Dark Skies Ahead at Easton's Safe Harbor

They all begin at different places. The mother whose daughter gambled away their house. The men whose tempers put them in jail. The woman who lost two jobs in less than a year. The foster kid who got too old.

They all arrive at the same destination: Safe Harbor, the Easton homeless shelter.

It's a two-story cinderblock building a short drive from the city's downtown. Every year, hundreds of people -- mostly from Northampton County, some from New Jersey -- pass through its doors.

And that's just the people they have room for; shelter works estimate they get 20 calls a day from people looking for beds. 

But after 20 years of providing a safe place for the local homeless population, Safe Harbor is looking for financial sanctuary. Federal funding for the Community Services Block Grant, which accounts for half of Safe Harbor's operating budget, is in danger of drying up.

"For us, it would be catastrophic," said Tyler Rogers, a caseworker at Safe Harbor. "We'd have to find a way to come up with $200,000 very quickly. Every year."

Without that funding, workers say, the shelter could close. Because of that fear, Safe Harbor is launching a community appeal to help keep going.

'Like Feeding the 5,000'

It's just before noon on a Tuesday morning. Nearly all the residents are out; one of the rules of the shelter is that the people staying there need to be working or out looking for work during the day. One man sleeps on a thin mattress in a bunk upstairs; he has a night job.

Upstairs and downstairs, there's a lot of activity. Residents have come back for lunch. There are other people here for the day program; they don't live here, but come here to get a meal, or maybe just to socialize. Ginny Truglio, Safe Harbor's development coordinator, says some of these are people who otherwise would have no other place to go.

In the kitchen, Annie Rudolph prepares lunch. Nothing fancy today, just sandwiches. The shelter makes do with donations, says Truglio.

"It's almost like feeding the 5,000," she says.

"If we get a donation of..." A how-do-I-put-this? pause.

"...quasi stale bread, she makes the best bread pudding in the world."

Rudolph is more bashful about her skills.

"I make sure they can eat and I love to cook," she says.

'They Say the Recession is Over...'

People can stay at Safe Harbor for up to 60 days. The whole time, Rogers and other staff members are at work finding residents a place to live. If not an apartment, maybe a room somewhere. 

"If I can get an income, I can subsidize an apartment," he says.

Most of the time, people end up here due to a  substance abuse or mental illness. But lately, Rogers has noticed a new pattern: people who simply could no longer afford to pay their rent or mortgage and wound up homeless.

"That's a hard one," he says. "It's different when you have someone through no fault of your own, ends up here." 

Michele Lawshe falls into that category. She had a financial services job, then got laid off, found another job, was laid off again. She's bright, friendly and well-spoken.

"Not to toot my own horn, but I grew up in Sussex County, very affluent community," she says. "This...has been rough. They say the recession is over..." 

For her, it isn't. She'll be moving in with family members in Florida soon.

Some residents say they'd have laughed if you'd told them years ago that they'd be sleeping in a bunk at Safe Harbor.

"Basically, my world fell apart," said Martin Schimmel, who was jailed for burglary in 2009, and had no where to go when he got out.

He has a job now with a roofing company, and acknowledges how difficult it is for people coming out of prison to find work. 

He thinks places like Safe Harbor get a bad rap. "People always have that picture in their heads. A shelter: drugs, vagrants, degenerates, alcoholics," Schimmel says. "No. It's not like that. More good comes out of here than bad."

'People Have No Idea'

Between July of 2009 and June 30 of 2010, Safe Harbor provided shelter for 346 men and women. It found housing for 123 people, served more than 46,000 meals, found jobs for 112 homeless people, and got more than 140 people into drug and alcohol/mental health treatment programs.

There's also about 56 clients outside the shelter participating in something called the "representative payee program," which helps people -- often those with mental issues -- handle their money.

Those things could all vanish without funding, Truglio said, leaving hundreds of people without anywhere to go. 

In January, she and the shelter's director took part in the Department of Housing and Urban Development's "Point in Time" program, which inventories the local homeless population.

"It's frightening," Truglio said. "People have no idea. No idea."

She fears it will grow even larger without Safe Harbor.

On that day in January, they found sleeping bags in the woods nearby. Truglio says it's an unseen population in Easton. They live in the woods, along the Bushkill, on the little islands on the Delaware.

You'll even find them camped under a billboard down the road from Safe Harbor. It's heated, Truglio explains, making it a popular spot.