Shelters open, even as social supports vanish for northwest Michigan's homeless

Oct. 31—TRAVERSE CITY — To those who live there, the sparse cluster of trees off Division Street is called "The Pines."

It's not clear how many people live here. Some 30 to 40 tents dot the treeline, sprawled across a soft forest floor of pine needles. Campfires make for open-air living rooms. The sound of cars whirring down Silver Lake Road is muffled by the trees.

It's liveable during the northern Michigan summer, but that doesn't mean life has gotten any easier for campers in The Pines, particularly in the shadow of a pandemic. Social supports are vanishing, housing remains inaccessible, and this year, regional organizations are tallying record numbers of individuals living in homelessness.

The approaching winter also means frigid temperatures that likely will push residents into shelters like Safe Harbor, which opens on Monday.

On Friday, the Record-Eagle followed along with a weekly street outreach team composed of staff from the Goodwill Inn, NMCAA. Doctors from Munson Family Practice sometimes also join, encouraging COVID-19 vaccinations and checking in on patients.

"It's a parallel universe," said David Klee, the doctor who led the Munson delegation.

There's no single type of person that lives in the encampment. They are both young and old, employed and unemployed, chatty and withdrawn. Many have weathered trauma deep in their past, others struggle with addiction. Some are dealing with both, as well as fed-up relatives who turned them out of the house as a last resort.

One of the residents goes by the name Freedom. He arrived in February, travelling up from Ludington on the remains of a $600 stimulus check and the leftover pay from a housekeeping job done for a family who took him in during a snowstorm. He'd heard the area was good to the homeless, and he cherished a memory of fishing with his father in Glen Arbor — all the way back in the summer of 1969.

Freedom talks freely about his past, and his story of how he came to live in The Pines is his own. In 1981, at 15, he served 17 years for a second-degree murder. Then in 2003, he went back to prison, this time on two counts of criminal sexual conduct. He spent 38 years in prisons across Michigan, from Riverside downstate to Chippewa in the Upper Peninsula. He left the system as a registered sex offender with a criminal record.

"I was in a twisted place, man," Freedom said. "And it was a twisted time in my life."

Today he said he's a different person, identifiable by a fedora and flashy style reminiscent of Elton John. He makes money "canning" — returning empty beverage cans to Tom's Food Market on 14th Street for 10 cents each — and is proud to be self-sufficient. Last week, he took in a $116 haul and invested it in an air mattress for his tent. He's also an avid guitarist, and carries an unshakeable belief in being true to himself.

"I don't lie to anyone anymore," he said.

Freedom changed his name, but he can't change his past. And it's his past that's stopping him from finding work and being approved for a home.

"People don't want to rent to me," Freedom said. "There are whole trailer parks that say 'Not allowed.' Ask anybody, they'll tell you, 'Not allowed.'"

So instead of pursuing permanent housing, he put in for disability with the Department of Health and Human Services and is preparing to winterproof his tent for his first northwest Michigan winter.

Others in the campground also are deciding whether they'll check in to Safe Harbor, an emergency shelter that opens this week. Safe Harbor offers warm beds and hot meals. It also offers safety the campground doesn't. In the past few weeks, a newcomer to the ground has taken to slashing open tents while owners aren't around. Freedom stitched his shut.

But shelters like Safe Harbor and the Goodwill Inn are congregate living settings, which many don't find appealing. Last week, the Goodwill Inn also worked to manage an eight-person outbreak of COVID-19, according to Ryan Hannon, Goodwill's outreach coordinator.

Hannon makes weekly treks into the campground, taking the temperature of the living situation and assessing people's basic needs. He keeps tabs on each campsite, where he knows most residents by name.

"They're surviving out here," said Hannon, who has been doing this type of outreach for 14 years. "The Goodwill Inn is completely full, and they can't meet the whole need so people come to the camps."

Meanwhile, other services have collapsed directly as a result of the pandemic. Traverse City's only detox facility stopped accepting patients on Oct. 22. The facility, run by Addiction Treatment Services, had to close because of a staffing shortage that left it without enough nursing staff to comply with state laws, according to Dan Rockne, the facility's access manager.

Nursing staffing shortages have multiplied since the pandemic as high numbers of nurses left the profession, either to retire or because of the immense stress of working through the pandemic.

The facility, known as the P.I.E.R., was the only facility of it's kind that helped individuals manage the horror of dependency withdrawal, which can be deadly if unassisted.

"That means that our clients who are looking for withdrawal services have to look outside of Traverse City, or go to the emergency room," said Rockne. "It is tragic."

Since the closure, Rockne said he already received a referral who was left out to dry by the program's closure. He thinks the individual might have died from not receiving withdrawal treatment, he said, after seeing their name in the Record-Eagle obituary page last Sunday.

"It is not even a question of when people are going to die now, because people already have," Rockne said.

The disappearance of support systems like the P.I.E.R has frustrated the organizations and individuals trying to combat homelessness. Sarah Hughes runs an eviction diversion program through CERA — the program spent millions to keep hundreds of families housed throughout the pandemic — but her program can only keep people in their homes. Other initiatives are needed to help the unhoused, and for those types of initiatives, there hasn't been much community commitment, Hughes said.

Because of a concern the shelters will be overwhelmed by demand, this year Hughes' organization, the Northern Michigan Community Action Agency, is trying to organize more temporary winter lodging with MSHDA, the state housing agency. But even with state money, those solutions require facilities and money to realize.

"We're doing this work everyday, but there's not a lot of community buy-in. That's why we're struggling to find housing anywhere near town that is affordable," Hughes said.

And Hughes said organizations like hers don't feel supported by many local politicians.

"A lot of the congressional members in our ten counties will say we don't have a homeless problem here," Hughes said. "So it's really a difficult road when they don't acknowledge the true problem."

On Monday, with Safe Harbor's opening, a number of tents will begin to disappear as their owners get up and transition to shelter. Next year, it might not even exist — campgrounds move with the ebb and flow of the homeless community.

Freedom said he doesn't think he'll go to Safe Harbor. He's proud of his independence, even if it's a trade-off for the safety of communal living.

"I love what I got. I wouldn't trade it for anything," he said. "I'm free."