be positive please<g> Some super rich who benefit from Bush tax cut do spend more this year, don't they?<g>
Yeah, I do read that the shelter/homeless people in NYC and some other big cities increase a lot this year<ng>
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Faces of homeless change
Recession blamed for growing number of educated now among needy
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By ERICA ERWIN
erica.erwin@timesnews.com
You could call Francis Werling an ambitious man.
You could even call him an educated man, a hard-working man and, at one time, a rich man.
Until this year, you couldn't call him homeless.
A laborer who once earned as much as $15 an hour working at various jobs within International Paper Co. and GE Transportation Systems, Werling is proof that a sluggish economy and massive job loss is changing the face of Erie's needy.
Evicted from his apartment in November because he couldn't pay the rent, Werling has since been living at Community of Caring, a local shelter at 245 E. Eighth St., where he shares a bunk room with 12 other men.
"I never thought this would happen to me with my education and background," said Werling, 53, who recently graduated from Gannon University with a bachelor of science degree in business. "Everyone says you can work, but in Erie, it's really hard."
No longer are the men and women who fill the beds at local shelters and line up at food pantry doors solely people with drug, alcohol or mental problems. No longer are they solely people with long histories of family homelessness or people with no education or work history.
While those people still make up the majority of the hundreds of homeless people within the city boundaries, local shelter operators say that the old stereotype is breaking down.
Many people with high school, and even college, educations and who once held good-paying jobs — some in the factories and plants that have closed or moved elsewhere — are counting themselves among the homeless, or at least among the needy, for the first time this year, local shelter operators say.
The Homeless Intake Tracking System, a database that tracks homeless people in 12 different shelters and social service agencies, confirms the new trend.
More than 840 adults found themselves newly homeless in 2003, according to statistics from Project Hope for the Homeless, the local agency that runs the H.I.T.S. database. That's a steady rise from 2001, when the database recorded 649 homeless adults, and from 2002, when homeless adults numbered 782.
"This year we are meeting more and more people who are so ashamed," said Shirlee Foster, outreach coordinator for Project Hope and administrator of H.I.T.S. "They're saying, 'This has never happened to me before. I can't believe this is me.' All of us are seeing that."
Not surprisingly, Foster and other officials at shelters and social service agencies attribute the new trend to a drawn-out recession that has hit Erie especially hard.
The latest figures from the state Department of Labor and Industry put the October jobless rate at 6.1 percent. That would seem to be an improvement from October 2002, when the same statistic showed 6.4 percent of people were out of work. That isn't the case, however, because Erie's labor force is shrinking.
About 143,600 people were counted among the labor force — people working or actively seeking work — in October 2002. In October of this year, that number dropped to 140,700.
While retirees and people who have moved account for some of that missing 2,900, Carol Patterson, an analyst for the Department of Labor and Industry, said it also includes discouraged workers who have given up on fruitless job searches.
"Sometimes during a recession we see the labor force swell because a primary wage earner lost their job or had their hours cut," Patterson said. "Now we're seeing it shrink again because workers are getting discouraged."
Operators of shelters, including those at Community of Caring and Erie City Mission, also say they're helping more people like Jeff Walls.
Walls, a husband and father of two who used to regularly donate food, clothing and toys to the City Mission, now finds himself taking his family there for free meals.
"I don't know what we'd do if we couldn't come here," said Walls, 29, during a recent lunch at the City Mission with his wife, Katherine, and their two children, 7-year-old Jennifer and 2-year-old Kenneth.
Jeff Walls, used to steady work in the service sector, including a good-paying job as a janitor with Bonded Services and then as a security guard at Whiting Protection Agency, now works at Lowe's, 2305 Asbury Road.
The job is good, he said, but with Katherine Walls staying home to take care of Kenneth, it hardly pays enough to keep food on the table and clothes on the ever-growing toddler. Jeff Walls' hours were recently cut down from 40 a week to 30.
"Everything just started going in the wrong direction for us," said Jeff Walls, of the 2100 block of Liberty Street. "I thought things would get better, but they haven't, and it's really hard. There's not enough jobs for the people who want to work.
"I never thought I would have to go to a place like the City Mission," he continued. "I don't like taking, but now we have to."
ERICA ERWIN can be reached at 870-1846 or by e-mail.
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