ASHLAND — The air in Ashland one Friday in mid-January registered around 20 degrees when police got a call from a frustrated employee at the Goasis gas station off U.S. 250.
The caller said a man was being a nuisance inside the station’s store, asking patrons for money and rides.
Officers weren’t surprised by the call.
A patrolman had helped the man, who was in his 20s, by giving him a ride to the gas station earlier in the day. The thought was maybe the man could find a ride to his apartment in Wooster from there.
That was hours ago. It was now 1 a.m.
The man, now outside, wore an unzipped puffy jacket and sagging jeans. He paced the sidewalk, arms crossed tightly to keep warm. He picked up a more-than-half-smoked cigarette off the salty sidewalk and used a borrowed lighter to take a drag.
He spent the little money he had on a cloth face mask, to keep warm, he said. Also, his phone had died. He didn’t have a charger. He had drained the battery earlier by calling his brother who lived in Ashland. Brother never picked up.
For the next hour or so, police learned the man hadn’t taken his prescribed medication for schizophrenia in the last four days. Still, the man did not meet the criteria to be hospitalized. He also couldn’t be jailed — and Ashland County does not have a homeless shelter for men.
Limited funding prevented police from getting the man into a hotel. Officers are not in the taxi business, police said.
What to do?
A hidden and growing issue
The homeless population in the United States reached 647,258 in 2007, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness. Though that number dipped for several years, the population seems to be on the incline, at least since 2017, when the overall population reached 550,996. In 2020, the latest data available, that number jumped to 580,466.
Ohio has witnessed a similar pattern. The population sat at 10,655 in 2020, down 5% overall from 2007 but a slight increase since 2016.
In Ashland County, there were 16 homeless people counted in 2018. That number jumped to 31 in 2019 and dipped to 15 in 2020. It then climbed up to 25 in 2021, according to Appleseed Community Mental Health Center, the agency in charge of the county’s point-in-time counts.
“Point in Time” homeless counts are required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in order for entities to apply for grants.
Several social workers in Ashland County have said homelessness presents itself differently than in larger cities, where some can be seen sleeping outside on benches or in tents — hence the fluctuations in PIT counts each year.
“It’s hidden. There’s way, way, way more homelessness in Ashland County than anybody has a realization of,” said Cathy Thiemens, program director at Ashland Church Community Emergency Shelter Services, or ACCESS.
The Goasis scenario described, though not exactly hidden, sounds familiar to several social workers in Ashland. It also represents a glaring issue in the area: the lack of emergency shelter for men and limited affordable housing.
“On weekends, after hours, these types of situations occur,” said Cindy Kyser, the director of social services at the Salvation Army Ashland Kroc Center.
The Kroc Center serves as the county’s hub for the intake of homeless people.
On any given day — during business hours — the Kroc Center works with homeless people to connect them to various agencies in Ashland County and elsewhere to find temporary (read “emergency”) or permanent housing.
The Kroc Center does not have its own housing program. It relies on other agencies and organizations to find housing.
“We refer them out unfortunately or get them back to where they came from,” Kyser said.
The Kroc Center assisted 106 people, or “clients,” in 2020. In 2021, that number jumped to 139. Assistance takes different forms. It could mean the person was connected to a number of different organizations or churches in town that provide housing.
Often, however, those organizations and churches have waiting lists.
When potential clients learn about the waiting lists, many of them leave in search of something more immediate.
“They say, ‘well, we need something now,’ ” she said.
In 2020, for example, 154 people started the intake process with the Kroc Center and either never finished or never received help. In 2021, that number was 242.
The Kroc Center works with Ashland Church Community Emergency Shelter Services, Transformation Network, Safe Haven, Appleseed Community Mental Health Center and Saint Vincent De Paul Society — all organizations based in Ashland County.
They also work with homeless shelters and programs in other cities like Mansfield and Wooster.
It’s those people who the Kroc Center can’t help — the 242 in 2021 — that underscores the problem. The challenge, Kyser said, is most local organizations have waiting lists of their own and sometimes clients aren’t keen on moving to a shelter in another county.
“There are many reasons people don’t want to leave Ashland,” she said, noting the hesitancy in some to leave friends and families or going through the hassle of switching doctors.
Sometimes the issue stems from a lack of reliable transportation.
Those who do stay in Ashland County are often helped by volunteer organizations, such as Saint Vincent De Paul Society, a ministry of Saint Edward Church in Ashland. The group of 16 volunteers aims to help the impoverished with a number of needs. Sometimes those people are homeless, other times the people just need help with groceries, said Claudia Stupi, the society’s coordinator.
When asked if she thinks there is a homelessness problem in Ashland County, Stupi pointed to the numbers.
In 2020, the group helped 509 individuals, which represented 224 families. In 2021, that number rose to 670 individuals and 305 families.
“There is a problem,” she said.
However, Stupi is impressed with the network of people in the area working to solve the issue.
“But poverty is always going to be with us, I think.”
At places that offer temporary housing, like ACCESS, the waiting list is blamed on a lack of affordable housing in the area.
“We have six people on our waiting list right now,” Thiemens said. “So where do you wait?”
Couch surfing
In Ashland, people wait in their cars or “couch surf.”
Thiemens defined couch surfing as spending a few days in a friend’s apartment and then moving in to a family’s house or garage for another few days or weeks. Some of them also end up in area hotels or motels for a week or two before moving on to something more permanent.
The problem with that definition is that it doesn’t gel with the HUD’s definition of a “literally homeless” person, said Amber Lester, the Housing Program Manager at Appleseed Community Mental Health Center.
On paper, therefore, Ashland County doesn’t have a homeless problem.
“Homelessness in Ashland County definitely looks different than what it does in other counties. Ours are not sleeping in the streets. But they’re there,” Lester said.
Lester said Appleseed has a waiting list of its own.
“From July 2021 to present time, I have eight people in their cars supposedly,” Lester said. “A lot of times these people are falling off the radar by the time I get to them on the waiting list.”
She said four years ago people waited for around 30 days. Now, people are waiting an average of six months.
Appleseed helps people with their first month of rent or a deposit if they are considered literally homeless. Its clients find permanent housing in apartments such as Union Lofts, Montgomery Crossing, Ashland Village Apartments or the Essex House.
“These places have huge waiting lists,” Thiemens, with ACCESS, said. “So where do you go in the meantime? Well, you couch surf, you hang out at Goasis, Walmart. You live in your car, the parks.”
The lack of affordable housing, along with a dwindling number of churches able to offer shelter, prompted ACCESS in 2016 to use some donated apartments to serve as emergency shelter and transitional housing.
In total, ACCESS has four, one-bedroom shelter apartments and another two transitional apartments. One of the transitional spaces has two bedrooms and the other has only one bedroom.
The average stay for ACCESS clients in a shelter apartment is 45 days, Thiemens said. In a transitional apartment, the average stay is 68 days, she said. It has helped the homeless issue, but there are limitations.
“We are just a tiny Band-Aid. Think of the tiniest Band-Aid — that’s what our help for homeless looks like in Ashland County,” Thiemens said.
Kyser, Thiemens and Lester acknowledged Ashland County has a homeless problem — and the problem is growing. They each have ideas on how to best solve it.
Kyser, for example, thinks part of the solution is establishing more programs like ACCESS, Safe Haven and Appleseed.
Lester and Thiemens both think Ashland County needs more affordable housing — maybe even a small shelter.
The man police helped at Goasis on that cold January night ended up getting a ride halfway to Wooster, where he lived, by an Ashland police officer. The officer was met by a Wooster police officer in New Pittsburg, who then transported him to his apartment.
Had that happened prior to November 2017, the man might have been able to secure a hotel room for the night under a program that allowed police to give homeless people a voucher that covered the cost for a night.
The program, according to Ashland Police Chief Dave Lay, was funded through the Kroc Center. The last voucher issued, however, was November 2017, Lay said.
“We’ve thought about wanting to bring that back, but the question remains — where does the funding come from?” he said.
So … what to do?
The issue of homelessness is complex. The solution is not clear cut.
A homeless shelter, for example, might provide someone with a place to stay for emergencies — but shelters, by design, are not permanent.
“We don’t need a giant homeless shelter,” Thiemens, with ACCESS, said. “But we do need something for that emergency.”
Thiemens referenced “Housing First,” an approach that relies on getting people into a stable shelter before addressing mental health concerns, substance abuse issue or other needs.
“You get people in housing, then you address their issues. Well, that’s well and good if you have subsidized housing available. We don’t have very much of that at all. Everything here is owned by private landlords,” Thiemens said.
“We need more transitional apartments, for people to be sheltered and gain stability in order to transition to affordable housing.”
Although Housing First has been touted to essentially eradicate homelessness, the problem with it is cost.
The state of Utah, which served as one of the country’s first state-funded Housing First models in 2005, is experiencing rising costs firsthand.
An audit performed in November by the state’s legislators showed a desire from lawmakers to “emphasize efforts to promote self-sufficiency” instead of allocating millions into the model.
Affordable housing seems to be a viable option, but only if developers find it financially feasible or as a wise investment, Thiemens said. The average rent costs $640 a month in Ashland, according to Apartment Guide.
Thiemens said the fair market rate in the county, for a two-bedroom apartment, is $743.
“Think about how much money you need to bring home to afford that,” she said, noting it becomes more of a strain when considering the cost of child care and transportation.
If people who are experiencing homelessness don’t also acquire the skills needed to secure stability — personal finance, job-related skills, community — social workers such as Thiemens fear the person could fall right back into sleeping on the streets, their cars or friends’ couches.
That’s why ACCESS, a faith-based organization, offers transitional or temporary housing under conditions: get a job, pay for rent, establish a community.
The goal, Thiemens said, is to develop skills and relationships that allow people to transition to self-sufficiency and a more stable future.
More programming and resources could help alleviate the existing organizations who feel overwhelmed, Kyser said.
“Ashland County could use more resources like ACCESS and others,” she said, noting the closure of the Pump House at the end of 2017 as a blow to the effort to shelter homeless men.
Kyser says the first step toward a solution to homelessness, at least in Ashland County, is simply to sit down at a roundtable to fully understand the situation before committing to long-term fixes.
A group of stakeholders, called the Homeless Coalition, has worked since at least 2008 to address challenges in the area.
The next meeting is scheduled for Feb. 9 and will gather social workers like Kyser and others to discuss the ongoing effort to curb homelessness. Kyser believes the Ashland area is in a unique position in history to make lasting changes.
“So let’s sit down at the table, understand the need,” she said. “From there, we can talk about what can we do.
“Are there other agencies that can provide assistance? It takes a team of us to dig down deep and talk about this urgent need.”
For those interested, the meeting is open to the public. For information on how to join the virtual meeting, contact Appleseed’s Jerry Strausbaugh at jstrasbaugh@appleseedcmhc.org.
