A PLACE TO HEAL
Safe Space hosts unsheltered getting medical aid
CHICO >> The popup shelter Safe Space found a way to operate in Chico despite restrictions in the pandemic this winter, thanks to the help of several churches and a referral system.
The key this year is that the shelter can only take limited numbers of people referred by the county’s hospitals, who live unhoused while getting medical treatment. It’s called “Casey’s Place” — named for Safe Space
volunteer Casey Doran who recently passed away due to cancer — at First Baptist Church, Trinity Methodist Church and First Christian Church.
In this new model, referred patients can spend the night from 5:30 p.m. until 8:30 a.m. the next morning, with meals provided by the local popup
Hunger Trolley, and sometimes get help from visiting clinicians.
“I think Safe Space as an organization has just figured out a way to focus its efforts to the current need,” Safe Space board member Siana Sonoquie said.
“We put a lot of energy into putting staff into Project Roomkey, which enlightened us in a way to all of these people that could not get in because of capacity, but still met the criteria …. (preventing) having heart surgery and having to sleep in a tent.”
Working with three churches made it happen, developing a referral process with multiple social workers that was based on the Project Roomkey model which showed the changes when people get off the street and get connected to resources, First Baptist Church Head Pastor Gail Hill said.
“We were thinking about how could we keep people sheltered without bringing further harm to them,” Hill said, as the goal was to be careful about bringing unhoused people into the churches under Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines for preventing coronavirus spread.
Workers from Enloe Medical Center and other local hospitals and dialysis clinics will call to see if a referral can come to stay overnight. The shelter stays prepared for people being discharged at all hours and tries to get them in when possible.
Sonoquie demonstrated how the facility is maintained, allowing people to distance inside with a sleeping bag, blankets and collapsible tent for sleeping. Just over 20 can come in each night, as there are always more referrals than beds, she said.
With referrals, the work is more intense. Staff are paid at this location as opposed to volunteering, and help from Medspire Health Mobile Clinic tends to soft case management.
And people have been struggling to make the trip to the new locations around the city, including those with mobility issues. Sonoquie said some people have been given bus passes and another guest who has a car gives people rides to the church.
Jeana Francis is one of those who got a 30-day bus pass, and said “I never had a cooler Christmas present in a long time.”
She has been staying in the shelter for about a week while getting treatment, after having been at the Torres Shelter and Jesus Center’s Sabbath House in the past.
Sleeping on the ground nearly killed her by heart failure, she said.
“I’m getting my medicine straightened around though,” Francis said, adding she had been prepared to stay in a tent, but she felt safer in a place “without people staring at me.”
“I feel safe here. It’s warm, and I’m comfortable, and it’s very much appreciated.”
Paradise native Grace Foster, 35, and has been without a home for three years. She said she got into Project Roomkey in November after leaving the Torres Shelter. Trying to manage Type 1 diabetes, asthma, congestive heart failure and chronic kidney disease, she said she sees doctors “all the time” but has a hard time getting to appointments.
Medspire Mobile Health Clinic’s Treasurer and Director of Clinic Operations Hannah Weiglein said this is the first time the Paradise clinic program has worked with the homeless in Chico. The collaboration began as the city’s enforcement sweeps began displacing campers in Annie’s Glen and lower Bidwell Park in early January.
“That was when we realized so many people … who had been able to find shelter there and had a community there were getting moved,” she said. The team also made connections at the triangle area near the intersection of Pine and Cypress streets in Chico, meeting multiple patients with illnesses and wounds.
Weiglein connected her team to Safe Space, seeing the need for immediate medical needs to be serviced, working with Ampla Health and Adventist Health in particular.
Connecting people with more resources like primary health care providers and trying to get insurance coverage means her job “made a transformation from health care to a lot of case management, and a little bit of actual health care,” she said.
Weiglein said she has ended up coming to the shelter twice a week for soft case management, as it’s hard to keep in contact with unhoused patients who keep having to move. The team has even bought people a cell phone to stay in touch with them.
“We kind of just have to hope that when I come back in the next couple of days they’re still going to be here. And there’s no real central spot where people can stay.”
Weiglein said she has met clients who are often elderly and getting medical treatment, who try to pitch a tent somewhere out of sight in Bidwell Park to try to avoid causing a problem — but once found out, these clients usually get moved by the city.
Weiglein said the population without homes in Chico really do not differ from the population her team already serves on the ridge since the Camp Fire, with many suffering from congestive heart failure, diabetes, HIV, lung disease and cancer, which are worsened by living unhoused.
“It’s the same prognosis … a lot of these people are living in a house of cards,” she said. “And then one thing happens and it all blows everything over, and (with the) domino effect, it just falls apart. We realize that one person is one unlucky circumstance away from being in a situation where they have nothing.”
Kathy Bivens, 60, said she was on the streets when she first came to Chico from Oregon in 2008, “and I was off the street for eight years.” But after losing a court battle with a landlord, she said, “I ended up back on the streets again after the fire.”
Bivens said she doesn’t think it’s fair people stereotype anyone homeless as addicted to drugs —“It’s not everybody. There are people who need to be off the streets, want to be off the streets and want to straighten their life out — I want to live longer.”
She said she stopped doing drugs, left a 14-year relationship and knew she needed to repair her health, and is now on multiple medications she must remember to take every day.
That means Bivens is always afraid of falling asleep on the street due to one of those medications. That’s where Medspire comes in to help her, and Sonoquie is also trying to help her get into a Chico Housing Action Team medical house for stable living.
There had been concern for weeks about safety, conducting operations without fear of threats to staff or guests, which Sonoquie acknowledged has happened before.
“We just really wanted to focus on the guests and the need — and didn’t want the attention, the harassment of staff,” Sonoquie said.
And Gail added keeping Casey’s Place under wraps was also needed to prevent having to turn more people away — making Safe Space more selective this year, although city enforcement sweeps have uprooted many unsheltered individuals.
“When you displace people from where they’re staying, there’s so much potential not only for COVID-19 risk … but potentially putting them in situations that might be unsafe,” Sonoquie said. She described clients moved from unsafe camping in alleys to live in a car or apartment which puts them in danger.
Weiglein added for those vulnerable clients, the ongoing sweeps by the city have made it more difficult to find people she connected with at the shelter.
“At the end of the day if you don’t know where your next meal is coming from and you don’t know where you’re going to sleep at night, how can you be concerned with taking your medications?” she said. “It’s just not a priority. You have to live in a minute to minute situation.”
Hill said the program runs through March 21 and could possibly continue through the end of March, if another church wants to join in hosting Casey’s Place.