Apr 16, 2013 9 min read

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January’s end had a few abnormally warm days, but they ended abruptly when a brutal cold snap and howling winds brought a chill to the bones and relentlessly buffeted the fabric of trouser legs, scarves or any insulating layers of clothing that had any give at all.

There was snow in the air, and swirls skiffed along the street and pavement.

The temperature was falling in the predawn darkness from 30 degrees to 29 degrees in the few minutes it took to walk from South Main Street down West Wheeling to the City Mission at 6:53 a.m. Thursday, Jan. 31.

While no one was stirring on Main Street in the bitter cold, the mission was a beehive of activity. Warm exhaust condensation puffed from a van, and groups of men moved about purposefully.

Some exited the dining area and placed insulated caps on a hallway shelf before they entered the mission chapel, marked at the entrance with a sign warning, “No food or drinks.”

The benches of the chapel before the 7 a.m. roll call were packed with about 100 men, and the relative quiet was punctuated by coughing, coughing and more coughing. Was it the hacking of the chronic smoker? The ailing? Both?

The City Mission that morning was the center of Washington County’s “point-in-time survey,” a count of the homeless that the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development mandates.

Jennifer Johnson, housing and homeless services coordinator for Washington County, said the point-in-time survey inevitably coincides with the coldest night of the year. While statistics don’t quite bear that out, the weather that night was wintry enough.

Those congregating in the chapel are what those who work in the human services field call the “sheltered homeless.” They don’t have a permanent address, but they’re not sleeping outside, either. Had it been warmer, they may have been.

Johnson was conducting a count of what are known as the unsheltered homeless; agencies were, for the first time, reporting that data online.

“The walk-ins don’t come until 8,” explained Johnson, who set up shop at a conference table in the mission’s prayer room with bookshelves, TV and DVR, children’s toys and a white board.

Walk-ins arrive at the City Mission to eat, seek clothing or furniture, or use the services of its health center or legal clinic. Johnson and Holly Callender, a social worker from Residential Recovery Services, planned to interview and count walk-ins who did not have a shelter in which to stay Wednesday night.

The mission obliged Johnson and Callender by ushering all arrivals, both men and women, into the prayer room. Anyone who slept under roof that night was not included in Johnson’s count, so they quickly moved from the prayer room to the dining room or other destinations within the complex.

Then a man entered, bundled against the cold with a heavy coat, camouflage gloves and a ball cap. “I slept outside,” he said. “I’ve been out for a whole year. I know how to do it.”

Johnson, for the purposes of the survey, asked him about his accommodations.

“Tent in the woods, not really, but that’s the closest way to describe it,” he said. “It keeps off the snow and the rain. It’s waterproof, moisture-proof. I built a shelter with what was right at hand.”

He talked a little bit about himself, but he did not grant permission for his name to be used in this story. He’s 34. He has rheumatoid arthritis. He’s not a veteran, and he’s not homeless due to domestic violence. He’s not a product of the child welfare system or the juvenile justice system, but he is a former resident of Mayview State Hospital, the South Fayette Township facility for the mentally ill that closed and is now being leveled and pulverized brick by brick.

When was he a patient? “Three, four years ago, right before they shut down,” he said. He was jailed in 2010, and he’s looking for work but has no income.

“I applied for seven jobs,” he said, calling his skills “machinist.” The closest potential employer is 40 miles away and pays $13 an hour, but the cost of gasoline would undercut the wage, he said.

“I got kids, I got a car, I gotta pay car insurance,” he said. “But I can’t pay car insurance and live in a shelter.” The children don’t live with him.

Of his next stop, the dining room, the man said, “There used to be hot meals here three times a day,” but lately, it’s been cold cereal.

The menu, said David Misra, City Mission director of development, depends on what the food stocks are.

“I know every homeless person in Washington,” said the visitor. “I know where every camp is. I know where everybody stays.”

Even if he had acted as her guide, Johnson said there’s a problem with trying to count Washington County’s homeless population in January. As frigid as it was on the night of Jan. 30-31, most homeless people just aren’t sleeping outdoors. They find places like the chapel at the City Mission, which has a policy of not turning males over age 16 away if the temperature is below freezing.

Why was he an exception?

“I have no interest in this place’s program,” he said of the mission.

The City Mission is nonsectarian, but decidedly Christian. Misra said aid for homeless women and children, through the state Department of Public Welfare, is “far more substantive than for homeless men.”

Doug Bush, recycling manager at the City Mission who first arrived there as a client in 1999, said afterward, “We see men who have rejected our program for years. They get tired, they get sick, they get old, and they see the usefulness of the program.”

Johnson went at mid-morning to Washington Christian Outreach. One unsheltered homeless man was there. She and Callender returned to the City Mission at 11:30 a.m. The sun was shining, but the temperature had dropped even more and the wicked winter wind was oscillating flags and halyards on poles outside the Courthouse Square office building.

A man she interviewed at the lunchtime session had no qualms about giving his name.

“Tom Strope,” he said, extending his hand. “They call me the Woodsman.”

He part of a band of men who call themselves the Hoboes. He said he has bipolar disorder and he sometimes spends time at Washington Hospital’s psychiatric ward.

Johnson asked Strope if he was interested in living in public housing.

“I don’t need an apartment. I need a car,” he told her.

He described himself as a welder by trade who was living in a garage. He doesn’t have a car, so if he finds work, he has to depend on a co-worker to act as chauffeur.

Johnson helped him fill out an application for public housing.

He asked her to marry him.

And so, for statistical purposes, the official Washington County count of the unsheltered homeless on Jan. 31 was three.

It was around 8:30 a.m. on Jan. 30, the day Greene County did its official point-in-time count. As volunteers and employees of the Greene County Human Services Department began loading into cars to begin a voyage throughout the county, from Monongahela Township at the county’s most eastern end, to Aleppo in the west, there seemed to be a sense that finding the unsheltered homeless was not going to be easy.

People were stirring, street traffic was picking up in Waynesburg and businesses were preparing to open for the day. “We will be lucky to find anyone still in their camps (if that’s how they were living) or in the places they have been known to hunker down for the night,” said Zabryna Karnes, a homeless outreach worker with the human services department, as her group pulled into the rear of Walmart off Route 21.

She said they have received reports of people living in their cars behind the store, but none was to be found. Looking over a hillside, there was some evidence of debris littered in the brush, perhaps a site for a camp at one time, but what was there didn’t appear to have been left recently.

Then it was off to look behind Aldi’s in the Greene Plaza near Interstate 79. Walking through some rough terrain behind the store revealed evidence of a campsite – some cans of food and discarded trash. Karnes made note that the cans were unopened for a reason: “They probably didn’t have any way to open them,” she said.

The next stop – behind the old Shop ‘n Save in the Waynesburg Plaza – yielded similar results.

“We shouldn’t be too surprised,” Karnes said. “Once morning comes, the people who might be living in these areas have left to go warmer places or walk into town,” she said.

Well, how will we find them? she was asked.

“We would probably have to come back to these places at night, and that’s not a very prudent thing to do. While they may be staying on property that does not belong to them, they still see these places as their homes,” she said.

The group met with more of the same at the county fairgrounds and Meadowlark Park in Morrisville. The car was loaded with bottled water, nonperishable snacks and first-aid supplies to hand out to people. Blankets, hats and gloves also were available.

This crew, as well as the others who fanned out to places like Jefferson Fairgrounds, Ryerson campground at Ryerson Station State Park and Mt. Morris Truck Stop were equipped with sheets to conduct interviews in the event an unsheltered individual or family was encountered.

One key question on that survey was, “Where will you sleep tonight?” – a question most would not want to hear but would have little trouble answering.

Yet, when the point-in-time count had ended into the evening of Jan. 30, the teams managed to find 16 who qualified as unsheltered. That number represented one “household” with two people, and 14 people in “households” without children.