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thedrifter
11-26-07, 07:51 AM
Posted November 25, 2007

Green Bay's homeless try to cope with being left out in the cold

Lack of institutions, shelters adding to growing problem

psrubas@greenbaypressgazette.com


As the church bell strikes 6 p.m., a group of men file out of the cold yellow glow of the parking lot light and into the warm church gymnasium that will be their dining room, living room and bedroom for the night.


Among those who come in out of the cold are friends David Leurquin and Tom Waarala. They are homeless.


Leurquin, 38, has been homeless since getting out of prison nearly 10 months ago. He has lived under a bridge, crashed with a friend and slept in a van most of the summer before coming to St. John's Homeless Shelter at 411 St. John St., Green Bay.


He expects to be at the church only a short time because he plans to move back in with his ex-wife. That way, he can take care of their four children while he looks for work to supplement his part-time income as a roofer.


"It's hard to find a job when you have a record," he said.


Waarala, a 56-year-old Green Bay native, has been homeless off and on over the last several years.


"I was sleeping in the parks, trying to dodge the police," Waarala said. "I went to Whitney Park, and I'm 6-foot-7, but I managed to put myself into the kids' slide, under the roof. It gets cold."


A 14-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, Waarala had two tours of duty in Vietnam. He quit the Marines shortly after beating a man senseless after catching him with his wife.


"They didn't kick me out, but I could read the writing on the wall: My career was over," he said.


And so was his marriage.


Waarala had a good job driving a forklift over the next few years. But after enlisting at 17, he had experienced adult life only as a Marine, and he found he didn't do so well outside that structured environment.


"Back then, Marines were expected to get drunk and fight. But now …" he said.


He has lost jobs after failing to show up for work, getting drunk, fighting and going to jail, stealing gasoline from his employer and going to jail again.


Now he finds himself unemployed with a very poor work history.


"I'm 56 years old, I have no address, no phone number, a bad work history … What's the first thing on an application after your name? Address and phone number. And I don't have them. And I'm on probation.


"I made some very stupid decisions. I'm not blaming anyone. I made my own bed here."


Why?

The debate about the need for homeless shelters in Green Bay has painted two opposing portraits of the homeless: the victims of society and the shiftless operators, the helpless and the lazy.


Social workers and caregivers talk about the chronic homeless — the mentally ill and the drug addicts who can't and won't take care of themselves and need a place to prevent them from dying in the cold.


The Rev. Guy Blair has seen homelessness up close.


He ran the Churches Offering Temporary Shelter program at St. John's before the city ended it and allowed an emergency shelter at the church last month. He stays there nightly although his regular quarters at the church rectory are just a few feet away.


Blair says the homeless people he sees are hopelessly out of reach and often beyond the help from people who want to provide assistance.


"Some just aren't able to cope with life," Blair said.


"Not everybody can be successful, find a job, maintain a schedule, because they come from a background that hasn't given them values for that, values that you and I take for granted, like self-discipline.


"And how does somebody become a roaring alcoholic, or a drug addict? The reasons for that are myriad."


No one at the shelter "has chosen to be homeless," Blair said. Some have greater needs.


Even the men and women who appear most able to take care of themselves come from dysfunctional families, have been cut off from their relatives or have some other reason for "failing at life," Blair said.


Society and our culture have helped increase homelessness, said Karina O'Malley, a retired sociology professor who, with her late husband, Lou, ran the Crossroads homeless shelter in Green Bay for years.


The breakdown of families over the last generation coincided with the elimination of mental hospitals, orphanages and other institutions that used to help the poor and others who couldn't take care of themselves, she said.


"We all make bad choices, but if society is stable … you work that out and you can come back," she said. "You have the prodigal son — you could go home — but where's home now? Home has moved."


Urban renewal projects, while removing blighted properties from cities, also eliminated much of the affordable housing, she said. Improvements in technology and the moving of manufacturing has eliminated many unskilled jobs, and many people who are working multiple low-paying jobs barely make enough to support themselves.


"As long as we've had poor people in the world, we've had people with drug and alcohol problems, mental problems — but we've not always had them on the street," she said.


The reasons for homelessness aren't always clear to the homeless.


"I wish I knew," Waarala said about his situation.


Living without a home

Sixty-seven-year-old George, who wouldn't give his last name, recently waited on the porch of St. John's Homeless Shelter to get in for the night. He stayed there the night before but smoked hand-rolled cigarettes as he waited on the wrong side of the building.


George was recently kicked out of the New Community Shelter on Mather Street for showing up drunk. The shelter, Green Bay's largest provider of services to the homeless, won't accept people under the influence of alcohol or drugs, said Kris Olson, development director.


"You can't put somebody who has been drinking next to someone who's working on sobriety," Olson said.


George said he lost a brother to alcoholism and a son to heroin.


He walks with a limp and lives off checks from the Veterans Administration and Social Security. He worries about how he will continue to receive those checks, because he lost his mailing address when he was kicked out of New Community.


Eventually he'd like to get back on his feet, bring his girlfriend up from Chicago and maybe rent a place near the river, because he likes to fish.


"I've heard you can't eat the fish, but people do eat it, right?" he said.


Another young man, who claimed to have two years of college, explained his situation this way: "Sometimes somebody offers you a place to stay and it doesn't always work out."


On a different day, three men hung out on a park bench along the Fox River Trail drinking Milwaukee's Best Ice out of 16-ounce cans and watching the fishermen fighting a wicked wind on the river.


One of them, 52-year-old Steven Salmy, had stayed at St. John's the previous night. But now he'll stay with his two new drinking pals, Jim Smith, 66, and Matt Blackbull, 36, both of whom have been homeless but who now have a place to stay — with room for Salmy.


"We're trying to help a brother out," said Blackbull, who was taken off the streets similarly by Smith.


Salmy knows he has a drinking problem, but he thinks he's beginning to master it: "I had it so bad, I used to sleep with a bottle of whiskey. Now I just drink beer."


Salmy regularly slept in his car, even while he worked a regular job, but a drunken driving ticket caused him to lose his license, which caused him to lose his job, which caused him to lose his car.


Now he has no job, no money.


"You hit a slump and can't get out of it," Smith said.

Ellie