“Bench” Conversations Seek Answers to Homelessness in Anderson

Greg Wilson/Anderson Observer

A pair of benches in downtown Anderson Thursday and Friday became a place of discussion for community leaders and the people who serve those who need a little extra help.

The “Conversations on a Bench” event was part of a national effort to bring homelessness into public discussion, the questions were local: Where can someone sleep tonight? What keeps a family from finding housing?

And what happens after the conversation ends?

Dave Phillips, CEO and executive director of Hope Missions of the Upstate, spent 24 hours on a bench at the mission last week, joining conversations about homelessness and deep poverty in Anderson.

For Phillips, the first task was to get beyond the idea that the people being discussed constituted a single, understandable category.

“Every problem, every person is different,” he said. “Every person is unique.”

The conversation had barely begun when Anderson County Administrator Rusty Burns joined him on the bench in a discussion of current and future efforts to help those in need.

Phillips said the mission serves about 150 people daily, with that number climbing above 180 toward the end of the month, when their money becomes scarce.

He expects the number to continue rising, but he is cautious about what an increase in the number of people identified means. As Hope Missions expands its outreach, it finds people whose needs may previously have gone unnoticed, while more people learn about the organization’s services.

On Tuesdays, he and his wife, Zoë Hale, travel in the Salvation Army’s canteen vehicle to places where people are living without adequate shelter or basic services. They visit abandoned houses and other precarious arrangements. Two men they see regularly occupy a house with neither electricity nor running water.

“It’s their house,” Phillips said. “And so they live there.”

Such is one demonstration that shelter in a building does not necessarily settle the question of whether someone has a safe place to live.

The outreach has benefited from contact with Anderson County’s environmental and code enforcement department and its director, Matthew Stipe, who alerts service providers when officers encounter people who may need assistance.

Burns described Stipe as someone who enforces the law “with a heart of service.” Phillips agreed, while acknowledging that an officer’s arrival does not automatically inspire trust — nor does the arrival of someone offering help.

At first, people may be wary of both.

“What we find, especially in those kinds of situations, I wouldn’t say they’re really receptive the first time,” Phillips said. “First of all, they don’t trust us.”

Repeated visits can change the relationship. Phillips described one woman who had moved from an unsheltered location into transitional housing. Her progress began not with a grand intervention but with enough contact for her to consider that the offer might be genuine.

“Maybe you actually do care,” he said, describing the response workers eventually hear.

Burns noted that Hope Missions is often associated with breakfast, but its assistance reaches far beyond a meal. Staff members help people apply for benefits, obtain identification documents and find housing.

Phillips pointed to a mailbox behind the bench as an important part of that work.

Several years earlier, Hope Missions had approached the local postmaster about serving as a mailing address for people who did not have one. Phillips said the organization received mail for about 380 people last year. Four case managers help sort through it and assist recipients.

The mailbox is an ordinary object performing an unusually consequential job. An identification card or Social Security card sent by mail is of limited use to someone with nowhere dependable to receive it. At Hope Missions, those documents can be collected, stored and placed in the hands of the person who needs them.

Sometimes the obstacle is even smaller than an address.

Phillips recalled a mother with three children who was otherwise ready to enter housing but lacked the necessary birth certificates. In her case, the documents cost $17 each.

“I wrote a check for $68,” he said, “and that mom moved into housing that week.”

The story provides a more complete view of homelessness. Alongside the need for buildings, beds and substantial funding, there are barriers that can be measured in four documents and one modest check.

Hope Missions employs a housing director, and its case managers work daily with people on the practical requirements of obtaining and keeping a home: identification, income, budgeting and banking, among other needs.

“There’s no solution to homelessness that doesn’t involve housing,” Phillips said, adding that housing is not the complete solution.

In his experience, handing someone a key is not the end of the work. People who have spent years without stable housing may need continuing help managing the obligations that arrive with it. Phillips described the organization’s approach as getting people “housing ready,” then celebrating when they move into a place they can sustain.

Phillips said rising rents and evictions are contributing to the need he sees, particularly among older people on fixed incomes.

A rent increase can outpace an increase in benefits. While some relatives may want to help, they lack the money, space or capacity to take another person into their household.

He recalled a recent conversation with a daughter who was raising two children alone and could not also care for her ailing mother. It was not an isolated predicament, he said.

Families with school-age children present another dimension of the problem. Phillips estimated that between 800 and 1,000 children in Anderson County are experiencing homelessness, including children staying temporarily with others, moving between couches or living in doubled- and tripled-up households. He said a more formal report on the challenge is in the works.

That estimate is separate from the daily number of people served at Hope Missions and from the point-in-time shelter figures discussed by Miracle Hill Ministries. The figures describe different populations and should not be combined into a single county total.

For Phillips and Burns, the school referrals are one reason to pursue Hope Village, a proposed housing development on a former Toxaway mill site reclaimed by the county for use by Hope Missions.

Phillips said plans are underway, but construction will begin once financing is in place. The long-term vision is 40 to 50 units accommodating roughly 60 to 80 people, with capacity depending partly on the number and size of families.

Burns said the project’s partners hope to prioritize students identified as homeless by county schools, providing a place for them and their families while longer-term arrangements are made.

A federal grant will help launch the project, but Phillips cautioned that it will not pay for the entire development.

“We’re not looking for a government solution,” he said, “but we want the government to come alongside where they can.”

At another bench downtown, just outside the Anderson County Library, representatives of Miracle Hill Ministries were hearing a consistent request.

“We need more services. We need more beds. We need more help,” said Jason Farr, the organization’s director of donor services and impact, summarizing what participants experiencing homelessness had told them.

Miracle Hill is planning an Anderson rescue mission, but a site has not been secured. Chief Development Officer Jacob Edmisten said the organization is looking for a property of approximately 40,000 to 50,000 square feet, away from downtown Main Street but close enough to public transportation for residents to reach work.

The proposed facility would accommodate more than 140 men, women and children, he said. There is no firm opening date.

Edmisten cited the latest point-in-time count as showing that about one in five people counted as experiencing homelessness in Anderson had shelter, while four in five were unsheltered. Even that count does not measure every person experiencing housing instability in the county.

The proposed mission is intended to complement Hope Missions, the Salvation Army and other local organizations, rather than replace them. Edmisten described something currently lacking in Anderson: a shelter where residents would not have to leave each morning and spend the day looking for somewhere else to be.

He pointed to the library as a place people turn to charge phones and pass time when they have few alternatives. During daytime hours, it also offers a cool place in summer and a warm place in winter. Librarians, he said, have consequently taken on responsibilities far beyond their usual work.

Miracle Hill’s representatives described a broader network that includes rescue missions, addiction recovery, transitional housing, foster care and workforce training. Their ambition in Anderson is to connect emergency shelter with services that help people move toward stability.

Farr emphasized that the project should belong to the community it serves.

“We want this to be the Anderson Rescue Mission of Miracle Hill Ministries,” he said. “We want to join in what’s happening here.”

The benches provided a place for listening. The conversations offered a glimpse of what could follow: documents retrieved, trust earned, properties found, funding assembled and rooms made available. The conversation will continue as the need grows — and as those committed to meeting it works to turn their vision into places people can call home.