Homeless: County agencies try to help

By Aleasha Sandley, Herald Bulletin Staff Writer

June 13, 2009 08:17 pm

— ANDERSON — As Barb Norris looked over her property on the outskirts of town, she felt blessed to have what she did: the outbuilding that houses her goats and chickens, the pieces of the greenhouse she plans to build for her plants, the few flowers she’s planted to make the place feel like home.
The only thing missing on the tiny lot is a home.
Instead, Norris, 51, and her 14-year-old son have lived in a 34-year-old camper on the property since March. She’s done what she can to make it into a home, replacing its flooring with a carpet remnant and putting sheets over its worn cushions, but she doesn’t forget the reality of her situation: She’s homeless.
Although Norris’ situation stemmed from a marriage gone bad, many others are in the same boat because of a recessed economy and personal problems such as drug addiction and mental illness.
Mary Jo Lee, director of Anderson women’s shelter Alternatives Inc., said the local problem is growing.
“Right now, it’s such a different time in this country and in our local community because of the economy,” she said. “We truly are seeing the increase (in homelessness) because people are losing their jobs. It’s people who want to work, and yet the jobs are just not there.”
Norris once owned the one-story brick home next to her lot near the intersection of 53rd Street and Layton Road. She moved out of it in 2005 when she married a woodcarver from Ohio. Upon moving with him to Ohio, things turned sour.
Norris and her husband and son were living in a tent on her son-in-law’s 57-acre farm while they built a cabin. Eventually, the son-in-law didn’t want Norris and her son living there, and she was forced to return to her hometown of Anderson without her husband.
“I was so stressed because I had to leave, and he wouldn’t leave,” she said.
Without a home or job back in Anderson, Norris used her tax check to buy the camper to place on the sliver of property she still owned in the city.
“It looks like a piece of junk, but it’s home,” she said. “I have no income; I have $200 child support. I have a telephone and two credit cards and I have to pay them off. Everybody’s got bills.
“This little piece of land is all I have.”
To make matter worse, Norris recently received a letter from the city citing an ordinance that says no one can live in recreational vehicles in city limits. Norris’ property is a couple hundred feet east of the city’s western boundary of Layton Road.
“I don’t have anywhere to go,” she said. “I had it together before I met (my husband).”
For now, Norris is able to stay in her camper until city officials tell her otherwise. Luckily, she just obtained a job as a bus driver, which starts in the fall, and she now is working a 12-week temporary position.
She plans to get on her feet and into an apartment by the time her son goes back to school in August.
“I was going to get on my feet,” she said. “I’m not going to live like this in winter time. Now I’m just thankful that I’ve got this to get me to the next step.
Although she has been to food banks and used some of the local resources available to the homeless, Norris has most of what she needs is in her camper. Many nights, she cooks over an open fire, and her neighbor — who lives in the same house Norris used to own — has offered her the use of his electricity and water.
“I’m doing what is comfortable to me,” she said, noting her Native American heritage. “It’s just natural to me, and I just don’t seem to mind it. I wanted to teach (my son) the values in life and there are more things than computers and games. I just wanted him to know there is another life besides city life.
“Even though I am struggling financially, I am enjoying life.”
Not everyone arrives at homelessness through relationships, but for many women, domestic violence plays a role.
“A lot of women who are homeless, it starts with domestic violence,” Lee said. “Of course you’ve got your addictions, you’ve got drugs and alcohol and they’ve gotten into trouble. Sometimes they steal or commit a crime to feed that habit. Their family support system has said we can’t do this anymore.”
Veterans make up large numbers of homeless people as well, Lee said, and local shelters like Stepping Stones for veterans are starting to see them come from the Iraq War.
“They’re expected to make a transition back to life in just a matter of a couple months and they struggle,” Lee said.
Elizabeth Ploog, director of House of Hope of Madison County, provides shelter for up to 15 men struggling with addiction.
“Most of them when they come to us are homeless and that’s a direct result of their addiction,” she said. “They become estranged from their families, they lose their jobs, they’re really at their bottom.”
House of Hope provides transitional services in its half-way house, and some of those it helps move up into its three-quarter house when they are ready. Others are rehabilitated and move into their own homes or back with family members.
“We help them build a foundation of recovery,” Ploog said. “We deal with the critical problem. The critical problem is the addiction which creates all the other problems in their life.
Ploog said those who enter the 90-day program can come from all walks of life.
“It really reaches across all the socioeconomic boundaries, everything from the street person to a married man with a family and good job,” she said. “Addiction doesn’t know a stranger.”
Lee said Alternatives is designed to help women and children who need both emergency and transitional housing.
Alternatives resident Kimberly (who asked that The Herald Bulletin did not use her last name) said she would not have the opportunities she’s found without the shelter.
Kimberly came to Indiana after getting herself and her three children out of an abusive relationship in Louisiana. She stayed with her sister for a few weeks, and when the arrangement didn’t work out, she found Alternatives.
Now, she’s enrolled at Ivy Tech Community College for medical technology and has a job at Harvest Market. She’s completed Alternatives’ 45-day emergency program and was accepted into its transitional program for up to two years.
“I didn’t know what to expect,” Kimberly said. “I found a lot more than I expected. They provide everything. I didn’t know anybody in Indiana; I traveled a long way thinking I could change my life.
“I couldn’t have found a better place.”
Kimberly hopes to save up money while she’s at Alternatives, as well as finish school and buy a house using the shelters Section 8 housing referrals.
“I had to realize I had to grow up and (my old life) wasn’t the way to be,” she said. “It was really scary at first because it was a new town. I had just left a bad situation, and I didn’t want to go to another one.”
Susie Kemp of Bridges Community Services in Muncie oversees homelessness in Indiana’s Housing and Urban Development Area 6, which includes Madison County. The most recent point-in-time count of homeless people in the area showed numbers that were mainly the same as two years ago.
The count shows the numbers of sheltered and unsheltered homeless people in the area.
Kemp and other homeless agencies in the area hope to help the problem by providing a gateway to $800,000 in stimulus money that will help those with moderate barriers to housing pay deposits and utility arrears.
The 18-month program is set to start between Sept. 1 and Oct. 1, Kemp said.
“It’s for the lower part of the middle class who have lost their jobs and can’t pay rent,” she said.

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