Todd McMahon

USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin

An average of one in six adults at St. John the Evangelist Homeless Shelter this season was 18 to 25 years old.

The downtown Green Bay shelter closes for the season Saturday morning.

GREEN BAY – What now?

As weeks and months of living in an emergency shelter gave way to just days and hours of preparing to be back on the streets again, Taylor Lang refuses to give up hope.

“I want it so bad,” the 19-year-old said of finding a permanent residence. “I don’t need a big place. I’ll be humble with what I get. Especially for a first place, I really am not picky.”

Unfortunately Lang, may have to wait to fulfill his dream of having a place to call his own for the first time since he graduated from Lincoln High School in Manitowoc last spring.

When St. John the Evangelist Homeless Shelter closes Saturday following another season of serving hundreds of homeless men and women, Lang won't be alone in leaving the downtown Green Bay shelter with more uncertainty ahead of him.

Only a few among a sizable group of young adults who spent time — often, considerable time — in the shelter since November will have moved on or are moving on to having a roof over their head.

“It’s been quite the year,” said Lexie Wood, the shelter’s executive director.

Of the roughly 450 people who stayed at the shelter over the last six months, more than 75 were ages 18 to 25. That is an average of one young adult for every six people in the shelter. What’s more, the number of younger adults jumped about 40 percent from the 2014-15 shelter season, when 54 people in the 18-to-25 age bracket stayed there.

On top of those unsettling numbers, the average length of stay for the young-adult population was 39 days, the longest among the facility’s users, who ranged in age from 18 to 76. The minimum age to enter the shelter is 18.

“These (young people) are coming and they’re staying longer because they don’t have the work history to get a job, they don’t have the education,” Wood said. “If they’re at the last-resort shelter as an 18- to 25-year-old, there’s going to be other barriers going on with them.

“So, if you’re out on the gym floor (in the shelter), you see the young adults. The older individuals that maybe just fall on hard times, got sick, lost a job, need to earn a paycheck and get out, it’s a little quicker. (But) these (young) guys, they’re with us long term.”

'This is truly the bottom'

Except for time he spent at a homeless shelter in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula during the winter holidays, Lang’s first-ever stay at the St. John the Evangelist shelter nearly lasted the full six months of its availability.

“There’s people my age, some will never see this side of life, and it’s really sad because you don’t know life until you’ve scratched this surface of being at the bottom,” Lang said Tuesday during a day out of the shelter.

“This is truly the bottom, and I’m trying to get back up,” he added.

Lang left what he described as a controlling home life in Manitowoc shortly after his high school graduation. He came to Green Bay and spent some time in New Community Shelter, which is open year-round, before winding up at St. John the Evangelist when it opened in the fall.

Lang is bipolar and recently struggled with some physical ailments. Those complications have kept him from getting steady work and having the financial means to save money and rent an apartment.

Any money Lang earned from jobs through a local temp agency went toward paying outstanding criminal fines and a new smartphone after his previous phone was stolen.

When an older homeless woman asked Lang if he had 4 cents as they started their day Tuesday at The Micah Center, the daytime resource center affiliated with the St. John the Evangelist shelter, the young man regretfully said, “I don’t think I have any change.”

Lang spent part of that day trying to get approved for a studio apartment he desired on Green Bay’s west side.

Working with case managers at The Micah Center, Lang was placed on a list for the Rapid Rehousing program. Backed by grants, the short-term transitional housing program provides a greatly reduced rent and other assistance for qualified Brown County homeless residents.

Similar programs are offered by other agencies in Brown County ,with the intent of helping those in destitute situations work toward self-sufficiency.

After not getting the apartment he coveted, Lang went into this weekend unsure whether he would have housing after the shelter closes. He said he might have to buddy up with a homeless friend at a local hotel for a few days until he figures out his next step.

“I talk to (the young adults at the shelter), and I just wonder because when I was their age I was never homeless, I always had a job,” said Troy Broadie, 54, who stayed at the shelter this spring. “The only thing holding ’em back is themselves. No one is going to hold your hand. You might find a few people (to do that), but on average, no, no one’s going to hold your hand.”

On the road to recovery

Help is readily available for those who seek it, however.

Wood and the case managers at St. John the Evangelist Homeless Shelter and The Micah Center, which is open Monday through Friday when the shelter is closed, are available to work on plans for job placement, housing assistance and, frequently, recovery for drug and alcohol abuse.

Daisy Bohm, 24, said she’s been clean for nearly six months and is starting to get her life together after a longtime addiction to heroin.

After many years of being homeless and resorting to prostitution just to get some refuge from the streets, Bohm participated in a sobriety program at the shelter and still receives counseling at The Micah Center.

“Daisy’s done a lot of work to get where she wants to be in life,” Wood said. “She has a lot to be proud of.”

Bohm recently gained custody of her two young children. She and the kids have been living at House of Hope, a Green Bay shelter for homeless women up to age 24 who are parents or are expecting. Bohm also started a job this spring at a local fast-food restaurant.

“It’s been a long road, but I’ve made it a very long way,” Bohm said.

Bohm’s background is common among the young adults who are homeless, Wood noted. She was a foster child, has a mental illness (borderline personality disorder) and was booted to the streets by her adoptive parents after she graduated from De Pere High School.

“Stability was not something I know,” Bohm said.

Wood said many of the young adults who are homeless "have fallen through the cracks in school and oftentimes haven’t built up a long enough period of need to really be on the radar with outside providers.”

Focused on a better life

While Bohm is determined to work hard and save money to get a place for her and her kids in the near future, Lang isn’t deterred by still being without a home.

The teen has drawn inspiration from Bohm, whom he befriended in the homeless shelter.

“She knows what it’s like to hit the bottom, and she came up a little bit,” Lang said. “She’s coming up, and I can see in her eyes she has goals. Everybody has goals … should have goals.

“I’ve talked to her a lot, and she’s one of the people I can vent to because she’s been through worse than me.”

His love for singing goes all the way back to elementary school, and he hasn’t given up his dream of becoming a musician.

For now, though, Lang just wants to have a place — all his own for the first time — to which he can go home every night after work without having to worry about whether he’ll have to spend the next day looking for shelter.

“It’s my first year (of being homeless), and I don’t plan to come back on these streets,” Lang said. “It’s not a life I imagined living.”

tmcmaho2@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter @ToddMcMahon23