Published: July 01, 2008 10:02 am      

Housing slump, economy keeps shelter busy

TRAVERSE CITY -- Ken Homa can see the region's tattered economy wearing on the people his agency tries to assist during tough times.

Almost three of every four people who stay at Goodwill Inn homeless shelter in Traverse City are without jobs, about 20 percent more than last year, said Homa, director of housing services for Goodwill Industries.

Last year, 25 percent of the shelter's residents worked at full-time jobs, compared to just 11 percent now.

"They're having a tough time," Homa said. "Even if they are working, they're not working full-time jobs so they can do what they need to move on."

The poor economy in northern Michigan, combined with the region's continuing housing slump, is making for a busy summer at the regional homeless shelter.

The shelter almost doubled in size in late 2006. It houses around 80 persons a night and sometimes up to 90 or more, Goodwill spokeswoman Ruth Blick said. It provided a roof for more than 800 people in its first year, double the amount served by the old shelter on the west side of Traverse City.

It's difficult to track the number of homeless in northern Michigan, but communities are studying that population more closely as part of a two-year-old statewide initiative to develop long-range homeless reduction plans.

The Michigan Coalition Against Homelessness estimates there are 2,774 homeless people in a 21-county region in northern Lower Michigan, representing almost 5 percent of the state's total. Close to one-third are children who are part of homeless families.

Local homeless populations range from more than 600 in the five-county Grand Traverse area, to 300-plus in Charlevoix and Emmet counties, according to estimates from local agencies.

Unemployment and a lack of affordable housing were cited as reasons for homelessness in the Traverse City area. Alcohol and drug abuse, and physical and mental disabilities were other factors.

Another local five-county survey done in early 2007 as part of a regional Poverty Reduction Initiative showed 18 percent of respondents needed more help to find adequate housing and 11 percent were living with family and friends without a place of their own.

But homeless numbers could be considerably higher because it's a difficult segment to quantify by traditional data collection methods, said Matt McCauley, a regional planner for the Northwest Michigan Council of Governments.

"It's a moving target ... if you're homeless, it's very difficult to count you," McCauley said.

Much of the homeless information is put together by social service agencies that typically don't glean much information from clients. Plus, those figures often don't count people living in their cars, camping out or staying with friends and family to avoid life on the street, he said.

Goodwill officials said the shelter also is seeing more people affected by the housing downturn, losing their own homes to foreclosure, or in some cases forced out of rental homes with financing problems.

Homa said it's led to a handful of families on a waiting list for rooms at the shelter.

"We've seen more people with foreclosure situations, definitely," Blick said.