Project’s decade full of hurdles, hope

If they had to do it again, Lynn Peterson and Kathy Reed still would place a roof over the heads of Coeur d’Alene’s homeless. But they’d pave the bizarrely bumpy road that led to the opening of St. Vincent de Paul Society’s Transitional Housing Center 10 years ago.

“It was a nightmare from the beginning,” says Kathy, chuckling. She’s the social services director for the society’s Coeur d’Alene operation. “You have to be careful what you ask for.”

The housing center is 10 years old this year – miraculously. It was launched with the best intentions. At St. Vincent’s thrift store just north of downtown Coeur d’Alene, the poor and homeless found warmth and compassion. So they returned regularly.

“We kept seeing the same people come back with the same problems,” Kathy says. “We wanted to help break the cycle that led them to our door.”

Eventually, the center taught plenty of people how to take care of themselves and their children, and to find and keep jobs and apartments or homes. But it was hard, frustrating work that tested the limits of the staff’s faith in humanity.

“It was a total learning experience,” says Lynn, director of St. Vincent de Paul in Coeur d’Alene. “We got a lot wiser.”

Problems started back in 1992. Coeur d’Alene’s City Council chose not to help the society pay to open a homeless shelter. The Catholic charity planned to remodel its spacious thrift store into a shelter for about 100 people and reopen the store at another site.

A year later, St. Vincent’s lost the intended new location for its thrift store to Goodwill Industries. To qualify for a federal housing grant, the society proposed a housing center instead of an emergency shelter. The center would offer apartments and supervision that would teach tenants parenting, good tenant and job skills, help them find jobs and prepare them to rent from the general public.

The $1.3 million grant came through, but the society had to match it with cash, not labor, materials and volunteer work as Lynn and Kathy had expected. St. Vincent’s had to raise more than $200,000 a year for five years toward the project.

“The transitional center was overboard for us,” Lynn says.

They never contemplated rejecting the grant. Lynn fine-tuned her sales skills and talked Idaho Housing and Finance into giving the society land for the center. At the same time, lumber prices skyrocketed and the three-wing, 24-apartment design had to shrink to two wings and 16 apartments.

Even opening the center in 1994 didn’t settle the turbulence. Kathy was convinced that moving homeless families into safety and comfort would transform them into model citizens.

“It was one big, hard lesson,” she says.

At first, the center was open for as long as two years to any homeless family that included children. Adults signed contracts pledging to live by the no alcohol, no drug use rules. But Kathy learned quickly that many adults were willing to sign anything for shelter. She exhausted herself speeding to the center at all hours every night to straighten out drinking, drug and abuse problems.

Staff was nearly as much trouble. Lynn hired people with social work backgrounds and a passion to help people. Most had stars in their eyes.

“They had good intentions,” Kathy says. “They just didn’t realize how hard it is there.”

The staff worked where people were learning the basics of community living. Some had babies that cried all day. Parents fought. People rebelled against the chores they were expected to do. Many didn’t like living under nearly parental supervision.

“It was drama and chaos constantly,” Lynn says. “People want their lives to change but don’t want to do the work to make it happen.”

Lynn and Kathy learned to drug-test incoming tenants. Lynn worked 18-hour days to turn the thrift store into the center’s cash cow. Both cherished the victories that reminded them why they’d opened the center.

“If we weren’t so bonded, we wouldn’t still be friends,” Lynn says, sharing a knowing smile with Kathy.

“And I wouldn’t still be employed,” Kathy says.

They like to believe at least half their tenants’ lives improved after living at the center. All residents took classes in parenting and life skills. They shared chores. Some used the opportunity to go to college. Some single parents escaping abuse blossomed under the support.

As the years passed and educated Kathy and Lynn, the center evolved from maddening mayhem to controlled chaos. Denise Thompson directs the center now and insists tenants abide by the rules. One alcohol or drug infraction and they’re out. Still, Denise has the heart for the job.

“People shouldn’t go through life without happiness,” she says. She’s worked at the center for nearly three years. “I’m constantly stunned by the degree of homelessness here.”

Tenants can stay up to two years, but most leave sooner. The 16 apartments stay full. Families apply for residency. St. Vincent de Paul’s accepts those with the most potential for straightening out their lives.

Dorothy, a 39-year-old tenant who prefers to use her first name only, gave up 26 years of drug use to move into the center with her husband and five kids.

“We’re trying to learn skills to stay stable so we can get a house,” she says. “I go to mental health (counseling). I’m on medication. They’ve got me back in the social stream. I’m on the tenant team. That’s good for my confidence.”

Monique moved into the center a year ago to get her life together after moving from New Mexico. A case manager sold her on education, so Monique is in her first semester in North Idaho College’s social services program. The supervision, schedule and chores threw her at first, but she decided the housing opportunity was worth the inconvenience.

“They do good here,” she says. “They try to help everyone out.”

Richard Irving, a case manager and job counselor for the center, has helped 70 tenants find work since he started two years ago.

“That’s huge,” Denise says. “We’re talking about felons with no teeth and B.O.”

And alcoholics, former drug users, victims of abuse and sexual abuse and more. Some tenants are so unskilled socially when they arrive at the center that they defecate in the bathtub, Denise says. One mother told Denise her sexually abused child didn’t need counseling, for which the center offered to pay, because the mother had been sexually abused and had lived through it without counseling.

When Denise encounters such discouraging tenants, she remembers the young tenant, Lil, who arrived fresh from high school with her baby. Lil’s mother was a prostitute and on drugs. Lil had lived with a foster family in high school.

“She was so backward she couldn’t even use a copy machine,” Denise says. “She wouldn’t look me in the eye. She was a lot of work and she irritated me.”

But aptitude tests showed Lil was bright. She enrolled at NIC, stayed two years at the center and graduated from NIC. She’s at the University of Idaho now majoring in environmental science.

“She’s the one who left with the freshly washed face and cardigan sweater,” Denise says, voicing the dream departure she fantasizes for all her tenants. “I liked her when she left.”

Which tells Lynn and Kathy the rocky ride was worth it.