The Hearth Act: An Open letter to the ACLU, Wake County, Congress and President Obama

In a previous blog, I went over my reasons for believing that the Hearth Act is not working as intended.

Since that time I have been told that I had spent my last night at South Wilmington Street Center (SWSC) in Raleigh, NC, later rescinded by the Case Manager after I complained that my First Amendment Rights had been violated.

At the same meeting he warned me that my time was coming, but that he would give me proper notice when that was decided. Since then, however, I have seen subtle warnings, one might say harassment, that impending doom is falling: My facilitator warning the whole jobs group I must attend once a week that if we didn't do EXACTLY as she says - including applying for a job at a Pawn Shop that hasn't publicly run job ads, and applying at Toys R Us (sorry, can't make a backwards 'R' here), both of which would require me to lift no matter what the position. I can't lift heavy objects. I have no strength or stamina in my right arm. But if we don't do exactly as we're told we could be asked to leave the shelter with no notice.

I have noticed an increased number of residents who have been asked to leave for minor infractions of the rules, such as a friend who was asked to leave after he was given a breathalyzer and blew .01, to which he attributed to mouth wash.

Now in the shelter's defense, because I want this to be a fair article, Frank Lawrence, the center director has warned us about using mouthwash with alcohol in it, but really, .01?

I'm not immune to the harassment. In addition to the premature ejection with no notice, which I'm certain as initiated by someone who read my last blog, and the harassment of a facilitator who likes to remind me that my time is short, and there are no excuses, I came back from class last night to find that someone hadn't entered my alert, which gives me permission to stay out of the shelter past 7pm. I rolled in at 11:30, which has been usual for me on Mondays and Wednesdays the last 4 weeks, and was told no alert existed, though one seemed to exist on Monday night when I rolled in at the same time. If there was no alert for Wednesday, then why was there one for Monday, when both were submitted on the same sheet last week?

The long and short of that is that I was breathalyzed and passed. The minor infraction of coming into the shelter late was not due to my neglect. If it was not put in, I have no control over that, but my concern is that it will be used against me to force me out of the shelter.

Once you are forced out of the shelter, you cannot come back for 90 days. This is a fairly recent addition to the mix of penalties SWSC has added in the last 18 months. They are there to drive men out of the shelter and keep them out, halting, ever so briefly, the revolving door I described in my last shelter blog. All the changes are due to pressure put on SWSC by Wake County officials. They claim it is due to the Hearth Act.

The thing is, I've read the Hearth Act and nowhere in it does it suggest that limiting shelter stays and keeping homeless men out of the shelter is the proper course of action. In fact, the Hearth Act is designed to eliminate homelessness by 2015. That is in its stated goals. You can't end homelessness by driving the homeless out of shelters, onto the streets or woods, and keeping them out of the shelter.

Therefore I submit that SWSC is in violation of the Hearth Act.

What do I want from this?

I want it explained to me how an act that is meant to help can be so perverted that it can be used to drive men out of shelters and keep them out.

I want to know what local, county, state and Federal authorities are going to do about this.

I want the spirit of the Hearth Act followed and homelessness truly eradicated, not shoved under a rug. 'Homeless? We've got no homeless. Just check the shelters.' Meanwhile men continue to live under overpasses, in the woods around SWSC, on benches and other less than happy places.

I want a permanent place to call home, not just for me, but for all homeless. Because shelter life sucks, is marginally above being in prison, though not as bad as living in the streets. It is not the life I choose. It is the life I am forced into because I am having such a hard time finding a job.

Frank Lawrence, the center director at SWSC, keeps saying that he never refuses a request for help. Frank, consider this my official request for help. Can you give me what I need to get out of the shelter and off the streets?

The Hammer Has Fallen... or Has It?

After I posted my blog that was critical of SWSC and the Hearth Act, I was acutely aware that some people might not take it well. I went through Monday night and Tuesday half expecting the hammer to fall and that I would be asked to leave the shelter.

I breathed a bit easier Wednesday, despite my blog being circulated on Twitter and other sources, and went to my A+ Certification class confident that no actions would be taken.

I came back in Wednesday night at 11:30pm, and was told that it was my last night in the shelter.

I was stunned. The hammer had fallen. Hard.

Was it because someone had read my blog and decided this troublemaker had to go? Was it because my time at the shelter had been extended one day too many?

The really sad part was I got a call about an interview and I was looking forward to going to it.

I lay awake half of the rest of the night worrying about it and thinking about what I would do. I doubt I got 3 hours of sleep last night.

In the morning, I contacted the Guest Advisory Council president, the person who lives in the shelter that acts as a liaison between guests and staff, and I told him my fears. We went around trying to find out why I was barred. I filed a grievance, asking for a hearing, based on the appearance that my First Amendment Rights had been violated and that I felt misled about the Shelter Plus Care Voucher, which I felt I could qualify for.

Finally I talked to the Case Manager, Bill Hoetzlein, who assured me that a) he'd never read my blog, b) he wasn't the one who put the order in (which surprised me) c) that he would make it a policy that no one was kicked out without a rules violation unless they had adequate warning, and d) my time at the shelter was drawing to a close, but probably not immediately.

He wanted to discuss it with his staff, and told me to call him later in the day.

A few other bits of information: Apparently the Shelter Plus Care Voucher is only accepting Mentally Ill clients now. This might be a violation of the Hearth Act. I'll have to check on that.

The 30/60 days to find a job and find housing has apparently been increased to 90 days. I was at class and missed that meeting.

I'm not sure what I'll do at the moment. I'm tempted to contact the ACLU, because that appearance of violating my First Amendment Rights bothers me. I am of the firm belief that the Hearth Act is being misused here, as an excuse to kick people out of the shelter simply because they haven't found jobs or housing. I will try to keep everyone posted.

Thanks for your support.

How the Hearth Act Isn't Helping Homeless

Last week, during the regular Wednesday meeting at South Wilmington Street Center (SWSC), in Raleigh, NC, the center director, Frank Lawrence, told the collected faces of those homeless men living in the shelter that they had 30 days to find a job and then 30 days to find housing, or (assumably) they would be required to leave the program.

I was at a class when this happened, but the way everyone is talking about it, it's a done deal. Frankly, this stunned me, though, really it shouldn't have. Let me go into a little bit of the background of how SWSC has worked in the past.

As I stated in my book: 'Project Five-Star: The Five Points of Hope,' I've been coming to SWSC off and on since 2005. I'm currently in my 4th iteration of coming to the shelter. I come there because I have no job and no other place to live. That's what a shelter is for.

To put it simply, the only way you could be put out of SWSC was to break the rules. For whatever the reason, many of the men in the shelter seem eager to test the rules. For instance, the guy in the bed next to mine not only has food in the dorm, an infraction, but eats it late at night. So at 2:30 in the morning when I should be sleeping, the noise of his crunching penetrates my earplugs and wakes me up. Normally I turn a blind eye to such behavior, but this morning, I reported him. SWSC is short of staff, though, because of budget cuts and these things often slip by the wayside.

Cell phone use is also prevalent in the dorms, when that's also verboten. Why do they do it then? I think it's systematic of why they're in the shelter in the first place: They challenge authority, and sometimes authority bites back.

So the bottom line for SWSC was a kind of revolving door. Even now I see the same faces I saw back in 2005 when I first entered the shelter. They come in, use the emergency list to maybe get a bed for the night, get back on the waiting list for the program, get into the program, then after a few weeks break a rule and are asked to leave, starting the process all over again.

But those that follow the rules and make an effort to keep out of trouble and the sight of staff, didn't used to have to worry about leaving the shelter. But during Wednesday night meetings when the center director, Frank Lawrence, gets us all together, he began to warn us that things were changing. Something called the 'Hearth Act' loomed and the shelter was going to change.

In 2012 I was unemployed, living at the shelter and trying to find work when I was hit by a car. My shoulder was dislocated and ligaments in my knee were torn. My job search was temporarily put on hold while I healed. After two months of healing, I received a small settlement that barely dented my medical bills, but gave me a little bit to live off. I left the shelter to do some traveling and see if I couldn't start my own business. When the money ran out, I came back to the shelter, technically still healing, but a little bit more mobile than I was before. I found that times had indeed changed in the 4 months I had been away.

Now we have to report to groups based on what we were doing. Despite the fact that I was still injured and can not do physical labor, I was put in a group that was supposed to be searching for a job. We were told that our beds were only guaranteed for one week at a time (if we followed the rules) and at any point, we could be asked to leave the shelter if we did not follow the rules, which included weekly status meetings.

But the changes weren't all bad. The shelter now offered classes on a variety of topics, mostly given by Wake Technical Community College. They included truck driving classes, hospitality, agriculture, and such skills that some employers were looking for. I took advantage of the Hospitality class.

Yet despite all that I still could not find a job in a field that I could perform. Manual labor is right out, as I can't do any heavy lifting. I can't stand for long periods of time, as my knee gets very stiff. So three-fourths of the jobs that were presented by our 'facilitator', or group leader, were not an option for me. The ones I can do, however, have a large number of applicants, and would you rather hire a 20-something with energy or a fifty-something who looks like a truck ran over him? (It was a car.)

So after almost a year of being in the shelter, I was presented with a notice that said I had 30 days to find work or find housing or I would have to leave the shelter. I was very despondent.

But a ray of hope appeared in the form of a Section 8 voucher from the Raleigh Housing Authority (RHA). I thought my wishes had come true and that soon I would be out of the shelter.

The voucher from RHA had two limits to it: The amount of rent it would pay was limited to $526/month, and it had to be used within 60 days or it would expire. I thought for sure that I'd find a place quickly. I didn't want to stay in SWSC any longer than I had to. Then I started looking for housing. In Raleigh, I found, the average rent is considerably higher than $526/month, and not many complexes take Section 8 Vouchers. After a week of looking but not finding, I asked for help from the shelter. My 'facilitator', Shantavia Alexander, was unfortunately injured herself because of a pinched nerve in her back. She was in and out of the building to the point where I did not see her.

I continued my pursuit of a place to live, but in the meantime, 30+ men from the shelter were booted at the end of August 2013 because they had lived there too long. No other reason, other than they had not found jobs. I can't speak for all of them, but I tried like a maniac to find a job in my time.

I was not one of those booted, because I had that voucher and it still had 30 days left on it. Again I asked for help, but received nothing more than a list of places that at one time or another took Section 8. The problem with the list: most of the properties on there either had age restrictions, 55+, 62+ etc., or they wanted more money than the voucher paid for.

I was stuck between a rock and a hard place and time was running out. I went to RHA and, per their written instructions, asked for an extension in writing. They said they made it very clear that no extensions would be granted. I asked if they knew of any place that would take the voucher. They said no, but there must be a lot of them because they had plenty of applications. (Personally I couldn't see the sense of that statement. You had the applications, but you couldn't tell me where they came from?) I left my written request with them but could not track down a place before the voucher expired.

I moved around the shelter carefully, expecting at any time to be removed, but that day hadn't come yet. I did get a verbal aside from my facilitator that the day was coming, but she didn't give me a particular day. What she told me, though, was that there are no excuses for not having a job. I felt for her, really, because she missed so much time in August and was in a wheel chair or walker and moves slowly through the hallways, but she's not using her injuries as an excuse. Except for the time when I needed her the most, to help me find housing when I had a voucher.

Still, I looked for work, and tried to establish my own business, called 'I Choose Not To Talk,' an organization that promotes a better understanding between introverts and extroverts. I established an Indiegogo campaign to raise money, and started designing buttons and T-shirts, hoping that enough money would be generated to get me out of the shelter before the hammer fell. So far, I've been wrong. The campaign is in its last 7 days. Please donate!

But then Wednesday came along and now everyone in the program has been given an ultimatum: Get out on your own or we'll put you out.

When I found this out, I was livid. Is this what a shelter is for? I know that Frank Lawrence, the center director is embarrassed by the fact that there are people living in his shelter who have been there more than a year. He made it sound like he was doing a bad thing by giving homeless men a chance to recover. Apparently other shelters don't give that much time, why should he?

Well, after having the 'Hearth Act' stuffed down my throat for the last 2 years, I sat down and read it today. Here are some highlights that have a bearing on me:

c) CERTIFICATIONS ON USE OF ASSISTANCE.—Each recipient shall certify to the

Secretary that—

(3) it will assist homeless individuals in obtaining—

(A) appropriate supportive services, including permanent housing, medical and

mental health treatment, counseling, supervision, and other services essential for

achieving independent living; and

(B) other Federal, State, local, and private assistance available for such

individuals;

Actually, SWSC has provided quite a bit of that assistance, but not the one I needed most: permanent housing. I tried to apply for a Shelter+ Care voucher, and was told that only disabled people qualified for that. Part of the problem with the Section 8 voucher was the limits put on it by RHA. Limits of $526/month. Shelter Care + doesn't have that limit, and I'm told neither did RHA until recently. The fact is I may not qualify for SSDI, but I AM disabled. I do have difficulty performing physical labor.

I am in the process of getting help from Vocational Rehabilitation. They recognize that I have a disability and have helped me in two regards so far: They arranged for all my teeth to be pulled and dentures made; and they are arranging for me to take computer certification classes at NCSU. Mind you, it took them almost a full year to begin those services after I applied, but the process has begun. I can't easily attend classes when I'm not sure where I'm going to sleep from night to night.

I don't believe that those who wrote the Hearth Act had it in mind that  people would be kicked out of shelters just because they've used it for longer than a year or even 60 days. As Frank has said, it is meant to hold shelters accountable for what goes on in them. Yes, I agree with that, but accountable should be to the occupants of the shelter, not to some government agency that seems to think that there should be a time limit to such stays.

Or better yet, SWSC should be accountable to actually providing the services that the act states it should provide. The problem is there isn't enough staff, and both staff and 'guests' are becoming frustrated with their end of the stick. Staff has too much work, and guests don't get enough of the services they need.

This is not what the Hearth Act is all about. Because if this is what they meant, to kick homeless people out of the shelter after a certain amount of time, then they lack empathy.

So let's look at ways the Act could help, if written properly:

• Let's get homeless men and women priority in hiring for government jobs. Not that working for the government is stable, but every little bit helps.
• Let's better define what makes a person disabled. I was denied SSDI because I can be retrained. Fine, I working on that. Give me time to finish that.
• Separate those seeking help from those not. Give better service to those that are seeking help, and basic services to those not.

Those are just a few suggestions to make the Hearth Act a little better. I'm by no means an expert in any field, but I know what works and what doesn't and right now, the Hearth Act isn't doing what it's supposed to be doing.

So 30 days to find a job, then 30 days to find housing. What happens after that? I fear that revolving door will return. Or worse: that the shelter will close, because everyone will be kicked out. But don't tell that to Frank, because he insists the shelter will remain open.

Will I get the help I need to accomplish one or both of those goals? Because I sure didn't the last time through.


I have worked my butt off for the last 4 years to prevent being homeless or to get out of being homeless without much to show for it. I take that back. I've become old and tired before my time. But even that works against me, making it that much harder to find a job or get income rolling in.

But neither my facilitator, nor the case manager, nor the center director, nor Wake County government, nor the State Assembly, nor the Governor of North Carolina, nor Congress, nor the President of the United States knows what I've gone through to find a job and live at this shelter.

As I stated in my book, the only thing keeping me alive at the moment is Hope. Wasn't that the theme of a recent presidential election? I'm not seeing much of it right now.

The staff sees a sheet of paper once a week showing how many jobs I applied to, but they don't see me walking 45 minutes each way to use Wake Tech's computers to not only apply for jobs, but to do what I can with no money and limited time and energy to build my own business. I may lack the business skills to make it work, but I have the drive and initiative to make it work. But I can't do it alone and my energy is running out.

And so, apparently, is time. I'll have to live in the woods, go to classes two nights a week, then drag myself back to the library to put more effort into raising money.  It might pay off someday, but I don't have time to wait forever.

All because someone thought giving homeless a time limit in shelters was a good idea. And I'll bet that person never spent one night in a shelter.

If you can't give me a job, a business loan or housing just give me the one thing I need the most right now: Hope.

There are no excuses for a lack of empathy.

The Indiegogo campaign for 'I Choose Not To Talk' is in its final days. If you'd like to donate, please start here: http://igg.me/at/ichoosenottotalk/x/5011549.

Alternatively, if you'd like more information on Project Five-Star, you may purchase the book at http://www.amazon.com/Project-Five-Star-Five-Points-Hope/dp/1463765053/