Is a permanent 'homeless district' on its way to Louisville?

The day they were kicked out of their downtown homeless camp in December, Daniel McStoots and his fiancee moved into Hotel Louisville on the dime of a stranger.

They ate a pancake breakfast the next morning. They took three showers a day. And, most importantly, they didn't have to worry where they were going to sleep.

But four nights later, they were back on the street – and back at the camp they had been kicked out of, this time without their tent, lost amid the chaos of last month's cleanup.

"No human being should live like an animal," McStoots, 34, told Courier Journal last month as he escaped single-digit temperatures in a downtown Starbucks. "I'm tired of being looked at like trash. ... I'm a human being like everyone else."

Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer halted cleaning out more homeless camps after a firestorm of criticism from concerned residents and homeless advocates.

He assembled a panel that is going to consider ways to help the homeless, including whether to allow permanent camps in certain areas. No specific locations have been discussed, according to city officials.

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Creating a "homeless district," officials said, is aimed at helping the hundreds of people in the city who are considered unsheltered homeless – a growing segment of the population that either chooses or is forced to live outside.

“We have a shelter system that some folks can’t get into for whatever reason,” said Eric Friedlander, the city's chief of community services and co-chairman of Fischer's task force. “There’s substance abuse, mental health and other background issues that" cause shelters to deny entrance unless there are below-freezing temperatures.

McStoots is one of those homeless who choose to stay outside. He said he prefers a camp over a shelter because of how he and his fiancee are treated by staff and other homeless people.

He's largely removed from this debate as are most given that the mayor's task force lacks a representative who is currently homeless. But he is paying attention to what's been going on, and he's hesitant about the idea of a designated homeless camp, especially if the homeless are tasked with the upkeep.

Rather, he said, the city should put more emphasis on finding housing for the homeless who don't want to live on the streets, as well as connecting them to other services, including drug addiction and mental health help.

"My opinion is get the homeless not homeless anymore," he said. "Get more vouchers, get more housing, build more Section 8 apartments. Get the homeless off the streets. The only way to fix homelessness is to take away homelessness."

Why not go inside?

During a stretch of 13 straight days below freezing, McStoots was outside in the camp, wearing sweatpants, a thermal shirt, and a heavy jacket bearing a 2014 Super Bowl patch. He used two pieces of cardboard as a bed to separate him from the cold, hard dirt and hunkered into a corner next to a freeway overpass.

He lives at the camp located near Interstate 65 at the intersection of Floyd and Jefferson streets. It's his second and longest homeless stint, and during both times, he only used the shelters to shower and eat.

The Coalition for the Homeless recorded about 6,500 homeless people from October 2015 to September 2016 during their annual census released last year. That included 5,600 individuals – an 8 percent decrease – in the number of people classified as sheltered homeless or those who stayed in emergency or transitional shelters.

But the report also found there were 740 homeless people living only in the streets or in camps, a 22 percent increase from the previous census.

In the shelters, McStoots said that his fiancee can't walk without at least a dozen men catcalling at her. The shelters are overcrowded and the staff is abusive, he said. Sometimes they run out of food, too.

"Go down when there is not a white flag and you'll get turned away," McStoots said, referring to a city program that opens shelters to all during bad weather. "I've seen them tell people that you can't come down and use the bathroom right now."

He wants to find an apartment. He's been on a wait list to get housing since July and said he hasn't heard from anyone since the media frenzy surrounding the cleanup of his camp ended.

Paul Stensrud, director of a Southern Indiana-based group called Exit 0, said smaller organizations hear about these sort of complaints from the homeless, many of whom have been barred from shelters. Others have reached their maximum stays without finding housing and more complain about treatment from staff, he said.

"There are folks living on the street because they've burned their bridges with the shelter," Stensrud said.

Natalie Harris, executive director of the Coalition for the Homeless, said her group takes any complaints by the homeless about mistreatment at any shelter seriously and pointed to a grievance process required at all shelters to ensure people aren't mistreated.

"From my personal experience, there are few people who are banned for a long period of time," she said. "And because we have multiple shelters, you are not banned from the other shelters. I know of a very small number who are banned from them all who had to do something violent or threatening to others to get banned from all three."

An already divisive idea

Fischer administration officials said they will facilitate a debate over the homeless district by looking at other practices, including what is done in similar-sized Midwestern cities, such as Grand Rapids, Michigan, and larger cities, such as Seattle.

They cautioned they won't pick a side.

Harris, who co-chairs the task force, said she hates to think that Louisville would accept permanent camps as a solution for the unsheltered population.

"Even if you do that, it becomes a shelter that somebody has to police," she said. "Who is going to make the rules. Do sex offenders get to come and do people who are actively using get to come there? If not, we really haven't solved a problem, so there's got to be some sort of a safe haven, and I would hope that would be indoors."

But Stensrud, who is also serving on the task force, said local leaders should accept that a certain amount of outdoor encampments will exist.

He suggests the city provide a parking lot or similar space that would be fenced in for security purposes, with a light police presence, that would be run by grassroots organizations. It would provide public toilets and medical services, he said, adding that the task force could work out the details.

"We are already familiar with these encampments. But if you chase them (homeless people) out, it interferes with social services and everything," he said. "There's people we're still trying to locate from the first roundup that have disappeared."

Harris pointed to another issue — the local loss of emergency and transitional beds across the city in 2016. The coalition's census report found a 32 percent decrease compared to two years earlier. Use of those beds, which are divided between homeless individuals and families, are often at 85 percent to 100 percent.

She called the numbers alarming, especially for families. She said that is also coupled with concerns about fewer resources to help those coming off the street once they're inside.

"Even when you get a hot and cot, you don't get somebody attached with that to help you figure out the whole process to get out of there," Harris said.

City officials acknowledge that Louisville doesn’t have enough beds for all of those living on the street currently. As a solution, Harris has lobbied the Fischer administration to require that any shelter receiving Emergency Solution Grant money, which is used for the most at-risk homeless, must also have a minimum of certain case management staff available on site.

Advocates argue that will help house homeless individuals quicker or get them treatment for either mental health or drug addiction, which will also free up beds.

Fischer administration officials said they visit nonprofit groups that receive the emergency solution money, including shelters, to ensure they are following certain guidelines surrounding homeless prevention, street outreach and rapid housing.

Friedlander, the community services chief, said the city is open to Harris' recommendation of requiring minimum services to receive funding but warned that it is a tricky proposal when talking about changing how those federal dollars are allocated.

“This is a complex issue tied up not just with real policy issues but real human emotion,” he said.

A desire to be boring

As he sat in the Starbucks, Daniel McStoots recalled growing up in Leitchfield, Kentucky. He said his childhood was normal until age 16 when he found what he calls his "first true love" — backyard wrestling.

He traveled the region as a professional two years later with the name "All-Star." His favorite memory was when he found a poster of himself in a West Virginia convenience store. He was the main event ahead of Ricky Morton, one half of the famed wrestling tag team the Rock 'n' Roll Express.

"I was really good. ... I had a lot of fans, a lot of support," McStoots said.

His career came to a crashing halt, however, when he fell 25 feet through three wooden tables during a match. One of the tables was on fire, one was covered in thumbtacks and the last with light bulbs.

He was left with a severe back injury and opted to pass on surgery. The pain worsened his burgeoning pill addiction, which led to a heroin habit. Through that and a series of other circumstances, McStoots ended up on the streets.

He likened homelessness to his 16-year drug addiction — easy to get into but hard to overcome.

"The hole is so big to climb out of ... you keep burying yourself, it seems like," he said.

McStoots said he's worked as an electrician, construction worker and plumber through a temp agency. However, he has trouble maintaining consistent work because he doesn't have a permanent place to live.

He also can't always afford his methadone clinic — he prefers medication after more than 30 rehab stints, which he said worked for him, but only temporarily. He's been sober for seven weeks, his longest stretch since early last year.

He longs to be a "boring person" with a stable job and stable apartment for him and his fiancee, whom he met in rehab in 2015 and who didn't want to be named for this story. But he's stuck on the streets, his back pain worsening and in desperate need of gallbladder surgery, which he's postponed until he has a place he can recover.

"One of my top fears is death," McStoots said. "I'm terrified that I'm not going to get this stuff done and it's gonna be the end of me. I worry about that every day."

"If something happens to me, what is she gonna do. ... There's no other thing more painful than that."

Justin Sayers: 502-582-4252; jsayers@gannett.com; Twitter: @_JustinSayers. Phillip M. Bailey: 502-582-4475; pbailey@courier-journal.com. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: www.courier-journal.com/justins.

Members of the city's homeless task force, as of Tuesday

Co-Chair Eric Friedlander, Office of Resilience and Community Services

Co-Chair Gena Redmon, Office of Resilience and Community Services

Co-Chair Natalie Harris, Coalition for the Homeless

Tony Zipple, Centerstone

Laura Ward, Centerstone

Mary Frances Shafer, Coalition for the Homeless

Paul Stensrud, Exit 0

Carey Addison, Family Health Centers

Amanda Mills, Family Health Centers

Christen Herron, The Forgotten Louisville

Mark Bolton, Metro Corrections

Sarah Moyer, Metro Health

Lt. Todd Felty, Metro Police

Maj. Andrea Brown, Metro Police

Keith Hackett, Metro Public Works

Maggie Elder, Metro United Way

John Carter, Resident

Johanna Wint, Salvation Army

Maria Price, St. John Center for Homeless Men

Steve Levy, St. John Center for Homeless Men

Kathy Cox, University of Louisville Hospital

Andrea Scott or Amanda Mills, UP In Kentucky

Nina Moseley, Wayside Christian Mission

How to contact the Coalition for the Homeless