Monday, November 15, 1999
Volunteers search for hidden homeless
BY MICHAEL D. CLARK
The Cincinnati Enquirer
HAMILTON — Flashlights in hand, the volunteers cautiously moved through the night fog searching for those who don't want to be found.
Homeless people sleeping a cold night away inside a Dumpster, under a bridge or in an abandoned building were the targets of a humanitarian hunt early Saturday and Sunday mornings as 10 volunteers scoured Hamilton. They planned to fan out across Fairfield and Middletown other mornings early this week. Their goal is to first help the homeless — with blankets and food — then to count them so that the city's social service agencies can more effectively solicit state and federal grants to help them.
Recent surveys of Hamilton's homeless have indicated they number in the hundreds. But despite searching until 5 a.m. Saturday in dozens of locations — including parks, construction sites, railroad brush fields and along the Great Miami River — volunteers were able to find only five homeless people in Hamilton the first night, and two more early Sunday.
The low number was more a reflection of Hamilton's varied neighborhoods and topography than any drop in this Butler County city's homeless population, said search coordinator Kathy Becker, co-chairwoman of the Butler County Coalition for the Homeless and recently elected Hamilton City Council member.
“This isn't like Over-the-Rhine in Hamilton County where the people are right on the street,” Ms. Becker said. “In Butler County you really have to seek people out. We have more rural areas. We walked through fields and so many places that we could have been out all night.
“There were signs everywhere that homeless people were staying there,” she said of the trash-strewn evidence that people had bedded down recently.
As temperatures dropped into the 30s after midnight and fog thickened, volunteers — many from various Hamilton social service agencies — brushed back shrubs, pulled open cellar doors and lifted plastic bags to reveal clues of a population subculture most rarely see and seldom try to understand.
“They can be very intelligent and aware. ... But this group of people (is) forgotten,” Ms. Becker said.
Volunteers discovered that the homeless sometimes sleep under the U.S. 127 bridge next to the city's power plant. Or in the brush near Joe Nuxhall Park on the city's east side.
Or they try to disappear into an abandoned, two-story home in the 300 block of Fourth Street, or into the dank cellar of an empty home in the 600 block of Chestnut Street. Both places — reeking of human waste, trash and animal droppings — would deter those less desperate on a cold night.
Some local officials estimate that homeless make up about 1 percent of Butler County's population, estimated at 324,000 in 1996. A 1997 count in Hamilton alone turned up 864 people, Ms. Becker said.
And in the past year, the Hope House Shelter in Middletown took in 954 homeless, with at least 60 percent of them from Middletown.
Police officers accompany volunteers, acting as security officers and guides whose ex perience in patrolling the city's streets and alleys helped searchers find the hideaways.
Dave Craft, chief executive officer of Butler County's Transitional Living, a nonprofit community mental health organization, praised both Hamilton and Middletown police for their volunteer cooperation and enlightened attitude in dealing with the homeless.
“The police have become a further extension of agencies in identifying and referring the homeless to the right services they need,” said Mr. Craft.
Hamilton Police Sgt. Marc McManus said, “We rely on local agencies.
“Obviously, if we find a person who is not rational, we try to keep them calm and find someone who is capable of helping them,” he said.
The coalition's countywide count is also laying the groundwork for volunteers to do another, more comprehensive homeless survey for the U.S. Census Bureau in March, Ms. Becker said.
In that month, as the 2000 Census begins, the Census Bureau plans to launch an extensive, nationwide effort with shelters, soup kitchens and other organizations to help count the homeless.
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