With Teen Homelessness, It’s ‘All Hands In’ Downtown.

Mike Summers has not been called by his given name for 2 and ½ years. Since he was 17, he has gone by “Drool,” a name given to him by his peers in downtown Portland, OR. The young man walks into the basement of First Baptist Church on SW 11th and stands in a long line. A young woman calls to him from the front and he raises his eyebrows as he smiles at her.

Mike is not in line for prayers, or to get into a worship service. He is doing what the other 250-plus young adults are doing on a Monday night at First Baptist: they’re getting food, water, and a warm place to sit for a couple of hours. They come because they are, for the most part, homeless.

The city of Portland holds the most per capita homeless ages 12-25 in the United States. Although homelessness is a recognized problem, a more specific issue that is gaining more acknowledgment is the fact that the age of homelessness in Oregon is lowering.

It is a problem that some might remember former Mayor Tom Potter addressing in his action plan for the city in 2005 when he took office. Potter’s plan came out of a passion that was ignited through his work with New Avenues for Youth in the late 90s. However, his enthusiasmwould not be enough. While the first two years seemed to produce results for homeless adults, it was not enough to match the growing teen homelessness rate in the city. Many citywide censuses’ say that teen homelessness has risen by close to 12% since 2007.

Beyond this, Portland’s homeless teen population is not only filled with kids who grew up in the Portland area. Rather, a large contributing factor to the growing population is teens from outside of Portland and even Oregon. John Allen, a volunteer staff member with Transitional Youth, a not-for-profit organization that aims to help teens get off the streets, said that he has met hundreds of kids during his time at Transitional Youth who come from all over the country.

Why Portland?

So what brings them to Portland? The people involved on the ground level of the problem still have no idea how it all started. Daniel Roby, who has been involved with the issue ever since he left his hometown of Waco, Texas, six years ago, said there is definitely a street youth culture that exists downtown today. Portland has the strange capability to house diverse but poignant culture. “The street kids, they have their own thing going on, and for some reason there’s word throughout the country saying that Portland is the hot place to be right now,” Roby said.

The teens, or “street kids,” agree with Roby’s statement. Most of the kids love to tell their own story of how they landed in Portland, and many came because they heard that it was the place to be. Frankenstein, an early twenties street kid who wouldn’t reveal his real name or age, is originally from Kansas City. “I was hitchhiking, thinking I would end up in California, when I heard like six people say, ‘Man, you gotta go to Portland, it’s the scene,’ ” he said.

The Life.

Each street kid has a street name, which they get from those already in the culture. They could have street brothers, street sisters, and street parents. All of the names and kinship that develops through the culture is dictated by the teens within that culture. This creates a tight communitythat is nearly impossible to gain entrance into. There’s no real initiation, but there is an attitude that seems required, and a choice to become one of them.

It is here that the problem of teen homelessness gets more complicated. The League of Women Voters suggests that nearly 70% of street youth say they chose their life on the street. “A lot of them have places to go back to; they just like their life on the street,” confirmedRoby. “There’s nobody telling them to get a job, nobody telling them what to eat, or how to act, or when to be home… it’s a teenager’s dream.”

This ‘teenage dream’ is what confuses people like Roby and Allen. If the teenagers do not want to change or get off the streets, can they—or should they—even be convinced to leave their life, the culture, and their street family?

Alternatives.

One way local organizations like Transitional Youth are combating this issue is by inviting teens to spend a week in a contrasting culture. Transitional Youth has a ranch near Battle Ground, Washington, where the teens are invited to go for free to work on the ranch and obtain responsibility in a rural culture in hopes to expose them to the benefits of a new, different lifestyle. But it is another matter just getting these teens to go on these weeklong trips.

That is where Gary Gorsuch comes in. Gorsuch has been involved in this issue longer than most. He started Greenhouse, an organization that would morph into Transitional Youth, over 15years ago. He is now retiring as Executive Director of Transitional Youth in order to free the organization from paying him a salary. Gorsuch and others are dedicated to showing the teens life off the streets: its benefits, opportunities, and happiness. He, as well as many other directors and professionals, are involved in the long-term process. It takes months, often years, to gain the trust of one street kid, and much more time to persuade them to leave life on the streets. But Gorsuch, and a handful like him, is committed to it entirely.

Getting Started.

The process is what Transitional Youth and similar organizations call “The Portland Homeless Youth Continuum.” It begins with a drop-in center, which Gorsuch said is “the most important aspect—it is where the kids are fed.” Gorsuch looks at it as their “entry point” into the kids’ lives. For Transitional Youth, this is in the basement of their church partner, First Baptist Church. The same place where Drool comes for his meal. In Gorsuch’s mind, this is the most important part of what they do. He claims that the teens who come off the streets have a very primary need of food and water, which the organizations must provide for them in order to gain their trust.

“If we can give them a cool glass of water or a warm meal, that is our opportunity to enter into their world and to begin the process of helping them,” Gorsuch said.

What are these teens really looking for?

But this is a point that many community workers disagree upon, and a point that has been debated in scholarly circles as well. What is the primary need of these teens? Gorsuch and some say it is food and water, but Daniel Roby and others, like Ron Ruthruff, who directs one of the largest and most successful street youth ministries in Seattle, would contend differently. Ruthruff, who has his PhD in at-risk teen psychology, claims that street kids deny their need of food and water in order to be accepted. Roby and Ruthruff claim that they deny these essential needs for their primary need, which is relationships. “These kids will go without water, starving if they can, just be accepted into this culture… they’ll eat junk, destroy their physical health, in order to satisfy their craving of relational acceptance,” Ruthruff said.

This difference of opinion on the primary need can be seen on the organizational level with these not-for-profit ministries. Some put most of their resources in their drop-in center’s food and medical support, while others utilize countless volunteers and counselors in order to try to provide these teens with solid relationships.

Luckily, this debate is not dividing the organizations or even the City of Portland. “This issue in this city, as far as I’m concerned, requires all hands in. I don’t care what you do, but if you’re doing something to help these kids and change this culture, you’re doing something. That’s all right to me,” Roby said. But there is concern ahead. One thing anyone might notice at these drop-in centers is that some of these young homeless teens are bringing in their infants as well. “The problem we’re seeing now is the beginning of a horrible cycle of poverty…these kids do not know how to get their kids out of poverty. A great fear is that we’ll be serving the kids’ kids in twenty years,” Gorsuch said. “We can’t let that happen.”

Sources:

League of Women Voters stats from a study on Oregon Youth Homelessness found at: http://www.lwvor.org/documents/HomelessYouth2006.htm

Tom Potter info found at: http://www.citymayors.com/mayors/portland_mayor.html