PACEM’s Women’s Case Manager Heather Kellams asks for donations of arts and crafts supplies, games, books, and other “enriching activities” for those who are currently being housed in a hotel.
PC: Eze Amos
As the number of coronavirus cases continue to rise in our area, life has become increasingly dangerous for those who do not have a place to call home. To protect these vulnerable community members, local shelters have pivoted from their usual operations and redoubled their efforts over the past several months—but not without challenges.
For months, these organizations have been scrambling to find housing for people who need it.
In March, People and Congregations Engaged in Ministry, or PACEM, which works with local community groups to provide shelter for the homeless, began housing women at The Haven and men at Key Recreation Center.
In late April, the Thomas Jefferson Area Coalition for the Homeless was able to secure funding for 30 rooms at a local hotel. All six of the women housed at The Haven, and about a dozen men from Key Rec, were transferred there.
The rest of the men, however, had to remain in a group setting, because the hotel rooms were reserved only for high-risk individuals, according to Jayson Whitehead, executive director of PACEM.
PACEM then managed to set up another women’s shelter at Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church in May. And once TJACH reserved 20 more rooms at the hotel the following month, these women were also transferred there, along with the men who were staying at Key Rec, regardless of their risk status.
But PACEM is no longer able to take in guests who aren’t high-risk, due to the limited number of hotel rooms available.
“Everyone who was in the congregate setting, whether they were women or men, did have a place in the hotel,” says Stephen Hitchcock, The Haven’s executive director. “That’s not the case now. If someone is experiencing homelessness, but is not [high risk], given their age or medical vulnerability, they do not have an emergency option [with us].”
Those who are not high risk can go to The Salvation Army shelter, he says. It’s often at capacity, though, and is currently unable to accept new guests, thanks to recent state restrictions.
In the spring, as a response to the economic fallout caused by the pandemic, Governor Ralph Northam and the Supreme Court of Virginia ordered a moratorium on evictions. On June 29, that moratorium was lifted, causing concern among advocates for the unhoused. Northam and the state supreme court reinstated the eviction ban on August 7, but in July, over 15,000 eviction hearings were heard in court, and more than 3,000 families were evicted across Virginia, according to the Legal Aid Justice Center.
From July 1 to August 7, landlords brought 73 unique eviction cases against Albemarle County renters and 57 cases against Charlottesville renters. Of those 130 cases, 28 have already been decided against the tenants, and dozens more remain on the docket in coming weeks.
However, Anthony Haro, executive director of TJACH, says it is “too early to say” if there’s been an increase in homelessness due to lifting the moratorium.
“I don’t think we’ve really seen it yet…we are anticipating it,” says Haro. “[But] there are programs that are stepping up to keep people in housing.”
The state is currently running a rent and mortgage relief program, which has about “$2 million available locally to help families facing eviction,” says Haro. “It’s been very, very busy. There’s lots of people reaching out right now…It’s not going to meet all of the need, but we’re hoping that it’s going to prevent a lot of those evictions that we are anticipating.”
For the guests it is able to house at the hotel, PACEM provides a variety of services, including daily meals, group therapy, and weekly checkups (performed by UVA medical students). Staff also sets up and brings guests to doctor’s appointments, which are covered by TJACH.
Due to the extensive health and safety measures both staff and guests have taken, there have been no COVID-19 cases among those at the hotel, according to PACEM’s Women’s Case Manager Heather Kellams.
“The women have said that, being at the hotel, they feel much safer. They feel that their mental and physical health needs are being met in this setting,” she says. “They have a chance to be more grounded, so that they can really look at their goals…and work on becoming more stabilized.”
Kellams says that guests are “really bored,” though, and she’s asking for donations of arts and crafts supplies, games, books, and other “enriching activities” to keep them occupied.
“Somebody could come in and cut their hair while wearing masks,” she adds. “Those are the kind of things that would really be helpful.”
The Haven and PACEM ultimately hope to transition guests to permanent housing, using the thousands of dollars in donations they’ve received. But the pandemic has made this more challenging than ever.
“We have a lot of dollars to house people. There’s just not affordable housing available,” says Hitchcock. “A lot of landlords are very skittish right now…They’re waiting to see what UVA does, and what it means for students to come back. They’ve got students in leases generally from August to August, and that directly affects us—that’s the affordable housing.”
“It’s been ironic to be heavily resourced financially but with a dearth of affordable housing,” he adds. “We’ve always had this affordable housing issue, but it’s acutely the case right now.”
When the pandemic does finally come to an end, Hitchcock is hopeful there will be an even greater push for affordable housing in Charlottesville.
“It feels like the general public is beginning to understand that homelessness is at its root a housing crisis,” he says. “And what is being amplified is that housing is health care. Everyone being safe—including folks who are extremely poor or housing insecure—is public safety.”
Body camera footage released by the police department shows an officer grabbing Christopher Gonzalez, moments before throwing him to the ground.
“If you can stay off the Downtown Mall and I don’t see you again, then I won’t take you,” said the Charlottesville police officer.
“That’s not going to happen,” said Christopher Gonzalez, who had been lying on his back on the mall outside CVS. It was 5:30pm on Wednesday, July 8. The sun was shining.
“Why?” The officer asked.
“I’m going to stay living right here,” said Gonzalez. He was experiencing homelessness, and had nowhere else to go.
“Then I’m going to take you to jail for drunk in public,” the officer responded.
“Well let’s go then,” Gonzalez said.
The officer turned Gonzalez around and started to put him in handcuffs, but Gonzalez pulled his arm away. Moments later, the officer threw Gonzalez up against the wall of the CVS, kneed him in the thigh, and pinned him on the ground in a headlock, where he held him for around 50 seconds.
An Instagram video showing the physical altercation was posted later that evening, and soon after, at the request of multiple community members, the Charlottesville Police Department released 17 minutes of body camera footage recording the lead-up to the incident. The body camera fell off during the scuffle, so the Instagram video is the only available footage of the physical arrest.
A citizen on the mall saw Gonzalez lying down and called 911, says the CPD. The body cam footage shows that a police officer arrived first; then a rescue squad appeared and gave Gonzalez a clean bill of health. The officer dismissed the rescue squad, and the altercation began. The police department has not released the officer’s name because the incident is subject to an “ongoing investigation.”
Fortunately, Gonzalez did not appear to suffer any physical injuries. He was charged with felony assault of a police officer, as well as with misdemeanors for public intoxication and obstruction of justice.
The officer’s violent arrest of Gonzalez has drawn concern from justice system experts and activists around town.
“I’m a nurse, and I am a researcher, and one of the things that I focus on a lot is strangulation,” says Kathryn Laughon, a UVA nurse and an activist with Charlottesville’s Defund the Police movement. Laughon says, speaking generally, “use of chokeholds by police—it’s unconscionable. There is no safe way to apply pressure to anyone’s neck.”
“We don’t do chokeholds, we don’t teach any sort of neck restraints,” said Police Chief RaShall Brackney in an interview with Victory Church on June 14.
“[Gonzalez] really didn’t assault the officer,” says Legal Aid Justice Center community organizer Harold Folley. “He pulled away from the officer, but he didn’t assault the officer. It doesn’t justify the officer beating his ass like that.”
Stephen Hitchcock is the executive director of The Haven, a shelter just a few blocks from where the incident took place.
“We deal with that kind of situation, someone who’s intoxicated, every day, all day,” says Hitchcock. “And we never have to knee the person, and pummel them, and then slam them to the ground, ever. We’ve never had to do that.”
“You give someone a bottle of water. It changes their breathing, it builds a connection with them. A little act of trust and generosity,” Hitchcock says. “How in the world, in this moment, could an officer think that was the way to address this person who’s intoxicated?”
The officer’s treatment of Gonzalez fits into a larger pattern of criminalizing poverty and addiction, say these activists. And Black and brown people feel the effect of those practices at a disproportionate rate.
The officer, standing just a few feet from restaurants where affluent patrons drink the night away, offered Gonzalez a deal—leave the mall and we won’t arrest you. “A drunk in public—it is against the law,” Hitchcock says. “But how many white, wealthy people behind the looping chains [of restaurant patios] are also drunk?”
“To say that, in the city, there are certain places where you can’t be drunk in public, but if you move a block away it’s not a criminal act—that tells me that this isn’t about health and safety,” says Laughon.
“So often, you see [UVA] students getting trashed,” Folley says, “and the officers assist them, help them to where they need to go…But that’s the difference between Black and brown people and white people.”
Arresting people who are experiencing health problems or homelessness makes it more difficult for them to get back on their feet, Hitchcock points out. If the felony charge sticks, it will be harder for Gonzalez to find housing and employment.
The body cam footage shows police officers misbehave in smaller ways, too. Several of the officers who appear in the video are not wearing masks to prevent the spread of COVID. And as an officer pats down Gonzalez, he pulls bits of trash and a bottle cap out of Gonzalez’s pocket, which he then litters on the ground.
Activists see this incident as an example of why it’s necessary to radically change the way police operate in the city.
“What I see is the importance of a strong Civilian Review Board,” says Folley. “The police should not police themselves.” (Charlottesville’s Police Civilian Review Board has just begun meeting, but it has been entangled in a dispute with City Council over its own bylaws.)
“This is a perfect example of why using armed police to be our first responders to just about every situation is a real problem,” says Laughon. “The money that goes into policing, and to then criminalizing behavior, could be better spent on housing, on health care—those are things that would make the community safer and healthier.”
The Downtown Mall has hundreds of private seats owned by restaurants and cafés, but only 37 public seats. PC: John Robinson
Last year, the Seattle Department of Transportation installed 18 new bike racks on a stretch of pavement underneath Highway 99. However, the racks were not meant to provide more resources for cyclists—but to prevent the homeless people who had been camping there from coming back.
Seattle is just one of many cities known to use hostile, or “defensive,” architecture to deter “unwanted behavior,” such as loitering or sleeping in public spaces. Curved and slanted benches, street spikes and dividers, boulders and spikes under bridges, and benches with armrests—among other examples—have been spotted and posted on social media in cities across the country.
While city governments claim that such architecture is needed to maintain order and public safety, critics say it unfairly targets the homeless, preventing them from having places to rest.
In Charlottesville, this debate has lasted for years, specifically surrounding public seating on the Downtown Mall. In 2012, the North Downtown Residents Association released a report (endorsed by downtown businesses) claiming that the increasing amount of panhandlers and loiterers on the mall “yelling obscenities, verbally assaulting passersby, fighting, and engaging in other disturbing behavior” made mall employees and patrons feel unsafe and uncomfortable, The Daily Progress reported. The report recommended, among other things, that sitting and lying down be banned on the mall.
The same year, the city removed the fountain-side chairs in Central Place near Second Street, and replaced the seating in front of City Hall with backless benches, in an effort to prevent “disorderly conduct” on the mall.
However, no bans on sitting or lying down were passed, and, as of today, “individuals who are residentially challenged or unsheltered” on the mall are not breaking the law, but “can be arrested for trespassing…if [they] are blocking entryways to businesses, or for aggressive soliciting, just to name a few examples,” says Charlottesville Police Department Public Information Officer Tyler Hawn.
Controversy arose again in 2016 when the Charlottesville Board of Architectural Review unanimously denied the Parks & Recreation Department’s request to replace all of the mall’s wooden chairs with backless metal benches to discourage loitering. BAR members believed the benches would be uncomfortable, and they’d prevent those who did not want—or have the means—to spend money at a business from fully enjoying the mall, dishonoring architect Lawrence Halprin’s intentions and design (which included 150 public chairs).
The city has since listened to mall patrons’ complaints that the backless benches in front of City Hall were not “human-friendly,” replacing them with the originally designed wooden chairs, says city Communications Director Brian Wheeler. But it has not added any more public seating to the mall, which, according to Wheeler, currently has 37 wooden chairs
Stephen Hitchcock, executive director of The Haven, says the issue doesn’t feel as loaded as it did a few years ago.
“Obviously, you’re going to have people who have pretty strong opinions about folks who are holding signs on the mall, or asking for money, or sitting in front of the landmarks,” says Hitchcock. “But, I feel slightly encouraged, at least in contrast with what I hear happening around the country [with hostile architecture]…something that I feel is really important about the Downtown Mall is that it is one of the only places where the city sees itself, across race, class, gender, sexual orientation, you name it.”
However, on January 4, Charlottesville resident and activist Matthew Gillikin revived the discussion surrounding mall seating on Twitter, pointing out the very few public chairs available, compared to the hundreds of private chairs owned by restaurants and cafés.
In response, someone else listed the fees the city charges each downtown business with outdoor seating: $125 annually, plus $5 per square foot—revenue generated from what is ostensibly public space.
The Center of Developing Entrepreneurs, currently under construction on the west end of the mall, could add more public space–plans call for an exterior courtyard and outdoor amphitheater for public and private events.
According to Wheeler, if the community wanted to add more wooden chairs to the mall, or even “a different type of bench that was much longer, [that] you could lay down on,” the proposal would have to approved by the BAR.
The city would also have to allocate a significant amount of funding for the seating, says Wheeler. He estimates the wooden chairs on the mall cost $1,200 to $1,500 each, and says they are expensive to maintain.
And while the city wants to be “good stewards of the mall…the number one architectural change we can make for our homeless population is to give them an affordable home and economic opportunities,” says Wheeler. “We want to get people out of homelessness.”
Kitchen manager Dee Dee Slezak arrives at 5am to lead a team of volunteers, who make “magical breakfasts” out of food donations from Trader Joe’s, Market Street Market, and various local restaurants and caterers.
Photos by Zack Wajsgras
In January, The Haven will celebrate 10 years of serving homeless and extremely low-income people in the heart of Charlottesville.
As the Downtown Mall has been revitalized, the area has become increasingly expensive, home to luxury residences like C&O Row and the 550. The Haven, in a 19th-century church at First and Market streets, is both a stark reminder of those left behind by Charlottesville’s growing wealth and lack of affordable housing, and a beautiful example of community and kindness.
The Haven is a low-barrier shelter, meaning it accepts everyone who walks in, even if they’re drunk or high. It serves a free hot breakfast 365 days a year, and offers guests (the preferred term for people who access its services)a place to shower, do laundry, store their possessions, get mail, and use the internet. Staff connect people to services for mental health, substance abuse, job training, and medical care. And they administer several housing programs to help guests get and keep a permanent place to live.
“This is a community in which our first goal is to care for each other, to treat each other with respect,” says operations director Owen Brennan. “So beyond the services, at base this is a place where we want folks to feel like they belong, where they feel at home, and where they’re always welcome.”
At 6:30 on a cold December morning, it’s still dark, and Charlottesville’s streets are quiet. In the basement of The Haven, light shines through the windows like a beacon.
Inside, David Slezak, a retired Latin teacher who wears purple Converse sneakers and a slender gold chain over his T-shirt and jeans, has been in the kitchen since 5. Coffee is brewing and the team of four volunteers, all women, are busy washing dishes, shredding turkey, and toasting bread on the griddle. Slezak, who goes by Dee Dee, is surveying the latest pile of food donations heaped on one of the kitchen’s metal work tables.
“Now, I don’t know what I’m going to do with two gallons of molasses,” he muses.
Slezak, 72, has been volunteering with The Haven since it opened, and was hired as kitchen manager in 2016. He makes what one staffer refers to as “magical breakfasts” out of the sometimes odd assortment of donations from local restaurants, caterers, and church dinners that supplement the staples. “We’ve been known to have salmon, scallops,” he says. “Once we got two bushels of crabs donated from a local restaurant. I reheated them and we got out the hammers and the newspapers and had Maryland crabs.”
This morning, there’s turkey in gravy, cheesy asparagus, and buttered cabbage, along with the usual eggs, toast, and grits. “I try to serve two proteins every day, and two vegetables,” Slezak says. There are strawberries and whipped cream, yogurt and granola.
Eggs are cooked to order.
After the front doors open, at 6:45, guests start filing in, filling mugs with coffee and taking seats at the big round tables. Breakfast is served starting at 7:30, but there’s already cereal out, and trays of donated Christmas cookies. Several guests pause by the kitchen to say hello and good morning.
Mark Malawa, a slender man in a baseball cap and glasses, sticks his head through the door.
“What do you need?” Slezak asks.
“A milk and an Ensure?” Malawa asks. “If you can help me; I’m going to be gone all day.”
“You want food to go? I can put a little plate together for you,” Slezak says.
“Whatever you can do, I’m grateful.”
Malawa used to work for PACEM, the nonprofit group that provides overnight shelter at local churches from October through March, but recently he’s become a guest himself.
Slezak grabs a takeout container and fills it with turkey, cabbage, toast, and a fried egg. He doesn’t forget the fork.
“This is more than breakfast to a lot of people,” he says later, noting that many pack extra food to take to work.
At 7:15, everything is ready, and Slezak lifts up the metal shutter between the kitchen and the dining room. “This is our dinner bell,” he says, smiling, as the metal clanks loudly into place. “I wish it was a little more romantic.”
Volunteer Janice Pfund serves breakfast.
For the next hour or so, the volunteers are busy filling plates, taking requests, replenishing mugs
“White or wheat?’
“Do you want the turkey on top, or on the side?”
“We don’t have oats, but we have Cream of Wheat, is that okay?”
When you’re living on the street, Slezak says, “you have so few choices.” So he cooks eggs to order. “You need a scrambled egg, you need an over easy, you need a sunny side up, we’re going to do that for you.”
Cleveland Michie, 62, used to buy breakfast at McDonald’s, until a homeless friend told him about The Haven. Michie is “housed,” but lives alone and is battling lung cancer. “I can’t afford good, nutritious food,” he says. He’s been eating breakfast at The Haven every day for the last two years, and says his appetite has increased and he’s gained “at least 10 pounds.”
“Dee Dee and Ellen [Hickman, a kitchen volunteer], they serve deeply, with honesty and love,” he says. “They have smiles, they don’t make you feel bad or look down on you. And they know the kitchen.”
Slim and neatly dressed, with glasses and graying hair, Michie says he gives back by offering free haircuts to other guests, as well as to residents at area nursing homes.
“If I ran across a lot of money,” he says, “I’d build a building just like this.”
***
Volunteers Lizzie Weschler (left) and Riley Goodwin help out at the front desk. Throughout the morning, guests stop by to check their mail, make appointments, ask for toiletries and towels to take a shower, or get clean socks, underwear, and other clothes.
By 8:30, breakfast is winding down. Riley Goodwin and Lizzie Weschler, high school students from St. Anne’s, make their way to the front desk. They’re in the midst of a three-week “intensive” on reimagining community service, so they’re staffing the front desk every morning, while two other students help out in the kitchen, on the prep shift for tomorrow’s breakfast.
Guests stop by to sign in and ask for towels, shampoo, razors, and soap, so they can take a shower. They use the hand sanitizer on the corner of the desk, ask for socks and ibuprofen.
“Can I get a shirt?” one man asks. Goodwin disappears into the long, narrow room behind the desk, which is stocked with supplies from underwear to hats. She emerges a couple minutes later with a hooded sweatshirt.
“No shirts, but we have a hoodie,” she says.
“Awesome, that’ll work.”
The girls field a call from someone looking for dental care (they connect the caller with the Charlottesville Free Clinic) and refer someone else with a housing question to Herb Dickerson, the shift supervisor, who’s been working at The Haven almost as long as it’s been open.
“I’m pretty much like a walking resource manual, if you will,” he says. “I direct people to whatever services they need, keep trouble down.”
Guests ask for their mail (they can use The Haven as their mailing address) or for a cup of detergent to do laundry. There are three washers and dryers, and people like Dickerson make sure guests move their loads through promptly.
Monday through Wednesday, Dickerson works the floor, and on Thursdays and Fridays he does community outreach, working with ex-offenders, substance abusers, and people with HIV/AIDS. An ex-offender himself, Dickerson says “I’ve lived on the streets. I understand being homeless.” When people come in, he says, “The first thing they need is rest.”
Later, a guest who introduces himself as Tim lingers by the desk, serenading the students with a couple Christmas songs. “This is a place where you can chill,” he says. “It’s a blessing to have a place like this.”
***
Volunteers Anne Cressin (left) and John Rogers, who also provides free counseling, sort through mail for guests. Many use The Haven as their mailing address. Along the left wall, more than 70 bins provide personal storage for guests (there’s a waiting list).
The Haven was born when Hollywood director and UVA alum Tom Shadyac returned to Charlottesville to film Evan Almighty in 2005, and decided he wanted to do something to help local people experiencing homelessness. He purchased the First Christian Church, and The Haven opened in 2010, part of the Thomas Jefferson Coalition for the Homeless.
At the time, says current executive director Stephen Hitchcock, the public library was the de facto low barrier day shelter in town, as it is in many cities. All along, the intention was to not only provide basic services to the homeless, but to incorporate housing programs that would help get them out of it, to “see homelessness as a circumstance, not a condition,” Hitchcock says.
The Haven became an independent nonprofit in 2014, and it now administers two federal housing grants: the Rapid Rehousing Program, which provides temporary subsidies for people exiting homelessness, and Homelessness Prevention, which is meant to help people at imminent risk of losing their current housing.
“The public perception is we’re a day shelter, but half our operations are helping to get folks into housing and helping to stabilize them once they’re there,” says Brennan.
The Haven follows a “housing first” philosophy, a nationwide trend toward connecting people with housing as soon as possible, rather than waiting until they’re “housing ready” and all their other issues have been resolved.
Staff meet with guests one-on-one to determine what their housing needs are and what resources may be available to help. “Some people only need a little bit of help,” Hitchcock says. Some people make enough income to pay rent, but don’t have the money to put down first month’s rent plus a security deposit. Others are dealing with acute mental health crises or substance abuse. “We’re trying to provide the right amount of help at the right time,” Hitchcock says. And that help can be more than just material.
“A colleague of mine likes to say that people don’t become homeless because they run out of money; people become homeless because they run out of relationships,” says Hitchcock. “I think there’s a lot of truth in that.” He recalls the epigraph to Howard’s End—“only connect.”
“I’m reminded of that all the time,” he says. “What we’re talking about is creating connection. So many folks are disconnected.” That can come from aging out of foster care, or aging alone; it could be because of divorce, or loss of a job, or incarceration. Whatever the reason, “we want to be a place where people can start, or start again.”
***
Guests at a weekly writing group run by Day Shelter Coordinator Rob White (center) in the sanctuary. The space is an extra place for guests to sleep or find quiet during the day, and is also frequently rented out for weddings and community events.
On Mondays at 10am, Day Shelter Coordinator Rob White hosts a writing group in the former sanctuary. The space is large, and beautiful, with beamed ceilings and stained glass windows. The Haven hosts groups and events here throughout the day, like a weekly class on mindful breathing, and monthly touch therapy sessions from Zero Balancing. But it also rents out the space for weddings and community events, like concerts and film screenings. The Village School, a private all-girls middle school down the street, uses it for recitals. “It’s such a cool thing, to hold these things proximate,” says Ocean Aiello, the community outreach director. “Screaming seventh grade girls and a homeless shelter; those things are not usually next to each other.”
Guests here for the writing group gather around a large table, and share their work. A woman named Marie reads a poem, and says she wrote it after getting a cardiovascular stress test. “The doctors told me, ‘You have a fragile heart,’” she says. “Doesn’t everyone have a fragile heart?”
One man reads from an ongoing story he’s writing, and a woman shares a short passage on camping, showing the meticulously drawn rocks she’s sketched in her small notebook.
There’s a new visitor today, Harold Tucker. He’s a large man in a ski cap, with a ruddy face and a mustache that’s turning white. He sits down and immediately starts writing.
He lost his wife three years ago, he tells the group. They were married for 41 years.“Life has gone downward since.” He writes about a dream he had, in which his wife urged him to move on. “I don’t know how to do that,” he says.
Marie tells him he is in the right place. White offers him a journal, and suggests he try writing directly to his wife, in the present tense.
The group has been talking about mindfulness, and today White has a poem for them to read, “The Fish,” by Elizabeth Bishop. It’s a fairly long piece, about catching a fish, one that’s been hooked many times before.
“He’s tired,” Tucker says of the fish. “Like a lot of us are.”
“Every day, you keep hoping things are going to get better,” he says. “But sometimes they don’t.”
Tucker was a truck driver for decades, but after his wife died, he got cancer, and had to get off the road. He’s estranged from his kids, and was sleeping in the park before he got connected with The Haven and PACEM.
White asks him to think of one thing he does, or could do, that would bring him purpose, and Tucker starts talking about kindness, about how he makes an effort to greet people and say good morning.
“That would make a nice poem,” White says. “It does matter.”
The group turns back to the Bishop poem, talking about how she focuses on the moment.
“The whole point of the poem is, don’t give up,” Tucker says.
Marie turns to him with a smile. “See how you get what you need in this class?”
***
Debbie Arrington makes use of The Haven’s laundry room. Guests use a sign up sheet for the washers and dryers, which are typically busy all day.
Kevin Mellette, a wiry man who seems to be constantly in motion, ducks outside for a smoke break in the rain. His official title is facilities manager, but his role seems to encompass a bit of everything: “I do shift supervision, I do security, make sure the building runs properly.”
A certified peer recovery specialist, he provides support for people who are using or suffering from mental health issues. “I’m also a recovering addict, so I kind of know my way around, if you will,” he says. “A great deal of our population—maybe more than 50 percent—suffer from something that is related to some form of trauma. And being homeless, that’s trauma in itself.”
The Haven doesn’t have any official security guards, but Mellette and others, like Dickerson, are in charge of keeping the building safe. “Mr. Dickerson and myself, we’re both from the street, so we have a tendency to be able to come across to people,” Mellette says. If there’s a conflict, he’ll do his best to de-escalate it, and will call the police when needed to escort someone off the property.
Mellette first showed up at The Haven for mandatory community service, through the circuit drug court. He’d been in a worsening cycle of substance abuse and criminal charges. “On this last go round, I decided to do something different,” he says. He’s been clean since September 28, 2015. “The Haven gave me that opportunity, that continuing of care for me. The way I pay it back is by helping others.” He’s been working here for four years now. About The Haven, he says, “I think what it does is, it offers those who are homeless a place in which they can gather themselves. A haven, a place where people can feel safe and deal with whatever trauma they’re going through, without having to be inundated with more trauma.”
***
PACEM guests board a JAUNT bus, headed to a local church where they will sleep for the night. Through PACEM, a rotating group of congregations and community groups provide dinner and shelter for roughly 45 men and 20 women each night. In the morning, they are bused back to The Haven for breakfast.
At 5pm, the Haven staff turns things over to PACEM, whose offices are also in the building. Every night, roughly 45 men and 20 women gather to board JAUNT buses that take them to area churches, which provide dinner and beds for the night. The number of women seeking shelter has gone up sharply in the last couple years, says caseworker Heather Kellams. She’s working to extend PACEM’s season to provide year-round beds for them, while also looking for private funding to create a permanent women’s shelter. “These women…are extremely vulnerable,” she says. “They need a lot of care.”
Like The Haven (and unlike the year-round shelter at The Salvation Army), PACEM is low-barrier. So before loading the buses, Brian Henderson, a seasonal staff member who is simultaneously warm and commanding, asks guests to give him any drugs, alcohol, or other “paraphernalia”they may have in their bags, and to stay in the designated sleeping areas in the churches where they’ll be staying.
The Tuesday before Thanksgiving, Tucker shows up looking for a spot, but the rules have changed and guests are supposed to register earlier in the day. The staff know Tucker, though, and it’s almost Thanksgiving, and there’s an open bed. They let him join.
One phrase Haven staff use to describe their work is “radical hospitality.” “We try to cultivate a culture of accompaniment,” says Hitchcock. “We work to be the kind of community we hope Charlottesville is—to hold out, this is how folks can be with one another across different backgrounds, different ages, races, genders, sexual orientations—you name it, it’s all here.”
It’s a feeling that comes across to many guests, too. “They’re good people,” Tucker says of The Haven staff. Yes, there’s the food and shelter. But he also talks about how they’ve given him bus fare, helped him get his license when his wallet was stolen. “They give me clothes, they give me gloves, let me take a shower, so I feel like I’m human.” He pauses. “So I feel like I’m human. Not just somebody sleeping on the street.”
*
Guest book
Virginia Lypps
Mark Mulawa
Tammy Edwards
Harold Tucker
Joe Bostock
Justin Watkins
Sharon Shelton
Tim Ferguson
Tevin Rogers
“When you see somebody sitting on the street, before you sit there and judge them, know their story.” –A Haven guest
Shift supervisor Herb Dickerson sings as volunteers prepare for the Wednesday lunch café.
Food for the soul
The Haven closes from noon to 1pm, and on Wednesdays, the dining room becomes a lunch café, open to the public for a $10 donation. It’s not a moneymaker, but it’s a chance for guests to get some paid food service experience, setting up, doing dishes, and serving the downtown lunch crowd. And it’s an opportunity for the public to see “a different side of what homelessness looks like,” says Evie Safran, who runs the program.
Like many Haven staff, Safran is a former teacher (she taught public preschool in Charlottesville), but she also had a 30-year catering career. She recruits weekly guest chefs, ranging from local restaurant and corporate chefs to caterers and dedicated home cooks, and the food “runs the gamut from down-home Southern to South Indian vegetarian,” she says.
Lunches also include a salad, sides, delicious homemade limeade, coffee, and dessert.
Like the church rentals, and an annual 8K run in the spring (which features a homemade breakfast in the sanctuary afterwards), it’s a way to bring the broader community into The Haven.
