Breakfast to raise awareness for homeless and hungry

Published 12:00 am Friday, November 10, 2000

Friday, November 10, 2000

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Maureen Turner Osborn will read her poem about homelessness on Tuesday. Photo Provided

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Breakfast to raise awareness for homeless and hungry

By JANA PETERSON

Austin Daily Herald

Homelessness isn’t just a big city thing, it’s happening in Mower County. Granted, the typical homeless person here isn’t sitting on the sidewalk begging for money, or sleeping under a bridge in a refrigerator box, but he or she does exist.

He or she is often a family.

Anne Troska, Semcac’s outreach coordinator, sees the homeless or about-to-be-homeless almost daily and she is distressed.

"We need to wake up, people," she says after hearing that someone questioned the need for housing in Austin. "We’ve got a problem and it’s getting bigger."

The outreach coordinator wants people to "wake up" for two reasons: first, to acknowledge the problem; second, to attend a Homeless and Hunger Awareness Breakfast at 7 a.m. Tuesday at the Salvation Army Community Center. Organizers are asking for a donation to the Salvation Army’s food shelf. There also will be a freewill offering for the Semcac Emergency Shelter program.

"We have this problem because we have a very good economy," Troska said. "People are coming here for work and never dreaming that they won’t be able to find affordable, safe housing. It’s not only ethnic minorities, it’s people of all shapes and sizes who are looking for a better life in Austin."

She has hundreds of different examples of people who Semcac, the Salvation Army or another agency has helped.

 

Many of them have special needs, like the family of seven who come here hoping to find work and housing so they could be close to the Mayo Clinic. Semcac helped with five days in a motel after the family exhausted their money. Although both parents are now working, the family still is living in a motel after a two-month search for housing.

Others are in a state of depression or find life collapsing around them for some other reason. Troska talks about a single mother, who moved from couch to couch with her baby for two months after her boyfriend, the father of the baby, left her. Semcac put her in a hotel for five days – their maximum for emergency housing – and put her in touch with the Crisis Nursery.

It’s a growing problem.

Last year, Semcac served 270 individuals who were either homeless or in danger of becoming homeless. Of those, 138 were children. The Salvation Army also housed 141 homeless last year, bringing the total to 411 people served in 1999.

During October this year, Troska counted, Semcac was contacted by 31 households about housing concerns. Of those households, 94 were adults and 54 were children.

"It’s the children that get me," Troska said. "Their parents might have made some poor decisions, but the children don’t have any choices – they’re just along for the ride. A motel room is no place for a child. They need stability."

What is desperately needed, Troska said, is transitional housing – homes or apartments where people could stay for six months to a year while they piece their lives together.

She’s working on it with several other agencies, but in the meantime, the crisis continues.

"At the rate we’re going, we’re going to run out of money," Troska said, "and that’s even with an expansion fund."

She has an answer for those who will say, "it’s not my problem – parents need to take responsibility."

"It does take a village to raise a child," she said. "That’s what used to happen: neighbors watched out for each other; generation after generation stayed in town and knew everyone, distant relatives helped out with child care. Today, sometimes society has to be that extended family."