Affluent Fairfax Shows Another Face: Poverty
Churches Reaching Out To Shelter the Homeless

By Bill Turque
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 3, 2006

Fairfax County, one of the nation's wealthiest areas, is seeing a sharp increase in the number of people seeking emergency shelter this winter, government officials say.

Waiting lists for families looking for room in one of the county's five shelters have swollen since last year, from an average of 60 families to more than 90. A coalition of churches, taking turns opening their doors to chronically homeless single adults, expected about 30 to 35 each night. Instead, the numbers have been twice that, despite the relatively mild winter.

Fairfax's homeless population has hovered around 2,000 for the last five years, the highest of any local jurisdiction except the District, with its more than 8,900 homeless, according to the most recent figures. Officials say that this winter's upward tick may reflect more awareness of available services rather than actual growth in the homeless population. The whole picture won't become clear until March, when the results of the region's annual survey are available.

The exact number, homeless advocates say, isn't all that important. Nor should it come as a surprise, they add, that a place as affluent as Fairfax (median household income: $85,400) has homeless people.

"Where there is great wealth, there is also insidious, hidden poverty," said Bob Wyatt, director of the Lamb Center, a daytime shelter for the homeless on Old Lee Highway.

The group of 60 or so that bedded down at Centreville United Methodist Church one evening last month included the hard core of a troubled population: chronically homeless single adults who usually opt to stay outdoors. They hole up anywhere: in the woods along Route 50 or Braddock Road, even the grounds of tonier venues such as the Army Navy Country Club. They are overwhelmingly male and almost evenly split between white and nonwhite. About a third hold some kind of job.

It was late afternoon when they arrived by bus from the Lamb Center. A few fell asleep right away, drifting off on the linoleum floor of the brand-new church gym, exhausted from days of living outside.

Others took a few minutes to size up the best spots to spend the night. Next to a wall was the location of choice; it eliminated at least one direction from which trouble could come.

"A lot of homeless people don't sleep at night," said Ken McMillon, 52, one of the 60 or so at the church. For those who live outdoors, such as McMillon, darkness can mean theft, assault or worse.

Their paths to homelessness vary, and personal histories can be murky or incomplete. Some were born and raised in Fairfax; others come from the District or beyond. Most held the kinds of service and retail jobs that sustain Tysons Corner and the county's other signature developments: busboy, janitor, security guard, sales clerk.

And most of them have seen a similar set of dominoes fall.

Start with an illness or an accident. Lose the job. Lose the car, complicating the search for work. Fall behind on the rent or mortgage. Lose the apartment. Exhaust the patience or resources of family and friends.

As others settled in for the night, Fernando Pardo, 38, sat quietly at a table, a steel cane resting in his lap. He emigrated from Colombia at 16 and waited tables at Fair Oaks hotels. After a car crash left him with a broken hip, a brother put him up for a time but then moved to Phoenix.

The wife of another brother in Annandale doesn't want him around. He can't work, he said, because of the constant pain in his hip.

For the last two months, Pardo said, he has spent days at the Lamb Center and nights usually behind shopping centers, where dumpsters and service entrances provide cover.

"You have to hide somewhere," he said.

Shortly before 6 p.m., the call went out for dinner. There was a slight glitch: The gym would be off limits from 7 to 8 p.m., for K-6 basketball tryouts. Those who wanted to eat and crash early would have to sleep elsewhere.

After a brief blessing, church volunteers served plates of pot roast and potatoes with salad, pasta and cherry pie. Most ate quietly and quickly. Some kept hats and coats on. Sweatpants peeked from under some jeans. One man wore a three-piece suit.

Despite their apparent isolation, many have family nearby. Yet some estrangement, often triggered by disputes over money, drugs or alcohol, has set in. Others appear embarrassed or depressed by their circumstances and have severed ties by design. Andre Evans, 28, was a security guard until he suffered a head injury in a car crash and lost his apartment six months ago.

Evans said he lived in foster homes from age 6 until he enlisted in the Army in 1998. He considers a foster couple in Spotsylvania to be his true parents, but he hasn't told them he is homeless.

"I feel like I've failed them," he said quietly.

Depression is endemic among the group. A 2005 study of single adults identified 80 percent as seriously mentally ill, chronic substance abusers or both.

Yet many homeless people and their advocates bristle at the assumption that drugs or alcohol sparked their collapse. It's more often the other way around, they say: The pain of a life that imploded leads to substance abuse or psychiatric issues.

The church effort, called the hypothermia response program, was prompted by the deaths last winter of two homeless Fairfax men. Even in a relatively mild chill, sleeping outdoors is dangerous, and alcohol accelerates loss of body heat and increases the risk of potentially fatal hypothermia.

Centreville United Methodist is one of 17 county churches taking turns opening their doors for a week at a time, regardless of the temperature. Susan Lampshire, chief operating officer of FACETS (Fairfax Area Christian Emergency and Transitional Services), a nonprofit that runs the program with the Lamb Center, said the goal is simple.

"People should not die. They should have shelter and food during the winter."

Their situation is receiving new notice from county officials. After a recent visit to a church shelter, Fairfax County Board Chairman Gerald E. Connolly (D) proposed creating a mobile medical clinic to treat the chronically homeless.

"We've got to reach them," he said.

By 7 p.m., dinner was long over, but the gym was filled with kids dribbling around pylons under the gaze of men with clipboards. A few of the homeless wanted to watch but were kept away by program organizers. Some sacked out in the carpeted hallway outside the church sanctuary, undisturbed by choir rehearsal.

For the most part, the week-long coupling of deep suburbia and chronic homelessness went smoothly. Volunteers who cooked meals and helped out in the gym were unfailingly courteous, the visitors, deeply appreciative.

"What it reinforces is how we could all be in that situation," said Barb Shaiko, the Centreville church's director of missions.

There were a few bumpy moments. One man slipped out of the gym and was discovered the next morning in the unoccupied nursery, asleep inside a cabinet. A few men went to the neighboring shopping center and brought back alcohol.

Tensions over drinking erupted on the final evening, when alcohol breath tests were administered by employees from the Fairfax Detox Center in Chantilly. Who authorized the tests is in dispute. But 11 "guests" were bused back to the Lamb Center and given sleeping bags for a chilly night on the streets. The expulsions disturbed FACETS officials, who said that the program aimed to protect people from the cold, even if they're drunk.

One of those ejected was McMillon, a tall, lean man who always keeps a couple of cigarettes in the fold of his wool cap. Nicotine, he said, helps dull hunger.

McMillon said that he drinks -- "I make no bones about it" -- but that he wasn't bothering anybody that Sunday night. Come March, when the program ends, he said he will most likely be back in the woods if he hasn't found a job.

His work history is substantial. After several years as a D.C. firefighter, he joined the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs as a computer technician. He lost his job, he said, after taking time off to nurse his dying father. Like many of the others, he has family in the area and burned bridges that he won't discuss.

"I don't want to do the Jerry Springer thing and air dirty laundry," he said.

He spends many of his days in libraries, he said, looking for openings and applying online, leaving the Lamb Center as his contact number. It has been slow. He was called back for a second interview at a Best Buy but never heard from the store again.

He said he is grateful for the kindnesses people have shown him, such as the bus driver who gave him an all-day pass to stay warm. Still, his despair grows.

"You can bring people up from New Orleans, take them shopping, give them money, give them jobs," he said, "before you take care of people who have lived next door to you all your life."