End of Service! Very Sad!

My end of service is here! I am very sad to see me go! Doing my service at the South Oakland Shelter has opened my eyes, to the world. It has opened my eyes to homelessness, and the stereotypes that surround homelessness. So many individuals come from many walks of life and everybody has their own story, and why they had to turn to a shelter for help. I have seen individuals with bachelor degrees and  master degrees from big ten and ivy league schools, and I have also seen one PH.D. I find that the world is very ignorant to what homelessness is about and if the world would just be more open to volunteering, and seeing how the other half lives, they would have a better understand. When I see the Chronic homeless coming in off the street asking us for bagged lunches, water, and clothes, and we can’t offer it because we are a small agency…. it saddens me. It saddens me, because I know that not everybody is going to go out their way to help these individuals on a daily basis. And if we deny them anything, they may not get it. I also wish we had more connections for jobs, or that more jobs were out there. The economy is not changing, at the rate, that  homelessness  is spreading. And homelessness is spreading due to the down fall of the economy. Our clients have transportation issues. The transportation in Oakland County and Wayne County is HORRIBLE! Clients get fired from jobs, or miss job opportunities because the bus was not on time, there was not a transfer, or they cannot afford bus tickets. Which I have to say, that the bus ticket prices are ridiculous as well! 2 dollars each way, then 25 cent for transfer. Most of our clients hardly have 1 dollar in their pocket alone. We always ask ourselves, could you imagine a perfect world? And if you could, what would that world look like? How would it be?  After completing my service I know have an understanding to what homelessness is, and what can be done to help all those individuals that are in desperate need. I think that everyone should take one day out of their busy schedule if they can, and help volunteer!

End of May!

The end of May was very hard. I can’t believe that my service is actually coming into an end. I will be happy to report that one of my clients, that I successfully helped, got the job he wanted and thanked me truly from the bottom of his heart. That really made me feel good!  I wish I could have helped more individuals, but that doesn’t keep me from helping people in the future!  I have also been successfully getting the clients excited when I do budgets with them. They want copies of it to keep track with what they are spending, and how much debt they can get themselves out of. Finding clients Co-Op’s low-income housing with the elderly is tricky. We do have some in our surrounding cities, but individuals can be put on a waiting list, and it is not always a guarantee. The Co-Op age for housing is 62, and some of our clients are 61 just missing the age range. I hope that more opportunities are out there, for elderly individuals to get housing.

First of May!

I can’t believe it! May! I am so sad….. I missed a week in the first week of May because I went on Vacation to Vegas. I know this may not be relevant, but Vegas had a different “homeless” population. What I mean by “different” is that they had more opportunities to get people on the street that could help them verses somewhere in Michigan. It was also more Visible like in New York, or Chicago. By servicing the South Oakland Shelter, I was very interested in knowing where most of the Homeless shelters were in Vegas.  Then I came back home, to the county of Oakland County, and see that our homeless population is kept in the dark. And also by Oakland County being one of the richest counties in Michigan. It is very sad. I find it very sad, because by Oakland County being a rich city, we should be able to help provide better services for these individuals that are in need of help. I hope to see Oakland County make an effort to help the homeless population come up out of poverty in the near future!

End of April!

The end of April was very tough! I didn’t expect it to go by so fast! In April it was very hard for the clients to get into housing. We ran out of prevention funds to prevent individuals from getting housing. I hope that the grant gets more money to help individuals stay in their houses. On the other hand we are still steadily pushing HPRP for our clients rehousing them. The issues that we face when we rehouse them are….credit checks, sustaining jobs, and or finding a job. A couple that was in program had a hard time trying to find housing, due to credit checks, because they had no credit. They made decent income that helped them, but again they did not have any credit. We had another client that was all ready to move into their apartment, but then they lost their job. I hope that HPRP gets more and more pull for future months to come!

April 14th Blog

Today is April 14^th, and the months keep rolling by extremely fast. I am so proud of my service with Americorps. It has transformed in me in many shape and forms than I couldn’t imagine.  Life is always full of surprises, and I never knew that this would be a rewarding experience. Everybody is always talking about how, how they get a rewarding, and fulfilling experiences with helping individuals that are less fortunate than us.  I want to do more rewarding experiences in the future.

Last day of March!

Today is the last day of March. I can’t believe how fast the time has gone! I wish that this was the beginning of my service, and this was not going to end. I love helping the community, and our clients. One day a client told me, “Alyssa, I like it when you are here, its fun!” Something like that makes you feel really good. It makes you feel as if you can get down on your clients level and not make them feel as if they are nothing. Nobody should consider themselves better than our clients, here in this situation. You will never know what life will bring. Jobs are still hard to find, and people are still getting forced out their homes for not being able to pay for rent, or utilities. Life sometimes takes unexpected turns.

I always hope for the best for out clients. Sometimes it is sad to see them exit the program, after they have gotten housing, or have gotten a job, etc. But usually it is for the best when they are exiting the program. I love when the ex clients stop by. I never knew how much I’d missed them after they were gone.

HPRP and Funds

 

HPRP is still up and running, but funds have run out to prevent homelessness. Now we can only Re-house individuals that come to recieve services in our program. In these previous months we had, had individuals call everyday regarding being they were being evicted.  We had at least 5 calls a day regarding individuals being evicted. Within the clients that called, if we weren’t able to help them, we were able to refer them to other agencies to receive services. The HPRP has been doing a wonderful job and helping out these individuals.

 Everybody has to know that they should be in the same Boat as the HPRP clients. In this economy everybody is a check stub away to being either homeless or needing help with utilities or rent. Life will take unexpected turns and sometimes we will never know what will happen.

For the week of 3/22/2010- 3/28/2010 

8 case Files Open 

48 Pre-Screen Files Open 

29 Prevention Rental Clients 

12 Prevention Utility Clients 

22 Rapid Re-Housing Clients 

Average open date: 2/22/2010 

Average Income: $848/month 

Most frequent city: Oak Park, 14

End of February

End of February February is the month where, the month is the shortest. It also seems as if our clients come and go so fast. Even though we want them to move on, and to be as successful as they can be, sometimes it is hard to see them go. The hardest, is trying to find the clients jobs. This economy is so bad that a couple of our clients, we helped move out of state, find housing, and some of them having gotten job offers out of state. With all the warming shelters that are open up, it seems as if people don’t want to go through our process.

 We know there are people out there that need shelter, because our phone is always ringing regarding shelter. I am always hoping that maybe the HPRP funds are maybe reasons why we had a decline in clients. Our phone rings off the hook every day with regards to HPRP. It is over whelming. Individuals are calling to ask for help, because they are being evicted or they cannot make the utility payments. I wish that we had programs like this on an ongoing basis. But there can only be so many funds that grants can give out.

I have 4 more months left of my Americorps service, and I have been proud to call myself an Americorps member. For years, I was active in community service/volunteering, but never found a service that I could really dedicate myself to. I hope that in the future Americorps reaches out to more individuals, and that people are aware of the great service that we do on a daily basis.

Reflecting on People and their Judgment

I am more than halfway into my service, and it’s been so rewarding and an honor serving within the South Oakland Shelter. The hardest part with the service, and getting attached to some of the clients, when they leave you miss their personality, and the brightness they brought into the shelter. Each of our clients has a different story, and not everybody’s story is the same. During the holidays our shelter had been in several news papers and on the news as well. As I went to view one of our stories, on one of our local news stations website, I was appalled to see the ignorance about homelessness. Also, the ignorance about the homeless shelters. The article touched base on our Hope for the holidays toy drive, and it also talked about how we are doing everything that we can for our clients and the community, but we simply have to turn away people due to no room. In the article, you got a lot of ignorant people, commenting on the article talking about how bad of a shelter we were for turning away people. It’s like, HELLO PEOPLE! We can’t house everybody on the street; we just don’t have the room. In a perfect world we would probably be able to do that, well in perfect world, there wouldn’t be homelessness. I wish would do more volunteering, and be able to walk in the lives of some of our clients, before they past judgment.

Autumn has arrived.

“Autumn has arrived,” doesn’t necessarily carry the punchiness of the phrase “spring has sprung,” but to me, autumn is a much more welcome season. Even though it heralds the approach of winter, it is hard to beat the beauty of autumn in our state.

Autumn also means the advent of AmeriCorps programs beginning. Our very first program–more of an experiment than anything–began late, in January, rather than during the fall, as is customary for programs. This year, funded once more and more prepared to meet the challenges ahead, I am eagerly awaiting the 20 new members that will join the ranks of our program.

It is really exciting to see how much the program has expanded from the initial 20 members to becoming funded for 60. The expansion of the program means that we will now be able to reach greater numbers of Michigan residents who find themselves in need. Already, our current members have assisted hundreds of consumers and I am sure it will be only a matter of months before we reach 1,000 and more.

To me, a thousand seems to be both an impossibly large number and a very small one. Perhaps our hypothetical 1,000 consumers might have never received any assistance if it weren’t for our AmeriCorps members serving out in the field. Yet at the same time, 1,000 seems like a tiny number in the face of our homeless counts, the most recent of which shows 86,189.

When the next annual summary on homelessness in Michigan is published, I will be eager to see if 86,189 has shown any decrease. Not all of the consumers assisted by our members will necessarily move into housing, and some might not even be homeless. There is a possibility that the 86,189 might even increase, as the economy of Michigan continues its decline and as we become better at counting those who might be existing on the fringes of Michigan’s most remote rural areas.

Regardless of whether or not the number jumps, decreases or hovers around the same mark, it is plain to me that our AmeriCorps members continue to accomplish victories,  both small and large on a daily basis. And for their service, the Campaign to End Homelessness owes them a great debt.