Reflections from the Front Lines of Compassion: Navigating Homelessness and Hope in Easton

When I was driving around the streets of Easton, I saw three clearly homeless men sitting around the park. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Certainly homelessness happened for a few of us, but Easton is a prosperous town but the gulf between the have and have nots has seemed to broaden in these changing times. As a former worker in a shelter, my heart barely could take it. We have to do better.

My work in a shelter started in earnest, very unexpectedly. I saw there was a job available when I was at the unemployment center. I decided to call the number, and a family friend was part of the Neighborhood Service Center. I later got an interview, was asked about how I would approach working in a shelter and working with residents and then began training. I immediately liked the job.

Although I was hired by The Neighborhood Service Center, most of my work would be directly at the shelter. Lucky for me, my old friend Joanna was already employed there and she showed me the ropes. My main hours were on the weekends, and I’d be put on the schedule whenever there was a need.

During the early days, I’d work Saturday 8 am to Monday 8 am. I had never really given the homeless community a lot of thought but they were there.

The first set of residents I worked with were an interesting lot, very disparate characters with the added complication of having two former friends inside the house at the same time. Like most of the sets of residents, I found someone who was a great help. 

In short, Louise was one of the sweetest people I ever encountered on the job. She helped me to maneuver within the house and she was always very helpful. During this time, the residents had to go through job searches to prove they are serious about getting employment, housing and moving forward. Despite her gifts, she had multiple job search papers, limited call backs and she was at the shelter for a year.

Louise finally got permanent housing and although I was sad to see her leave, I was also happy, she remained a great example and an example other residents were capable of following.

Near the beginning of my shift at the shelter, I made rookie mistakes, getting too close, sharing too much. I remember one couple in particular had concocted a story about working at night together repossessing vehicles after midnight. Looking back it made no sense and yet people bought it.

That’s the thing about learning a lesson working in a shelter, you’ll learn it multiple times.

My first supervisor was often gone more than she was there and so the hours were juggled and I worked more than I ever planned. I noticed that the time she was there, the respective residents were at loose ends and couldn’t quite get comfortable. Chaos is contagious.

At this point I often sat with groups of residents and just listened. Although doing chores specifically on the weekends was a big part of the responsibility for the residents, I never saw the gateway from cleaning the bathroom to permanent housing. I’d rather do all of the work myself. And doing that, I could also be in close proximity to the clients belongings to see if everything was “OK.”

Surprisingly, my job was going to consist of more than cleaning and cooking roasts in the crock pot on Sundays. I’d have to learn more hard lessons while meeting a myriad of people at the shelter.

By this point I encountered a “shelter hopper,” someone who goes from shelter to shelter without much interest in implementing the plans and strategies that lead to permanent housing.

Francis was a seemingly good natured man but another resident called him “an emotional vampire.” Francis would talk about his tales of woe, family and relationship related. He seemed to be making some progress but he left abruptly to leave for Chicago. Within three weeks he was back. He came back and asked to be allowed back in the shelter, but it was full — and a resident would have to wait a year before reentry.

After our tense conversation, I was in the office and saw Francis on the video camera trying to break the door down. I had to call the police and he was escorted off the premises. This was one of the first calls I made to law enforcement, but sadly not the last. This is how the numbers are according to the 2022 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report:

21 percent of individuals experiencing homelessness reported having a serious mental illness, and 16 percent reported having a substance use disorder

The fortunes changed when the shelter was changed to a low-barrier shelter. In layman’s terms, “low-barrier” means that the shelter can’t deny anyone entry and drug tests and case search checks were a thing of the past. To be honest, I thought this wasn’t a great idea and probably exacerbated ongoing issues. The good thing was that the shelter workers still had the power to remove people with specifically bad behavior especially when they were a danger to the residents or staff.

David was one resident who had a difficult time with drug abuse and the law. I always got along with him though he could be a bit aloof. A resident and I used to get a kick out of the fact that David looked like Tom Cruise when he wore his Ray-Bans.

I remember one afternoon when Joanna and I were talking with David and saw him speaking in an agitated manner about his daughter and talking about not making the mistakes his brother made. A little later on another shift he was removed from the after it was found that he had drugs on the premises.

I also saw how mental issues could impede a resident’s progress and their path to employment and permanent housing. I certainly saw that with Evelyn. Evelyn was a well spoken, well traveled woman with ties to the community. When I first saw her, I was amazed she was at the shelter, but there she was. She had an immediate way of talking and a very soft voice. Evelyn also seemed to have difficulties with the residents, the staff and mild cognitive issues but I got along with her. I saw her subsequently and she was doing well. That’s what I always loved about the shelter, the people, the unique lives and the great stories.

By 2018, the shelter went through a few supervisors. After a few years I learned to conduct myself a little bit better. The examples of supervisors left a large impression, I saw the things I didn’t want to do. I had grown into a certain comfort in the job, I wasn’t the supervisor and it was easy to navigate between the residents.

The Point In Time numbers went up a bit with the Mid Shore recording 642 homeless residents. I did see a lot more faces, more turnover but the exits were mostly calm yet still sad and often avoidable.

Like many agencies, Ridgeway had to contend with its own issues often due in part to its perception in the neighborhood, benign neglect and simple red tape.

It’s difficult for many to understand but the shelter could be a great place to work. I grew accustomed to the seasonal changes, expected to work extra hours in the summer and winter due to the respective high and low temperatures. I especially enjoyed working in the spring at the shelter. Even though it was a homeless shelter with a great number of sad things going on, spring suggests a renewal, new beginnings, fresh air.

I liked to clean during this time, sweeping the porch, de-weatherizing the windows, greeting visitors and churches with lunches, and changing the front door glass to a screen. The porch was a great place to get to learn about people and spend time talking with them.

I remember having philosophical conversations on the porch with Grant, he was a veteran who got caught up dealing drugs and when he was released from prison, the steps of the shelter were his first stop.

I grew attached to a lot of the residents and that makes it hard when they leave. I always hope for a good outcome. Sadly I’ve learned that a lot of struggles led to homelessness and it took a toll on their minds and bodies in ways I didn’t anticipate. The following is from The Mortality of the US Homeless Population  by Bruce D. Meyer, Angela Wyse and Illana Logani (University of Chicago): 

Non-elderly people who have experienced homelessness face 3.5 times higher mortality risk than people who are housed, accounting for differences in demographic characteristics and geography.

The one thing that amazed me was the deaths of a few clients I had worked with. At the time, the majority of them were in their 40’s and 50’s and seemed to me to be at least taking care of their health with doctor’s visits.

I often will see the local obituaries and see their pics and facts in there and would be stunned. In death and in life, I see them at their best, laughing in the old shelter’s kitchen, coming into the office for a private chat or on the porch animated in conversation.

David passed away in 2020 and I saw his video services online. Grant died in 2021 and eventually lived close to his wife again. Francis died in January 2024. A few more have died as well and I mourn them all.

After a few years it dawned on me that it was thought of as “less than” as opposed to the other one in the neighborhood. Talbot Interfaith got more plans, better structure, accolades and gifts and Ridgeway just “existed.” The locale didn’t help. The shelter was located in a not-so-great part of town with a not-so-great view of a graveyard that some residents would travel to for any number of reasons.

My friend and fellow worker Joanna was always afraid that that shelter would close, she had been there so many more years than me, I thought that Ridgeway was a local institution and therefore would always be open…

The Neighborhood Service Center started acquired a rental property and it was called Webb’s Hope. Webb’s Hope opened in 2019. This was to offer rooms for low-income residents in the area. I thought, perhaps selfishly, that Webb’s Hope would take away the kind of residents that provide a good example for the other residents.

This one particular spring had a surprise in store that I didn’t see coming. My supervisor at the time Amanda wanted to work less hours. I suggested that I could work my normal  Saturday and Sunday 8 A-8 P plus Monday and Tuesday 4 -12.

The office decided to go in a different direction. I became the supervisor before I knew it. Turns out the hours were good and I had great fellow shelter workers to rely on.

As shelter manager I could access the HMIS which is the Homeless Management Information System. The database had complete histories of the shelter residents’ experiences in shelters, their times there and their exit stories good and bad.

During these days, I worked with Mrs. Thomas, she was in charge of sheltered oversight. Although she was younger, I never called her by her first name with the fellow shelter staff, she was my boss. Mrs. Thomas’s boss was the head director, Ms Neal. Going through Mrs. Thomas as a liaison between the shelter and the main office could work to the shelter’s advantage as well as mitigating the stress that buckled prior shelter managers.

I wasn’t quite off the hook and there was some things I still had to do. Being a shelter manager meant that I’d have to attend the Mid Shore Roundtable on Homelessness. This is a monthly meeting of the Mid Shore Behavioral Health. I was a bundle of nerves throughout the meetings and totally felt out of the place. If anything, my years at the shelter had made me have even more rough edges. But if the shelter had an especially good month, I was proud to share.

Everything was off to a promising start. I was happy when I saw repairs being done to the house, new floors, more new appliances, the paint job but part of me couldn’t shake the feeling that it was done for the next tenant. Actually, I did get the sense that Ridgeway could be done with altogether and it could be a sanctioned home for a family.

Of course the low level chaos didn’t dissuade me of the notion. The kind of residents that entered seemed to change year by year. We lost most of our clients on Friday night Saturday mornings because they stayed out too late, got drunk or high or sometimes just never came back. During this time more calls had to be made to the police, so much so that I wouldn’t have minded having a substation nearby.

The end of 2019 found the shelter during a period of relative calm.  Christmas 2019 at the shelter probably had the last cohesive and calm set of residents at Ridgeway. Two of the residents gave me a birthday cake and the times were good. However 2020 found two prevalent issues taking over the shelter and the community itself.

The house was quiet but of course true peace was difficult to come by. Like everywhere else, the shelter was impacted by COVID. The decision was made to keep the shelter open with a decreased number of residents. The shelter also closed for a while to deal with the virus and then stayed open 24 hours to prevent the residents from catching the disease and bringing it to the shelter. All of this impacts shelter protocol, admittance and the work itself. Andrew Hall mentioned this in his article Impacts of COVID-19 Relief on Sheltered Homelessness.

“Social distancing protocols instigated transitions to non-congregate shelter models, and some shelters closed or restricted capacity to prevent the spread of the virus. Some people experiencing homelessness may have been hesitant to seek shelter services for health reasons. Tremendous strain on frontline staff throughout the pandemic also worsened homeless service systems’ ability to serve people experiencing homelessness.”

At the beginning of the outbreak, the shelter had 3 residents and then it was down to 2 with the residents taking both the entire rooms segregated to males and females. I thought it was a great idea to allow less people in but then I realized that the shelter’s very existence was contingent on the number of people who were served during the year.

Through this period there was good and bad. A resident named Tom came into the shelter very unkempt and down on his luck. During the intake process, I thought he might last a night at the shelter. It turns out that Tom became a favorite resident for the workers. Tom was a textbook example of Ridgeway truly helping people and gave us an example to strive for.

At the same time however, we lost Joanna as a shelter worker and steadying presence. I felt very bad about it, I missed her advice and watching her interact with the residents. For the most part the shelter didn’t quite work as a place for just one or two people, but we had to proceed.

Within a few years, Ridgeway seemed to lose its agency and given our good reputation, we had a lot of people wanting to get in. The problem was when potential residents came from multiple agencies and Ridgeway often had little or no say even when our workers and residents were in danger and or felt uneasy.

The Christmas was dire. The house usually could muster some cheer but there was little. I had remembered past years of happiness or at least a reasonable facsimile of it. At this point it was much less of everything and I felt a constant state of unease.

By early 2021, the writing was on the wall. The shelter had a particular difficult time and I didn’t know if it could survive. I had a meeting at the shelter with Mrs. Thomas and Ms. Neal and they told me the shelter was set to close.

I remember when I heard the words, I expelled a bit of breath, like I was going to say something. And to be honest, I choked back a few tears. Certainly losing a livelihood in a matter of seconds can be daunting and losing a job can be debilitating. What I felt at that moment was the loss of the possibilities, more good outcomes, great days like they used to be. Ms. Neal mentioned a safety concern and all of the police calls flashed through my mind. I understood…

It’s been a few years and I’m surprised at the things I miss about Ridgeway. I miss working with Hugh, Olivia and Syrinthia. I certainly miss working with Joanna. I miss seeing Mr. Donald Brown at the front door with a smile on his face and a lot of food. I also miss making breakfast for the residents. There’s quite a few places that help the homeless in the area and I hope they feel as lucky, rewarded and inspired as I was.

Jason Elias is a music journalist and a pop culture historian living in Easton