Study Belies Stereotypes of Homelessness : Demographics: Most have at least a high school education, and one in three holds a full- or part-time job. The city report also found, however, that 91% admitted to having a substance abuse problem.
Darrel Howard--a graduate of Blair High School in Pasadena and a former student at Pasadena City College--is homeless. He knows the stereotype.
“Old men, bums, alcoholics,” said Howard, 32, who stays at Union Station shelter in the city. “Every time I look at TV, they show a downtown mission and guys with a bottle, lying around on a piece of cardboard.”
According to an unprecedented study for the city, the stereotype is wrong--Pasadena’s homeless have more in common with other residents than most people believe. Most homeless people, for instance, have, like Howard, at least a high school education, the study shows. And one in three holds a full- or part-time job.
On Monday, the Pasadena Housing and Homeless Network released a draft report on the demographics and lifestyles of the city’s homeless--part of a joint project by the homeless network and the city that began in September, 1992, with a count and survey of the homeless population.
Data from interviews with 507 homeless people is included in the draft report, which the City Council will use to create a comprehensive plan on the long-term needs of the homeless.
The draft report puts a face on the people who sleep on Pasadena’s streets and provides a picture of who they are. They include a former accountant, social worker and interior decorator; an auto mechanic, garment worker and a street musician.
Men make up 72.5% of the homeless population, women 27.5%. Forty-eight percent of the school-age homeless children are enrolled in schools. The survey noted 205 homeless children, but only 65 were surveyed.
Almost half were Pasadena residents before they became homeless. A whopping 79% of the men and 67% of the women have a high school education, or higher--compared with 76% of Pasadena’s general population.
Lewis Davis, 37, is homeless, but holds a part-time job as a security guard. Davis, who is living at Union Station shelter, is anxiously waiting to begin a training program in the spring for a job in optical dispensing. Saving money to rent an apartment, he shook his head at the notion that he wants to be on the streets.
“People feel we’re (homeless) because we want to be,” said Davis, who graduated from high school in Kaysville, Utah, and spent a year at Pasadena City College.
The report found that 91% of the people surveyed admitted to having an alcohol and/or drug problem, said Joe Colletti, co-chairman of the homeless network, a coalition of about 35 social service and housing agencies. A majority--73% of the women and 67% of the men--also said there is a history of alcohol and/or drug dependency in their family.
The draft report also indicates that homeless people have their own social networks that provide emotional and survival support. On the streets, 75% sleep in an encampment with others, mostly for safety reasons. None of the 133 women sleep outside of an encampment.
The final report on the study was scheduled for release this week, but that was delayed until early 1994 for more city input, Colletti said.
In September, 1992, the city reported that a community-led recount of Pasadena’s homeless had found 1,017 people--almost five times as many as reported in the 1990 Census. The recount is significant because city and social service agencies will use the new tally to apply for government and private grants for the homeless that are based on population.
The city is expected to use the recount and draft report’s results to call for more shelters and job training programs. It is unclear where the money will come from--the city’s 1993-94 budget of $306 million had $9.3 million in cuts, including the elimination of 41 City Hall jobs.
Mayor Rick Cole, a member of the draft report’s advisory committee, was unavailable for comment. But his assistant, Judith Zitter, said new policies on homelessness would not necessarily cost the city more money.
For instance, she said, when the City Council hands out social services grants, it could require agencies to form street outreach teams to work with homeless people as a condition of funding.
Also, the city expects to apply for more federal grants for homelessness programs, Zitter said. Henry G. Cisneros, secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, has asked the White House to double his annual budget on programs for the homeless to $1.5 billion.
Pasadena already has 10 shelters and, in 1991, spent $315,071 on programs for the homeless--the third-highest spending per capita among large cities in Los Angeles County, according to a USC study earlier this year on the region’s response to homelessness.
“I would prefer to see as many private resources as possible (for homelessness spending) before turning to city government,” said Glen Kissel, a founder of Pasadena’s Political Reform Round Table, a group that tracks City Council action.
Sylvia Hines, co-director of Hestia House, a temporary shelter for women and their children in Pasadena, said the city has a responsibility to help everyone within its borders, homeless or not.
“It’s easier to categorize people in the homeless community as bums who want to be homeless, who aren’t like us, rather than understanding that much of homelessness is random in terms of (loss of) jobs or catastrophes that befall us,” she said.
One of those is Janice Taylor, who said she grew up in South-Central Los Angeles with a mother who held together the family of six girls and two boys while her father worked on the Alaska pipeline. The family prayed together every night and celebrated the holidays in front of the hearth with a roaring fire, she said.
But when Taylor’s mother died 12 years ago, the close-knit family unraveled. And Taylor soon faced mounting problems--including a bout with alcoholism--and ended up homeless. Now, at age 30, she is completing a recovery program at Union Station.
But for a couple of years, when she panhandled on the streets, people looked right through her, and other homeless people, like “we aren’t human,” she said.
The Homeless: A Profile
Pasadena social service providers and others this week released a draft report of an unprecedented study on the city’s homeless people. In a preliminary report in September, 1992, the city and the Pasadena Housing and Homeless Network reported that a recount of Pasadena’s homeless found 1,017 people, almost five times as many as reported in the 1990 Census. The latest report, to be officially released after the first of the year, analyzes data from interviews with 507 homeless people during the recount.
Among the preliminary findings:
* 92% were born in the United States
* 74%, not including homeless people in shelters, have been homeless for more than one year
* 43% first became homeless in Pasadena
* 88% of the street population sleeps in the same location every night or almost every night
* 28% have a car
* 29% of the men and 1.5% of the women are veterans
* 79% of the men and 67% of the women have a high school education or higher
* 41% of the men and 16% of the women have a full- or part-time job
* 63% of the women and 39% of the men receive public assistance
* 49% of the men and 48% of the women know whether they have the AIDS virus
* 10% of the men and 16% of the women are married
* 69% of the women and 35% of the men said their spouse is with them
* Of the 65 homeless children surveyed (of 205 counted), 54 were of school age
* 73% of the women and 67% of the men said they have a history of alcohol and/or drug abuse in their family
* 76% of the men and 52% of the women have an alcohol problem
* 71% of the men and 57% of the women have a drug problem
