Need knows no season Need knows no season (December 12, 2003)

Homelessness is hard year-round

By Julie O'Shea

Taped carefully to the wall are dozens of pictures of little girls laughing. One shows off a toothy grin, while another smiles shyly for the camera.

Jane calls these snapshots her most cherished memories. They are the only things she has left of her daughters -- Rachel, 12, Danielle, 9, and Emily, 3.

"For the first time I know what it's like to be crying from my soul," Jane said, slumping down on her bed and staring vacantly at the other side of the large room she shares with three other women at the Elsa Segovia Homeless Center in Menlo Park.

Jane -- a 39-year-old recovering drug addict and alcoholic who didn't want her last name printed -- has not seen her children in more than a year. She says the girls were placed in a Vacaville foster home looking to adopt three sisters. Her contact with them has been slowly waned, Jane said, adding that she has not spoken with her daughters for weeks.

"Christmas will be hard," Jane said, as her eyes welled with tears. "This will be the first Christmas I've spent sober without them."

Jane is among the thousands of people jamming into Peninsula shelters for the cold winter months. But homeless advocates are quick to point out that this isn't a seasonal problem. They say the number of people who have sought out their services has jumped in the last year, and shelters throughout Silicon Valley have enormous waiting lists.

"The truth is, homelessness exists with us year-round," said Poncho Guevara, the director of housing and government affairs for the Emergency Housing Consortium in San Jose, which serves 14,000 to 18,000 people a year.

A regional problem

Homelessness is a regional problem, Guevara said, citing 20,000 documented incidents of homelessness in 2003 in Santa Clara County alone. That number, he added, could even be higher since only the homeless who seek aid and support are counted.

From Mountain View, 76 people this year have asked for emergency housing help, Guevara said.

"It doesn't seem to be tied to seasons," agreed Nancy Noel, who is the director of the Alpha Omega homeless program in Mountain View. "Yes, we are having a lot of calls for shelter. But I don't think there is a particular surge because we are getting into the holidays."

Alpha Omega, a 14-year-old cooperative effort between the Community Services Agency and local churches, can only take on 15 people at a time in a program which provides short-term shelter in parish halls, food and support to sober, drug-free clients who are actively seeking employment.

There are about a dozen waiting to get into the program, and Noel said it is gut-wrenching to watch people's face fall when staffers explain that it could be months before there is a vacancy.

The program is seeing a lot of first-time homeless cases, according to Noel. "They are among the walking layoffs that the Valley is full of," she said, adding that many of those turned away by Alpha Omega often head up to Urban Ministry in Palo Alto, which has a similar set up with local churches but can accommodate more people.

With the county's alarming homeless statistics, one might expect to see more panhandling, but that doesn't seem to be the case, at least not in Mountain View.

The homeless stereotype

"A homeless person looks just like you and me," said Jane, who spent time on the streets before taking refuge at Clara-Mateo Alliance's Elsa Segovia Homeless Center for Women and Children on the VA Hospital campus in Menlo Park.

"When people find out that you are homeless, they're dumbfounded. ... They always envision the elderly woman pushing the cart -- that's how homeless people are stereotyped."

Jane, the youngest of three children, started using drugs when she was 9. In an abusive relationship in Ukiah, Jane said she had barely been holding things together when child protective services took her daughters into custody last fall.

"I just didn't know how to handle that situation. When they took my kids, I broke," Jane said, breaking into fresh tears. "I put on a tough role, but obviously, I'm not so tough."

Coming to Clara-Mateo, which serves about 130 homeless individuals, couples and families from both Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, saved her life, Jane said. And now she has her sights set on getting a permanent home (Clara-Mateo only allows its residents to stay for 90 days), a job and her girls back.

"Had I not been here, I would have been loaded and strung out somewhere. So yeah, they saved my life." Jane said. "Staying sober can get hard, really hard."

Taking a framed photograph from the nightstand by her bed, Jane stares at the picture for a moment. "This is my daughter," she said, her voice catching. She paused and looked up. "Tears come out on and off through the day, and I let them."

E-mail Julie O'Shea at joshea@mv-voice.com

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