefully at his seam-busted backpack. "That's a scary
feeling."

Living without a home is scary. Anyone on the streets will tell you
that. Many turn to alcohol or drugs to numb the fear, creating a cycle
of addiction that is the biggest challenge of the agencies.

By 5 p.m., those who worked today have money in their pockets, and are
ready to spend it. Sekerke's map marks with black triangles the many
convenience stores downtown that sell 40-ounce bottles of malt liquor,
a cheap and popular way to get drunk. On the edge of the grassy lot
behind 302, once called Smitty City for the homemade shelters pitched
there, dozens of empty 40s gleam in the weeds.

Gordon asks why these stores aren't regulated by zoning laws or
targeted by downtown developers. "Rather than saying, 'Let's not have
any more social service programs downtown,' it could be that you say,
'Well, let's make it hard for people to open up businesses downtown
that serve malt liquor or alcohol in single servings.' You know?
That's how we stop this problem."

But the problem of addiction isn't contained just in glass
bottles.

Tracy Minns remembers clearly the long cold nights; the costly numb of
crack. In her homeless days, she often spent summer nights in a sunken
lot called the Pits, off Cary Street. Dozens of people gathered there
to sleep, drink and pool their money to buy bricks of crack.

The draped windows of the stately Jefferson overlook this cracked
asphalt square, although it's impossible to tell if those on high can
see the camp below. Twin billboards on the corner read "Hate Your
Job?" and "Folgers, the Best Part of Wakin' Up."

One morning, Minns woke next to a dead opossum. "I had been drinking
and drugging all night," she says. When she stumbled under the bridge
near 302 Canal St. she couldn't hear, smell or see. When daylight
came, she opened her eyes to see the animal lying stiff, teeth bared,
beside her.

Minns, 32, was homeless four years, from 1997 to 2001, and addicted
for 11. The crack was anesthetic, but inside Minns felt a mounting
desperation. She knew that she couldn't stay on the streets forever,
and that being a woman, the danger was great. A year and a half ago, a
friend overdosed and died. The shock spurred her to seek help at the
drug-treatment center Rubicon, where she overcame her addiction.

Others she knows aren't so lucky. A year ago, her sister died in a
drug raid, shot while she was in a house getting high. In November,
Minns' friend Yolanda Cosby was found burned to death in a portable
toilet where she'd been sleeping. Minns has watched her ex-boyfriend
and her street friends fail again and again to break their addictions:
"They always say they gonna do it now. When they get money in their
pocket, they go another way."

On the Walk, homeless-ness and drug use go hand in hand, and it's hard
for addicts to get help when they need it. The Richmond Behavioral
Health Authority offers drug treatment, but the weeks-long waiting
list means when an addict is ready, the system isn't.

Rubicon, the nonprofit center Minns used, tries not to make people
wait. But state budget cuts mean the agency lost about half its
funding this year. It's now struggling to regain its feet, and its
clients.

Hope lies in a new treatment center that promises results for little
money. Soon, Richmond will have The Healing Place. Modeled after a
center with the same name in Louisville, Ky., it will be both an
overnight shelter and a place that provides treatment for addiction
through a peer-led program similar to Alcoholics Anonymous.

Beginning seven years ago, Jim Ukrop, then-Mayor Tim Kaine and city
activists toured the original facility, liked what they saw and
decided to bring it here. The Louisville center boasts a 65-percent
recovery rate, costs about $18 per person, per day, and has been
copied in five other large cities. It also serves as an alternative to
jail or a hospital when the police pick up homeless addicts, saving an
estimated $3 million annually in ER visits and jail costs.

Agency leaders in Richmond hope The Healing Place will fill a void in
Richmond's network of rehabilitation. But ultimately, they know, it is
the addict who must choose to try to end the habit.

The Walk ends each day with sleep. Some line up for space in a CARITAS
shelter, some move into semi-permanent "abandominums" in boarded
buildings, some merely sleep wherever they find a hidden place. But
when is the Walk over for good?

It'll be a while before agencies' results-based strategies -
centralized intake, new drug programs, vocational training - take
effect. So for now, the homeless must use the resources they have.

For Minns, the Walk ended March 19, when she got a job mopping and
cleaning at the Daily Planet's headquarters after completing its
Project Empowerment course in "life skills, computer stuff and
budgeting." She now lives in an apartment in Church Hill with her son,
who just turned 17. He plays football and basketball at Thomas
Jefferson High School, does his homework and loves video games. "It
felt kinda strange trying to take care of my son after being out on
the streets," Minns admits. "It's kinda hard trying to tell him what
to do."

For Minns, the system worked, in that she walks the Walk now only as a
tour guide. But the road ahead is long. She's looking for another job,
because $5.15 an hour doesn't go very far when you have a teenager at
home.

Daniel Thomas, Walter Jones, Mike Ogden, Rasjay Burnett and Jack
Hession all have a pretty good shot of finding places to live soon,
statistically speaking. For 85 percent of the city's homeless,
remember, it only takes a year.

But you can do a lot of walking in one year.