Troup County Homeless Coalition
“No one thinks that the co-worker sitting next to you slept in her car the night before. They don’t have any idea that you brushed your teeth and washed off in the office bathroom that morning,” said Taya.
Although she had a job and a car, with two financial emergencies, she found herself living in that car. After a few weeks, she was able to find a friend to live with until she found housing for herself again. Four years later, she remembers that time as one of her most challenging – and she’s still never told her coworkers about it.
For individuals like Taya who find themselves homeless, there are no emergency shelters available in Troup County. Harmony House provides a shelter for women in a domestic violence situation, and when temperatures drop to 37 degrees or below, the Troup Warming Center is open to men and women.
“But we do not have a long-term homeless shelter in Troup County. There are too many women and children in hotels,” said Mike Wilson, CEO and president of New Ventures, Inc. He also heads the Troup Homeless Coalition and oversees the Warming Center.
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The definition of “homeless” can be elusive. For some organizations, it’s literally no place to sleep at night except a car or street; for others, it’s anyone without stable housing, including the “couch homeless” – also called “precariously housed” – people who stay with family or friends. The exact statistics are usually only an estimate because identifying the homeless can be challenging.
Current census information estimates between 300-350 homeless at any time in Troup County. Troup County schools also identify 100-150 students each year who are homeless.
“I have seen kids go from living in a tent to living in a different hotel every three weeks, to living in a house that is falling down, with no utilities,” said one school bus driver who has a route that includes children who are homeless.
“Sometimes I pick up a child and see the tag on their meter (indicating utilities were shut off). They come to the bus with flashlights. Sometimes it’s so hard to do, I want to quit, but I can’t. I make it my mission to be someone who is there for them, even if it’s just a few minutes a day,” she said.
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About ten years ago, a Homeless Coalition was created in Troup County to bring together stakeholders who address homelessness, its causes, and solutions. Wilson leads that group in monthly meetings and local responses to the issue.
The Warming Center was one of the projects of the group.
“It first started in 2013 in a fire department building. It ran for a few weeks, and I spent the night a few times as a volunteer. Churches brought food each night we were open,” Wilson recalled.
The following year it moved to the Dawson Street School building. That didn’t work out when the building became unsafe. The next year Three Life Church housed the shelter.
Finally, with Wilson at the helm, New Ventures offered its site, and local groups offered labor and donations to bring it up to code. For the first several years, the Center averaged 20 -25 people a night when the weather was at its coldest. Then the Homeless Coalition brought in Action Ministries to provide long-term housing for 24 chronically homeless people.
“That helped a lot, and we saw our numbers drop,” Wilson said. Still, this past winter, the Warming Center was open 73 nights, providing 435 beds.
Entirely staffed by volunteers, the center struggled with COVID safety regulations, but still opened its doors.
“It’s been a tough year for the chronically homeless,” Wilson said. “The places they usually go to stay warm like the library or a restaurant were closed. We’ve also had to follow new protocols at the warming center, including not allowing home-cooked meals to be donated. But no one at the warming center tested positive for COVID.”
While the warming center has been successful, it’s not a definitive answer.
“We need a long-term emergency shelter, a transitional center, and a day center. We’re working on that,” Wilson said. “We also need more affordable housing in our county.”
It’s a challenging issue for city and county officials, organizations and families, with complex causes and complex solutions.
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Reasons for homelessness vary, but some sources say as many as half of all homeless have a mental health disorder and/or are substance abusers.
Don Ellison knows well that addressing the issue can be exhausting. His son was homeless off and on for years before his death in 2010.
Ellison’s youngest son was outgoing, friendly, athletic, and energetic. But he found school difficult beginning early on when he repeated first grade.
“I think that affected his self-esteem,” Ellison said. “Later, he started tenth grade three times but couldn’t get past the first semester each time.”
His son, Brian, was 14 when he began his relationship with whatever drug was available.
“We thought if we could control him and keep money from him, we could keep the drugs from him,” Ellison said.
That didn’t work, so Ellison tried rehab facilities. In all, Brian attended eight rehab programs, but never finished any of them. He also spent significant time in jails in four states.
“The homelessness began when he’d steal from a job or miss work, and they’d let him go. He didn’t have any place to sleep,” his father said.
More than once, Ellison and his wife would drive to wherever their son was living to see him, feed him, buy him new clothes. And then he’d return to the street.
“We realized that he’d never quit using for his baby or his wife or us. He had support. He had a family, and he had good friends who really cared about him. But we knew he would only quit for himself, and he never did.”
Ellison was familiar with substance abuse.
“In my family, there are only two kinds of people: teetotalers and alcoholics. There is a propensity to alcohol. I chose never to touch it, because I saw what happened,” he said.
Dealing with family members who are addicted is hard, and Ellison knows it’s tough for others who try to provide help for them.
“I know how jaded you can get. And there has to be balance and boundaries, but I think one of the most important things is building relationships and having conversations with the homeless. Don’t stick them in a hole somewhere.”
Wilson agrees.
“It’s frustrating when you see people not move forward, but it’s good to sit with them,” Wilson said.
He continues to work toward a more comprehensive response to homelessness in the community, something he believes is “in his DNA.”
“I grew up hearing stories of my grandfather who fed people during the depression. He was a Methodist evangelist to the Cherokee Nation. So, I grew up learning that kind of behavior, but I really think it’s in my DNA.”
A lifelong Methodist, Wilson had wanted to go on an international mission trip and finally had the chance to go to El Salvador with a group. It was a good experience, and when he returned to Georgia, he volunteered at Restoration Atlanta. There, he met a woman who was homeless, trying to eke out a living as a prostitute. He listened to her and learned that she had once lived in Buckhead with a husband and son who were killed in a car accident. The accident was her husband’s fault, and she was sued and lost everything.
That’s when he decided that while international trips were good, there was an awful lot to do in his own backyard.
“I certainly think this is what God wants me to do,” he said. “I think He’s prepared me for just this work at New Ventures and with the homeless coalition.”