More and More Seek Out Shelters : Homelessness in America Becoming a Family Affair

John Rhea doesn’t know what he will do next. Maybe he will have to collect aluminum cans again or sell his blood one more time to help support his family.

Better that than trying to sell recreational vehicles in cash-poor Houston. Working on commissions, he didn’t bring home a nickel for two months. The savings dried up, and collecting cans and selling blood wasn’t enough. Then the eviction notice came. The Rheas, a family of five, lost their $595-a-month apartment. They were on the street. They were not alone.

The stereotype of the homeless goes something like this: white, male, over 35, alcoholic or mentally deranged, living on the streets by choice, picking through garbage cans for sustenance, panhandling for enough money to buy a bottle of cheap wine.

But it is families like the Rheas--many of them used to a better life and only newly poor--that are the fastest-growing segment of the homeless population. From Boston to Miami to Chicago to Phoenix to Seattle, their numbers, though virtually impossible to estimate accurately, have increased dramatically. As cold wintry weather arrives early this year across the nation, more and more of them are applying to shelters for help.

The National Coalition for the Homeless, a New York-based nonprofit advocacy group, estimates that families now make up 40% of the nation’s homeless, and coalition member Cindy Bogner says that, if the coalition’s national estimate of 2 million to 3 million homeless is used, 500,000 to 800,000 of them are homeless children.

The Rheas’ home these days is Houston’s Salvation Army family center, with its gleaming linoleum floors and its antiseptic institutional aura. John, his wife, Janet, and the children--Victor, Christopher and Patricia--have a roof over their heads and three meals a day. The kids are still in school. Janet Rhea’s paycheck from Popeye’s Chicken means that some steady money is still coming in. But in an unforgiving world where worth is measured in bank statements, the Rheas are a family in trouble.

Nevertheless, they are trying to save, trying to find another apartment, trying to get back on their feet. The furniture is in storage. They’ve still got the family van, purchased from Janet’s aunt, but they haven’t made the $200 monthly payment since July.

Mired in Depressing Limbo

John wears a tan suit with his cowboy boots, a burgundy tie to complement his pink button-down shirt. He talks of a better time, of finding a job to match his qualifications, of getting another apartment, of pulling the furniture out of storage. But the truth is that the Rheas are mired in a depressing limbo where they cannot provide for themselves.

John blames himself. Maybe he should have taken just any job. Janet’s sister, who persuaded them to come to Houston a year ago, has already returned to Chicago. Maybe if John had been willing to do manual labor back in Chicago, that would have pulled them through until he found a job that befits a man with a college degree, a Vietnam service record and a high regard for his own worth.

“This has never happened before,” said Janet, sitting in the courtyard of the family center on a balmy November evening. “I’ve always been able to keep my head above water. It’s brought me down quite a bit. I’m really depressed.”

Housing Harder to Find

As more and more families--a major segment of them deserted or battered women with children--find themselves homeless, officials say, the search for a place to live grows steadily more difficult. Affordable housing in many major cities is rapidly diminishing to make way for downtown revitalization efforts.

Help from the federal government--minuscule when compared to the scope of the problem, most housing authorities say--has been shrinking during the Reagan Administration.

The National Coalition for the Homeless estimates that homeless families are increasing by 25% a year. The result is that, from the depressed oil patch to the booming Northeast, homelessness has become a common tragedy for families of all stripes.

In Houston, the Star of Hope Mission opened a family shelter last January with 100 beds. In two days, 187 people--men, women and children--were crowded into the renovated warehouse. Now, even though temperatures in Houston rarely dip below 50 degrees, more than 200 stay each night. Plans are in the works to more than double the 25,000-square-foot capacity of the center.

‘Could Not Leave’

“The issue was forced upon us because women, children and whole families were coming to us to eat and would not or could not leave,” said Dr. Jerry Collins, the family center director. “It was sad. It was terrible. There was no place else for them to go.”

This, in a city that has some of the lowest apartment rents in the country, where many homeless take advantage of the first month’s free rent offered by desperate landlords, then take a powder.

In Boston, where the economy has skyrocketed, there is a problem of another sort. With the intense demand for housing, rents have risen to a point where many families can no longer afford to pay them.

In his 1983 inaugural address, Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis made homelessness his major social welfare concern, and in that fiscal year, the state spent $9.4 million to aid the homeless. In fiscal 1987, aid for the state’s homeless will cost more than $139 million. But despite the increase in assistance, Boston led a list of the country’s 50 largest cities in the growth of the homeless last year. The state Human Services agency estimates that 20% to 40% of those homeless are families.

But in almost any city there are stories of homeless families this year.

Search for Better Life

Charles and Dagmar Smith are living in a Denver shelter with their four children, after moving from Long Island. He was a roofer; she was a nurse’s aide. He lost his job and decided to move the family to Colorado in search of a better life. Instead, they found themselves sleeping in the car until they found refuge in the 170-bed Good Samaritan Shelter. By day, they look for jobs, but they must take the children with them because there is no provision for day care at Good Samaritan.

In Kansas City, Sheila, who asked not to give her last name, and her three children have been homeless for six months. She and her family have moved from shelter to shelter while she looks for work. Her car has been repossessed. She worked as an undercover detective for a drug company until the firm changed hands and installed an electronic security system. Now, she is living on benefits from Aid to Families With Dependent Children and food stamps and is on the long list for public housing subsidies.

“You hear about the homeless and you hear about not having a home, but you don’t really know until you are faced with it,” she said. “Until you yourself are caught in it, you don’t know and can’t begin to understand.”

Churches Give Aid

In Phoenix, Bill Miller once owned three weekly newspapers, a cable television magazine and a monthly newspaper. Then, about a year ago, he learned that he had a brain tumor. His ability to run the business slipped. He couldn’t pay his mounting medical bills and support his wife and three children. They lost their house, and his careening dive toward homelessness was stopped only by charity. The family now lives in a $280-a-month house, receiving some support from churches to help defray costs.

“My employees and I used to go down to the shelters and serve food to the homeless,” he said. “People think that today it’s somebody else, but tomorrow it could very well be them.”

Douglas C. Dobmeyer, president of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, said about half the shelter beds in Chicago are for members of homeless families. He said 48% of the people who were turned away from shelters between November, 1984, and November, 1985, were homeless women and children. The figure rises to 60% if battered women are included in the calculations.

Advocates for the homeless contend that neglect by the federal government is responsible for a growing crisis.

“Homelessness is a national problem, yet the federal government has virtually no policy to address it,” said a report published recently by the National Coalition for the Homeless. “Homelessness is a national crisis, yet the current Administration denies its very existence. No one is for homelessness, yet homelessness is the inevitable result of policies set by this Administration and acquiesced in by this Congress.

Basic Causes Cited

“Families with children are now the fastest-growing segment of the nation’s homeless population,” the report said. “Across the country the same basic causes are cited: Primary among them is the extreme scarcity of affordable housing. Again and again, those working on the front lines described the effects of the recent massive cutbacks in federally subsidized housing. And, again and again, they cited the cuts in federal benefits programs that leave mothers unable to both pay the rent and put food on the table.”

The report said that federally subsidized housing programs have been cut back 69% and that qualifying for Aid to Families With Dependent Children has become increasingly difficult. The criteria, tightened three times since 1981, mean that only 55 of every 100 poor children are receiving AFDC benefits, the report said.

The ability to qualify for such aid may soon be tightened even more. A report issued last week by a federal panel contended that the “easy availability of welfare in all its forms has become a powerful force for destruction of family life.” Among the recommendations was one that said single mothers under 21 should not be given subsidized housing if they live apart from their parents.

Nevertheless, there is a glimmer of hope for families on the street and for those who have doubled and tripled up in housing to make ends meet. During the last congressional session, portions of a $4-billion Homeless Survival Act, sponsored by Sen. Albert Gore Jr. (D-Tenn.) and Rep. Mickey Leland (D-Tex.), did become law.

The measures provide, among other things, that mothers can receive AFDC benefits without having to give an address. Before passage of the law, the rule was: no address, no benefits, a terrible Catch-22 for the homeless.

The law also provides that veterans can receive benefits without an address, of particular importance because estimates are that roughly one-third of the homeless served in the armed forces. Finally, it provides that food stamps can be used to pay for meals in shelters, alleviating a dilemma faced by many homeless--they were eligible for food stamps but had no place to cook.

Hope for More Help

Timmie Jensen, a staff member of the House Select Committee on Hunger, said that despite these breakthroughs the bills that passed were small change when compared to the big-ticket items in the comprehensive bill. But she said there is hope that more segments of the legislation will pass in the next session.

“I think it’s generating public support that something has to be done about it,” she said. “I see a momentum of change.”

But for the present, the Rhea family and others like them are out there, hoping that this is a small, sad chapter in their lives that will soon be over.

John Rhea doesn’t like the memory of that night when they were packing up their goods, getting ready to put them in storage, of sleeping in their van for the first two nights without a home before going to the Salvation Army for help. At first, he said, the children thought of it as fun--sleeping anywhere but their own bedrooms was something of an adventure.

“Then the temperature got a little cold, and it wasn’t so funny anymore.”

Times researchers Joanne Harrison, Wendy Leopold and Dallas Jamison assisted in the preparation of this story.