Back when he had a job and a girlfriend and lived with her and the couple's 1-year-old daughter, Ferris Shrewsberry used to drive his vehicle through downtown Eau Claire and laugh at the homeless people he saw wandering the streets.

 

"I hate to admit it, but up until last June I used to make fun of these people out here," Shrewsberry said one mid-March day as he traversed downtown Eau Claire sidewalks dusted in snow. "I used to drive by and laugh at 'em and point at 'em."

 

Then Shrewsberry, 30, learned firsthand about life on the city's streets. Multiple past run-ins with the law that included drug-related charges and traffic offenses caught up with him and he spent 60 days in jail, losing his construction job in the process.

 

When he was released in June, Shrewsberry learned he had lost more than his job. His girlfriend, the woman he had moved to Eau Claire with a couple of years earlier, left him, along with the couple’s daughter. Shrewsberry lost something else: His house. He was homeless.

 

“It was a shock,” Shrewsberry said of winding up without a home of his own. “You never think it’s going to happen to you. But it did.”

 

Shrewsberry is among a growing number of Eau Claire residents without their own residences. According to officials who work for the agencies that serve the city’s homeless population, the Eau Claire Police Department and homeless residents themselves, more people than ever before in the city don’t have a bed of their own to sleep in at night.

 

“There is no doubt we are seeing more homeless people here than we used to,” said Jeanne Semb, family development coordinator with Western Dairyland Economic Opportunity Council, which provides multiple services to poor people, including homeless residents. “They definitely have a bigger presence in our city.”

 

Getting a handle on exactly how many people in Eau Claire are classified as homeless is difficult. That population is tough to track. Many are transient, moving from place to place, and sometimes from city to city, frequently.

 

Some attempt to evade census takers, driven by a fear of authorities or a desire to seek isolation. Others bop in and out of homelessness, finding temporary places to stay before losing them. A few climb their way to better situations, finding homes of their own.

 

Determining a homeless count also depends on who is included. Some counts include only those people out on the streets on any given night. But others believe that figure should also factor in the 100-plus people in city shelters on any given night as well as the several hundred families and individuals who don’t live in their own houses or apartments but instead stay with friends, relatives or others, often moving from place to place when they wear out their welcome.

 

Include all of those people, officials familiar with Eau Claire’s homeless population said, and the total numbers in the hundreds and may approach 1,000. Some people believe it may be even higher.

 

Rachel Keniston, director of The Community Table, an Eau Claire soup kitchen that serves daily meals to people in need, believes that whatever the number is, it is likely to grow.

 

“When I look at how many working poor there are in Eau Claire who are struggling to pay rent, I get scared,” she said. “There are an awful lot of people barely hanging onto their homes.”

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People become homeless for many reasons. Some lose their jobs and no longer can afford house payments or rent. Some are separated or divorced, losing substantial household income in the process. Some gamble away their income or spend it on other items they can’t afford. Others feed their addictions as their lives fall apart. Still others are kicked out of their homes for all sorts of reasons, including mental illness.

 

Economic factors are driving many of Eau Claire’s working poor from their homes to the streets, local officials said. For years, dating at least to the shutdown of the Uniroyal Goodrich Tire Co. in 1992, Eau Claire has been home to more low-pay jobs than many similar-size cities.

 

Average income has climbed a bit in recent years but still lags behind many other comparable communities. The median household income in the city in 2011 was $42,170 compared to $50,395 statewide that year. Eau Claire, like cities across the U.S. and worldwide, suffered an economic hit with the recession of 2008. Like much of the rest of the country, the city’s economy has shown signs of improvement since then, but studies show residents on the lowest rung of the economic ladder generally aren’t bouncing back. As costs for such staples as food, gas and housing rise, minimum wage of $7.25 an hour can’t cover them.

 

“Life is getting harder and harder for the working poor,” Keniston said. “And for homeless people, those challenges are even bigger.”

 

Adding to the problem is an economic shift that has been happening for several decades. Gone are most of the blue-collar manufacturing jobs that once paid people without a post-high school education middle-class salaries and ample retirement pensions.

 

Instead, today’s job market most often requires post-secondary training even for the lower-pay manufacturing jobs that remain. People seeking professional-level jobs typically must attend college and often graduate school, the cost of which continues to climb, making it difficult for middle-class families to afford. For most of the working poor, such an education is simply out of reach.

 

Given those factors, the number of people calling Eau Claire home in the future seems likely to rise, officials who serve the city’s poor population said. Adding to that number is the fact that Eau Claire is the regional center for northwest Wisconsin and is home to more jobs and more services for homeless people.

 

For multiple reasons, including physical and mental health issues that make employment difficult or impossible, many of Eau Claire’s homeless population don’t seek jobs. Many of those who do said they have a tough time landing one. Some, including Shrewsberry, have lengthy criminal records that give employers pause.

 

“Getting a job is tough enough for anyone,” Shrewsberry said one late-March day as he walked the snow-covered sidewalks of downtown Eau Claire. “But it’s tougher when you’re homeless. And when you list the Sojourner House address as your place of residence, for many employers, it’s like a badge of shame.”

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Another reason some credit for Eau Claire’s growing homeless population in recent years is the addition of the Sojourner House shelter. The one-story structure at 618 S. Barstow St. overseen by Catholic Charities opened in November 2011 and houses a maximum of 48 people. Prior to the opening of Sojourner, Eau Claire’s homeless could find refuge at two shelters, one for single men and another for single women, operated by Hope Gospel Mission. But many people without homes chafed at the rules and religious bent of the Hope program.

 

Other shelters include Beacon House, a shelter for families; four apartments operated by Western Dairyland Community Action Agency; and Bolton Refuge House, a shelter for domestic abuse victims.

 

Shortly after opening, Sojourner attracted many of Eau Claire’s homeless. Staying there requires relatively little: Pass a Breathalyzer test and treat staff and other homeless people there with respect. Despite the fact Catholic Charities funds the shelter, a religious component is not required.

 

“That’s a big deal to a lot of people,” said Santiago DeMars, 37, who has been homeless for much of the past several years in Eau Claire after taking and dealing drugs derailed his college career and plans to do more with his life. “After a day on the streets, a lot of people just want a meal and to be left in peace.”

 

On many nights during the recently completed winter, a winter that tied 1903-04 as the coldest on record in Eau Claire, homeless people could find room at Sojourner House. But on other nights when the temperature dropped below zero, Sojourner workers had to send people out onto the cold streets because the shelter was above capacity. “You feel horrible doing that,” said Jennifer Lokken, a night supervisor at the shelter. “You worry about what’s going to happen to people out in that kind of cold. You worry they might not survive. And it makes you think we need more shelter space.”

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Positive Avenues was hopping on this early mid-May morning. Two men still donning thick winter coats, hats and gloves to ward off the unseasonably cold temperature outside chatted as they sipped coffees. Nearby, a mother drew pictures with her two young daughters. Three men in their early 20’s yelled boisterously as they played pool. One heavy-set man sat at a computer, playing a game on the screen before him.

 

Halfway across the room of this site, a downtown Eau Claire drop-in center for people with mental health issues and others down on their luck, Positive Avenues program supervisor Sue Howe counseled a young homeless woman seeking assistance of various sorts. A moment later Howe knelt on her office floor, painting the toenails of the daughter of another homeless woman.

 

“We even give pedicures now,” Howe joked as the girl skipped away gleefully to show Howe’s handiwork to her mother. “We try to do it all.” But Howe knows as well as anyone the challenges of serving the myriad needs of Eau Claire’s homeless population. It is a population with so many needs and so few resources. In many cases, the people who comprise that group lack the skills and emotional makeup to better their lives.

 

Many spent the winter wandering a familiar path day after day, receiving meals and places to stay warm but moving no closer to getting back on their feet or obtaining a home of their own.

 

Howe and other Positive Avenues staff, like members of other agencies that assist Eau Claire’s homeless, provide what counseling and assistance they can. But it is never enough. And, as Howe has learned, some homeless people don’t want or, often because of mental health issues, are unable to accept assistance.

 

“Sometimes the best you can do for them is help them get through the day and not slide backward,” she said. Shrewsberry did just that recently. On April 15 he added to his criminal record when he was charged in Eau Claire County Court for stealing from Menards and selling the items to a pawn shop.

 

Shrewsberry seemingly made progress on one front, however. According to court records, he is no longer homeless, having found a north side Eau Claire residence to stay at in April.

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Finding a way to get people off the streets, always a challenging task, appears poised to become even more daunting. Eau Claire agencies that assist the city’s homeless people report continued budget cutbacks in recent years even as the its homeless population grows.

 

On April 30 Western Dairyland shut down two of the six Eau Claire apartments where the agency housed some of the city’s homeless after high heating costs last winter forced the closures. The agency can now house 16-20 homeless people at a time and provide a wide array of services, ranging from helping clients obtain food and rent assistance to lining up doctors appointments.

 

However, reduced funding has forced cutbacks to case workers’ hours, making it more difficult to provide services to homeless people, Semb said. Last year the agency turned away nearly 600 people seeking assistance.

 

“It’s a real problem,” Semb said of funding reductions to local agencies that serve Eau Claire’s homeless. “The need just keeps getting bigger and the dollars less and less.”

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As Eau Claire’s homeless population grows and available resources stagnate or shrink, agencies that work with people without homes realize they have to do something different to better serve that group. They hope a program that has proven at least somewhat successful in other parts of the U.S. can help.

 

Several of those agencies combined to seek a $249,000 grant that would fund 15 apartments to house some of the city’s longterm homeless residents, providing them with housing while staff address their other needs. The idea of the project, Semb said, is to get people off the streets first, then work on their other issues.

 

“Many of these people don’t even know what services are available to them or know how to apply for those services, so staff members working them will be key,” Semb said.

 

Agencies involved with the Homes First endeavor should find out soon whether they’ve received the Homes First grant. They hope to implement the program this summer.

 

That program, if successful, could go a long way toward getting Eau Claire people off the streets and into better situations. Agency leaders also are working to streamline other services and provide them more effectively. But they know making inroads toward improving the lives of Eau Claire’s homeless residents is an uphill battle. And, if the number of people calling Eau Claire’s shelters and streets home continues to climb, they know more of them will face similar struggles to Shrewsberry.

 

“We have to do something different,” Keniston said. “We have to do something more. We can’t just site here and ignore this problem.”

 

Emerson can be reached at 715-830-5911, 800-236-7077 or julian.emerson@ecpc.com.