Apr 16, 2013 4 min read

By Barbara S. Miller

Staff writer

bmiller@observer-reporter.com

If you’re headed down Interstate 79 or Route 19, you’re down on your luck and flat broke, and you need a place to stay and a meal, Washington is the last stop between Pittsburgh and Morgantown, W.Va.

Or, if you’re in the same situation and traveling east-west, or vice versa, on Interstate 70, Washington is likely your option between Greensburg and Wheeling, W.Va.

“We get ’em from Allegheny County, we get ’em from Greene County, because we’re in the interstate corridor,” said Tim Kimmel, Washington County director of human services. “We get them from West Virginia. So we’re accessible.”

Greene County, for example, does not have an emergency shelter.

While Washington County residents might be concerned about taking care of their own first, money for government-funded care of the homeless comes from federal taxpayers, which is distributed to a host of non-profit agencies.

“They’re homeless, so they have no residency,” Kimmel said. “And likewise, when our shelters are full, and we have a situation, we place in Allegheny County so we can at least get these people a roof over their heads.

“If we can prevent a homeless situation, that’s what we want,” Kimmel said.

“After that we move into the emergency shelter system, which has a threshold of how long individuals and families can stay there of 60 days.”

“The focus of the emergency shelter system is to stabilize our individuals and family, provide case management support system and see if we can assist them in securing permanent housing.”

Moving in with family and friends might be an option for some. Another option might be transitional housing, a two-year program with support services. Or the route might be what’s known as “permanent supportive housing,” for those who have some type of disability, perhaps developmental, perhaps a history of

drug or alcohol abuse.

“This continuum was really, in my opinion, developed by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development,” Kimmel said. “And they put these two pieces in there, transitional and supportive housing, because they found that moving people from emergency shelter into permanent housing, we were setting them up to fail.

“Because we weren’t able, in 60 days, to address that they had bad credit, they didn’t know how to manage money, that they needed all these life-skills services.

“So they came up with the concept of transitional housing that gives us two years, helps us to work with them, and the goal is to have a successful transition.”

That’s the way the system is supposed to work.

The reality may be quite different.

Ironically, the interview for this story was conducted on the seventh floor of the Courthouse Square office building, just above the plaza where a homeless man was a fixture for several years.

With a shopping cart or two containing the worldly possessions that were important to him, he gravitated toward the gazebo. Scores of county employees and visitors would pass him each day, sometimes leaving coats and food for him.

He appointed himself night watchman, and one weekend in 2007, he noticed a cascade of water running down steps and reported it to sheriff’s deputies returning from a shift at a county park. A heating and cooling unit burst, sending a cascade of water into the elections office, its conference room and floors below.

The following year, he moved his base a few blocks east, where thugs attacked him. When he recovered, he became a resident, not of the streets, but of a local program known as Safe Haven, according to Bill Leach, director of Connect Inc.

“We found $5,000 in uncashed checks, we got him a guardian, and successfully got back his Social Security checks,” Leach said.