Nowhere to go: On and around UK’s campus, homeless struggle to get by

His feet hurt.

He sits down on the curb and wiggles his fingers under the laces to loosen their grip. He pulls off the shoe and rubs his feet with his weathered hands.

His back hurts.

He kneads his knuckles into the base of his spine and then into his right shoulder.

His head hurts.

He pulls his knees to his chest and folds his arms across them, burying his head into the pillow of his body to suffocate the pain.

“I’m just tired,” Herb says and lets out a heavy sigh. “I’m just real, real tired.”

A few feet from where he sits, Herb has parked his shopping cart piled high with trash bags filled with aluminum cans he has collected throughout the day. He’s scoured the streets around UK’s campus for 14 hours, collecting cans from trashcans or picking up those littering the sides of the streets.

“I like to think I do the city a service of some kind, like a clean-up guy,” Herb says and laughs a little as he scoots the cart closer to him. “It’s my way of life right now, my means for a living.”

Herb, like more than 2,000 other people in Lexington, is homeless.“There are a lot of us out here on the streets,” Herb said one afternoon in March as he walked down Woodland Avenue collecting cans in front yards. “There are people who feed us and places for us to crash for a night or so, but it’s still real hard. Earning a couple of bucks a day and trying to survive on that, it’s real hard.”

Counting the homeless

The Kentucky Housing Corporation and its Council on Homeless Policy have taken measures to identify the causes of homelessness and to work toward finding housing, education, employment and rehabilitation for people living on the streets in Kentucky.

But of the 14,000 people identified as homeless in the state — that number reaching as high as 19,100 over the past two years — almost 2,000 people remain unsheltered.

In reality, that number might be higher, said Alex Rodney, who used to work for the Catholic Action Center in Lexington.

“How do you count homeless people? There are a lot of people who aren’t going to come forward for that head count and say, ‘Yeah, count me, I’m homeless,’ ” Rodney said.

The Catholic Action Center, located on Fifth Street, offers meals and temporary shelter for people with nowhere else to go, Rodney said.

“There are a lot of people who need help in Lexington, whether that means a roof over their head or food in their stomachs,” he said. “There are a lot of people that have no money. They have nothing.”

Everyone is homeless for different reasons, Rodney said. For some, it’s because they couldn’t hold down a job, or maybe the bad economy caused them to be laid off. For others, mental illness or an addiction problem also leaves them on the streets, he said.

“I think the face of homelessness is hidden in a lot of ways because we choose not to look at the people,” Rodney said. “We make up our mind about what we think a homeless person looks like — maybe they’re dirty or sick or scary to some people — and we forget they are people. They are children and mothers and fathers.”

‘Fallen on hard times’

The Kentucky Council on Homeless Policy drafted the “10-Year Plan to End Chronic Homelessness” in 2006 and began to implement some of the plans to help move people off the streets in January 2007.

While several programs have been successful, the plan can’t help everyone living on the streets, said Davey King, who helped organize the council.

“The problem is, we can’t help people who don’t want to be helped,” said King, director of Specialized Housing Resources for the Kentucky Housing Corporation. “There are a startling number of people who are living on the streets but don’t want anyone to sweep in and rescue them.”

Some people living on the streets don’t want to believe they are part of a problem, King said.

Herb has been out of a job for about six months, after the auto body shop where he worked as a mechanic was forced to close because it wasn’t making enough money. A few weeks later, Herb was evicted from his apartment because he couldn’t afford to pay the rent.

“I don’t like to think of myself as homeless,” Herb said. “I’ve just fallen on hard times.”

Charities provide shelter

Herb and his cousins James and Fletcher walk the streets of campus daily, often with their friend Leroy, picking up aluminum cans to turn in for profit. Local recycling centers pay 28 cents a pound for aluminum. Herb says after a full day of collecting, his three-man team can earn around $7 or $8.

“It’s a lot of walking and a lot of digging through trash, which isn’t the greatest, but we can usually find about 12 or so pounds of cans a day,” Herb said.

Leroy said he is an Army veteran who found himself without a home after his mother became sick, and he had to quit his job to take care of her. He doesn’t regret spending time six years ago taking care of his mother in the months before she died, but getting back on his feet, Leroy said, is hard to do.

“I used to have a decent job, and now I’m looking through the trash for cans and taking handouts from people,” Leroy said. “It doesn’t do much for me, but it’s what I have to do. I’ve become something people try to ignore. And who wants to help a guy like that?”

Herb and Leroy stay with friends when there’s room for them and stay at churches downtown that offer outreach programs and hot meals, but they never have found a temporary home at local shelters like the Salvation Army or the Hope Center.

The Salvation Army only has beds for women and families, Herb said, and the Hope Center, which takes in men, is too far away from their can routes on campus — the center is located more than 2.5 miles from UK’s Central Campus.

The Salvation Army has a 152-bed emergency shelter on Main Street for families and single women. During their stay, residents receive three meals a day, comfort supplies, access to laundry facilities and LexTran bus tokens, said Director Maj. Debra Ashcraft.

Emergency shelters like the Salvation Army and the Hope Center provide short-term care for homeless individuals and rehabilitation and employment programs to help them get back on their feet, Ashcraft said. Implementing successful transitional programs — including emergency shelters — is the key to getting people off the streets.

Long-term solutions

The first warm day in April found Leroy stretched out on his back on a park bench in Woodland Park. His shopping cart sat nearby, about half filled with cans.

“On days like this, you just have to take a break and relax,” Leroy said and closed his eyes against the sun. “On days like this, street life doesn’t seem so bad.”

Of the 14,000 people homeless in Kentucky each year, more than 2,400 remain homeless for extended periods of time due to addiction to drugs or alcohol, and other special needs.

“It’s only been about six months for us,” Herb said. “We’ve been out of a house before then, for a couple of years back around 2000. It’s always a challenge for us.”

Herb said he and his cousins don’t have addictions to drugs or alcohol and aren’t disabled, but finding work is difficult sometimes, especially if the employer knows they are out on the streets, and especially during hard economic times.

But Leroy knows what life with addiction is like.

“I was spending dollars on alcohol and only collecting dimes on the street,” Leroy said. “But I didn’t care. I’d starve for a pint. That’s the life of an alcoholic.”

Leroy said he kicked his habit by finding a renewed faith in God.

“Every time I wanted a drink, I prayed instead. Prayer wasn’t nearly as satisfying to the thirst, but it helps a man get by.”

King said the state is working to further develop rehabilitation facilities for people who need help battling addiction. Partnered with employment and education programs, King said people would have a better chance at a fresh start. Other programs designed to help people with mental illnesses — more than 1,700 members of the homeless population in the state — are also a priority for the council.

“That is the focus right now for the homeless council,” King said. “We see more long-term accomplishments in helping to educate, helping people get clean and providing medical care.”

Getting people off the streets requires state government to provide affordable housing, King said. Kentucky’s 10-year homeless plan defines affordable housing as housing that costs no more than 30 percent of adjusted gross income.

In Kentucky, especially in the rural areas, that affordable housing is difficult to find for people living below poverty level, King said.

For Herb, his cousins and his friend Leroy, affording a house isn’t even a possibility. The men make between $8 and $15 each a day with the money they take in from recycling and from collecting change from people around town.

“How much is rent? Like $250 a month for a shack? We can’t afford that,” Herb said. “Look at this. This is how much we got.”

In his gloved hand, he held a couple of crumpled up dollar bills and a dozen silver coins.

“It’s not that I’ve given up,” Herb said. “But this is my reality right now. It’s not perfect, but it’s not awful.

“Call us homeless if you want to, but we don’t call ourselves that. We’re just getting by.”