Helping the homeless

Alisa Rimson remembers in vivid detail the day she first arrived in Madison.

"It was August 6, 1985," she said. "I remember because when I came all I had in my pocket was six dollars in food stamps."

She also had three small children, one only four months old. Rimson, then 22, came to Madison to build a better life for her family and to escape an urban existence tainted by drugs and violence.

"I left Chicago to get away from that fast, hard life. So I came up here," she said.

"My sister Erma was coming through Chicago that day on her way to Madison. I said, 'If you just wait while I wash my babies' clothes, I'll come with you and bring them wet.' So I came here with $6.20 in food stamps. All my kids clothes were in a bag and they were wet."

Rimson's family circumstances qualified her for help from the state to find a place to live.

"Madison, Wisconsin, had this program called emergency assistance," she said. "If you came in they gave you a voucher. And you just had to find a landlord that was willing to take that voucher."

The voucher covered her first month's rent. Later, she'd receive a grant for a security deposit and the next month's rent.

"It worked out great," Rimson said. "We came in on a Tuesday. They put us up in a hotel. By Friday we found someone to take our voucher and by Saturday we had moved into our apartment."

But the story doesn't end there. Without a high school diploma, a network of responsible friends in the community and a reliable means of support, Rimson began to repeat the pattern that had made her situation in Chicago unbearable. That hard, fast life followed her to Madison. "I got right back into it," Rimson said.

Wild house parties at her apartment and consorting with local criminals who provided her with drugs compelled Rimson's landlord to force her removal from the building. With virtually no other options remaining, Rimson and her children found themselves homeless.

Fighting for the homeless

United Way of Dane County aims to end this cycle of homelessness among families with children like Rimson's. Working with community organizations and local businesses, United Way has set a goal to reduce this homeless population by 50 percent by 2010.

Nan Cnare, vice president of community building at United Way, said the plight of homelessness is exacerbated when it involves the lives of small children. The United Way plans to significantly reduce the number of kids who end up in area homeless shelters. Cnare said that by focusing on families the organization can strike at the very heart of conditions that force children to live on the street.

"There were over 850 children in Dane County last year that spent at least one night in a shelter," Cnare said. "That's a lot of kids. But it's not an impossible number for us to think about solving this issue. There are lots of homeless populations, but if we start with children we really have an opportunity to break the chain of homelessness."

Children often suffer

Children who live in unstable housing conditions, Cnare said, are at risk for a number of different factors that can limit their development both academically and socially.

"We know that these kids suffer in school," she said. "They're nine times more likely to repeat a grade, four times more likely to drop out, three times more likely to be put into special-ed programs and twice as likely to score lower on standardized tests."

The family dynamics of kids who bounce from one home environment to the next could result in behavioral patterns that can lead to asocial activities that include violence, petty crime or drug abuse, Cnare said.

"We used to have a philosophy where you had to fix people first and then get them into housing," she said. "Housing is the issue that is of most concern to these families. Let's address that. It's more costly up front but it saves money in the long run."

Developing affordable housing

Doug Strub, chief executive at the Meridian Group, develops affordable housing in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Illinois. He said working to support the housing needs of families is an excellent way build safe and secure communities.

"As a general rule, people are more apt to make changes in their life to benefit their children and not necessarily just themselves," Strub said.

Motivated to create a safe and nurturing environment for their kids to grow up in, Strub said parents across the social spectrum are more inclined to build and support strong neighborhoods.

"The example I can give is the Vera Court Neighborhood," he said. "That was the number one, most crime-ridden neighborhood in the city of Madison, based on Madison police department statistics. About five years ago the police department made the decision to pull out the neighborhood officer because they said there was no need for him any more."

Strub cites physical and social changes in Vera Court that turned the neighborhood around. Financial investments in the structure of apartments improved living conditions. Strict enforcement of tenant screening for criminal records of violence or drug offensives rid the neighborhood of undesirable elements. And people simply took pride in their homes and worked diligently to keep them safe.

"So now you've improved the physical structure. You've set rules. You've enforced them. You've set screening criteria and used them religiously whether there were vacate apartments or not," Strub said. "Then you had a very active neighborhood association."

Associations important

Tom Stolyst, executive director of the Vera Court Community Center, said his organization creates a focal point for neighborhood residents to get involved. "The center gives them a place to belong," Stolyst said. "We have a really tight relationship with Mendota Middle School nearby so families have access to a lot services. It may be low income housing but people here feel they get a lot out of it."

It was in the Vera Court Neighborhood where Alisa Rimson began to turn her life around. Dedicated to her children, and motivated to create a stable home life, Rimson committed herself to kicking her drug habit and stabilized her circumstance enough to secure a small apartment in the vicinity. Having never been convicted a drug offense she still qualified for public housing and she promised her new landlord she would be a good tenant.

"I don't care if it's four walls and a ceiling, as long as I have a place to cook some food for my children," Rimson said. "You won't have any trouble from me."

Changing her life

Rimson began as a volunteer at the Vera Court Community Center and soon worked there as a childcare provider. "That gave me something so that I was occupied," she said. "When my kids got up to go to school, I went to school."

Now with four grown children, three of whom graduated from high school, Rimson runs her own home-based child-care business. She earned a high school equivalency degree and she is the pastor of her own Christian faith ministry. At 44 Rimson now has big ambitions to grow her business and her church.

"I want to get the day care out of my home and I want to find a building big enough to hold my church services and a day care," she said. "And I want to open up a couple of other businesses. I like fancy clothes. I want a drycleaners to serve the first ladies of the church."

Recruiting more help

It's success stories like Rimson's that United Way aims to capitalize on. Several business leaders were invited recently to visit a number of affordable housing sites, including Vera Court, on a citywide bus tour to learn about available opportunities. Cnare said there are many ways to get involved.

"One is to be a leader or a partner who brings resources to the table," she said. "The other is being an employer helping employees learn about first-time buyer assistance and what their housing needs are. Another might be providing land for housing."

Chris Howe, a vice president at Greater Wisconsin Credit Union, went along on the tour. He said it was a real eye-opener.

"We're not experts in affordable housing," Howe said. "Just having the opportunity to go on a bus tour and see the things that are happening in the city of Madison was invaluable for us. It sparked for us the interest to want to do more."

Cnare said she hopes organizations in the community will band together to peck away at the homelessness problem for families throughout Dane County. She believes that with the right combination of resources half as many children will see area shelters over the next three years.

"We realize that some of the best alternatives for families have been created by really innovative partnerships, " she said. "It demonstrates that affordable housing doesn't have to be something that we set off in one corner. It can be integrated into the fabric of our community. And that's how these families will succeed."

James Edward Mills is a Madison freelance writer.