A Broward coalition operates a bed hotline for the homeless, but it's often impossible to place women with children.

by Jane Musgrave

Convinced she has called the right place and will be able to leave work that night with a heartwarming story about how she rescued a young family from homelessness, the woman’s voice is open and friendly.

She’s a nurse at a Broward hospital. A woman, who is seven months pregnant, came into the emergency room in labor. While her medical needs were taken care of, it quickly became clear the woman has a potentially bigger problem.

She and her boyfriend and her two children are staying with his parents. The parents, however, want them out. And they have no place to go.

"They’re a real nice couple," the nurse says cheerfully. "He’s working but he doesn’t make enough money to support the family. Do you know any place they can go?"

The nurse’s hopeful call to 524-BEDS, a telephone hotline run by the Broward Coalition for the Homeless, is understandable. This, after all, is the place that is supposed to be able to keep people off the streets by finding them places to stay.

But Alan House, an aptly named divinity school graduate who has run the program for a year, has bad news for the nurse and even worse news for the young mother and her children.

"She’s seven months pregnant? And she has two other children?" he asks, rubbing his chin. "No. No, there’s no place in the county that will take a pregnant woman with children."

And, he says, because the family at least for the time being has a roof over their heads, they aren’t technically in crisis. They should call back when their situation gets worse.

The nurse, unwilling to accept the fact that she won’t come out of this a hero, doesn’t like this assessment.

"These people need some place to stay," she says, her lilting voice turning shrill. "They’ve tried to work within the system. They have sought help from all these different agencies. You’re telling me they have to be living on the streets before they can get help? That’s pathetic."

With that, she slams down the phone.

Welcome to the real world of helping people, trying to solve homelessness — one phone call at a time.

Since launching the so-called bed line last October, House and his ever-changing cadre of volunteers have fielded nearly 2,000 phone calls from people in a vast array of mental, physical, economic and emotional states.

He’s talked one guy out of suicide. He’s been a sympathetic ear to a woman whose paranoid delusions make it impossible for her to stay at any shelter for more than a day or two. He’s made frantic phone calls to find shelter for families who are living out of their cars. He’s told families who are living on the streets, sorry, there’s simply no room at anyone’s inn. He’s fought to get people into the county’s seven-month-old Homeless Assistance Center only to have them leave the facility the next day.

On average, he says, the hotline gets 130 to 140 calls from individuals each month and finds housing for 40 to 50 of them. Families, he says, are more problematic and their calls more sporadic. The agency has fielded as many as 57 calls from families in a month but last month heard from only 15. On average, though, through the highs and lows, the agency only finds housing for three or four families a month.

Still, he says, despite the less than stellar record, he’s not depressed.

"You’ve got to look at the entire picture in balance," he says. "OK, we didn’t help X number of people, but we did help X number of people."

When phone calls turn nasty, like last week’s call from the nurse, he takes it in stride.

"I know I’m doing the best I can and I’m stuck with what the shelters provide," he says.

As he, law enforcement officers and other human service workers will attest, in Broward County often it ain’t much.

There is a severe shortage of places for families and for people who suffer from any kind of mental illness.

While the coalition hopes to be able to increase its services to the homeless by beefing up its beds hotline next month, many say the increased service will only underscore how few places there are for homeless people to go.

The coalition’s plans to use a $68,000 grant from the privately funded Homeless Initiative Partnership to add three more lines and hire three people to answer calls will reduce the time it takes to get help, says Fort Lauderdale Police Commander Bob Pusins, who heads up the department’s efforts to deal with the city’s homeless.

Often, officers, who are now trained not to simply arrest homeless people but to offer them help, persuaded a person to call the beds line. With only one phone line, however, callers frequently can’t get through.

"Often these people, these homeless individuals, get cold feet," Pusins says. "We have to strike while the iron’s hot and take advantage of their willingness to seek shelter."

When the phone line is jammed, people lose interest or have second thoughts and officers miss the chance to help them get off the streets.

However, Pusins says, a jammed phone line is only part of the problem. The other, more serious, problem won’t be solved by simply adding more phone lines and workers.

"The back side of this program is beds and placement, and if we don’t have providers that change their admission policies so they’ll take people at night and on weekends," then homeless people will continue to be forced to live on the street.

For instance, the $7.9 million 200-bed Homeless Assistance Center that opened in February won’t accept anyone after 3 p.m. and only a very limited number of people on weekends. While the so-called HAC works closly with police, the main group the department turns to at night and on weekends is Helping People in America. But because it’s in Hollywood, getting a homeless person to agree to go there can be difficult.

So, even if the coalition expands the hours of the beds line so people answer the phone at night and on weekends, if there’s no place to send people who call, what’s the point?

"It’s going to be the laughingstock of the homeless community within three months," predicts one homeless man who, like many, says the HAC should do more to respond to the need that obviously exists.

Because the Homeless Assistance Center has so many beds and it receives so much county tax money, many say it is in the best position to provide relief by simply relaxing its admission policies and expanding its hours.

While the HAC often has beds available, it is often difficult to get people in, House says.

A 24-year-old woman who called last week seemed like a good candidate for the center. Since completing a county drug rehabilitation program, she had been living in a halfway house. While she had gotten a waitressing job at an upscale beachside restaurant, she wouldn’t be paid any real cash until her training was complete in several weeks. In the meantime, she couldn’t pay the rent at the halfway house and needed someplace to stay.

Then she dropped what House predicted would be the deal killer. Like many homeless or near-homeless people, she said she suffers from depression and anxiety. Unlike many homeless or near-homeless people, she was being treated for it.

Having spent months trying to get people into the HAC, House wasn’t hopeful about her chances of getting into the HAC. He said it typically rejects people who have even a whiff of mental illness.

Ultimately, the woman found housing elsewhere. But, House says, dealing with the HAC’s stringent admission policies can be frustrating.

"It’s hard to get people in there because they won’t accept people with drug problems, with disabilities or with mental health problems," he says. "If a person is receiving SSI, they say they should be in an assisted living facility. But lots of people spend their SSI checks and are homeless at the end of the month."

Ezra Krieg, a spokesman for the HAC, said the center deals with individuals on a case-by-case basis. There are few hard and fast rules other than they won’t accept people who are intoxicated, using drugs or alcohol or severely mentally ill.

But, he says, the agency does accept people who are suffering from mental illness. "If we excluded all the people who have mental illness, there wouldn’t be anybody here," he says. While he says the agency isn’t equipped to deal with people who have severe emotional problems, those who are depressed or suffer from anxiety are commonplace on the center’s grounds, and counselors are available to help them.

He said the agency is trying to get a $60,000 grant that would allow it to accept people after 3 p.m. and admit more people on weekends. The problem is that the agency doesn’t have enough medical staff to screen people after regular business hours and all new residents must be examined to make sure they aren’t carrying a contagious disease.

The center will accept a small number of people — up to about 10 — on weekends. But, he says, they are kept in an isolated area, separate from the rest of the residents, until they can be examined Monday morning.

"It’s a matter of humanity. We don’t want to lock someone up for two days," he says and then adds, "It’s better to be with us in isolation than being on the streets."

Still, at least one homeless advocate is getting tired of the excuses and having to turn away people — particularly families.

"I’m over everyone saying we don’t have room for families," says Sean Cononie, founder of Helping People in America. "I can’t look at a family with a baby or a 1-year-old and say, ‘I’m sorry, you’re going to have to sleep on the streets.’ "

This week, at a meeting of the 200 agencies that belong to the homeless coalition, he plans to propose that all human service agencies donate $300 a month to create a special fund to be used to put families up in hotels. He is also hoping to ask area hotels to donate rooms for emergencies.

If counelors knew hotel rooms were available, they could meet with families before they get evicted so they don’t have to spend a night or a week or a month on the streets before they get help, he says. And, when people, like the nurse who was trying to help the young mother who was seven months pregnant, call the beds line, help will be available. Families won’t have to be told to call back later only to be told there are still no rooms available.

It would certainly make life easier for those who both run and call the beds hotline. Because, the calls keep on coming.

Not long after the nurse slammed down the phone, another health worker called in. A woman had arrived at Henderson Mental Health Center with six children and an eviction notice.

"Is there any place where they can stay?" the worker asked.

And again, House rubbed his chin.

"For a woman with six children?" he said. "Not now. Tell her to call back tomorrow."