AIDS, Crack Add to Woes of Missions for Homeless

Cash-strapped inner-city missions nationwide are being forced to move beyond their traditional roles as providers of soup and shelter to handle problems such as addiction to crack cocaine, AIDS and the rapid growth in the number of homeless women and children, mission workers reported Thursday.

Representatives of 240 inner-city missions participating in a conference in Anaheim reported that among residents seeking help, 79% of the men and 63% of the woman had a history of drug abuse.

And they said that between 2% and 12% of the people enrolled in mission rehabilitation programs throughout the country were infected with HIV--the human immunodeficiency virus, the precursor to AIDS--or had the disease.

In Los Angeles, according to a study made during the past four months at the Weingart Center, a 600-bed Skid Row transition house, 4.5% of 254 homeless people tested positive for HIV. About 1 in 250 Americans is believed to be infected with the AIDS virus.

“The soup-kitchen image has been shattered,” said the Rev. Stephen Burger, executive director of the International Union of Gospel Missions. “Because of this changing face of the homeless, rescue missions offer more than just food and shelter. . . . Our goal is to walk the individual back into society.”

Rescue missions have hardly abandonned their more familiar role. Last year, rescue missions in North America served more than 20 million meals to the poor and homeless--up 2.5 million from 1988--and provided 7.9 million nights of lodging, an increase of 41%.

But whereas Skid Rows of American cities 20 years ago were populated primarily by older, alcoholic males, the streets now are dominated by younger people addicted to crack, according to Malcolm Lee, director of the Richmond (Calif.) Rescue Mission. The average age of the homeless has dropped from about 40 to 28 in the past 10 to 15 years, Lee said, referring to mission reports. The decline in age, he said, is largely because of crack use.

“You can drink hard for five years and hit Skid Row. But you can get there in six months by smoking crack,” Lee said at a news conference Thursday at the Los Angeles Mission, near Skid Row.

Drug rehabilitation programs that work, the directors concluded, must be heavily structured, last a year or more, and involve work-skills training and one-on-one, spiritually based counseling. Some of the work is done by volunteers, but missions nationwide are appealing for funds to bolster their efforts.

Changing the behavior of the homeless is “very difficult,” conceded Mike Edwards, director of the Los Angeles Mission. Shelter personnel contend that programs providing free bleach kits and condoms to the homeless were ineffective in slowing the spread of AIDS because homeless drug users often do not use them.

“Users shoot up anyway,” Edwards said. “Their outlook is so short-term that the prospect of dying from AIDS in four or five years pales in comparison to the daily risk of being raped, mugged, knifed, shot or (going) without food or shelter.” The Los Angeles Mission plans to establish a 24-bed infirmary specifically for AIDS patients next year, Edwards added.

Del Maxfield, director of the Denver Rescue Mission, served on a task force that found that that single women and single parents with children are the fastest-growing segment of the homeless. They now make up 35% to 40% of those on the nation’s streets, according to Maxfield.