On Nov. 7, the Yupiit Piciryarait Cultural Center in Bethel filled up with people looking for a hot meal, looking to get out of the cold, and looking to connect with the wide array of community services evolving to address the city’s chronic homelessness. Now in its sixth year, Project Homeless Connect continues to live up to its name.
Dozens of visitors to the Nov. 7 event found the giant pot of moose chili being offered up irresistible on one of the coldest days in November. New scarves, socks, gloves, and a range of necessities were piled high on a set of tables, free for the taking. A man sat in a barber chair at a volunteer-staffed haircut station. Others had their vitals checked, applied for various benefits, grabbed harm reduction products provided by public health workers, and made their way between the dozen or so booths representing the backbone of Bethel’s outreach efforts.
The goal of Project Homeless Connect events, which ideally take place three times a year, is to not only raise awareness of the array of community services that are available, but to also gather the baseline survey data essential for keeping many of these services funded.
"We have to be able to compile this very comprehensive list of what homelessness looks like in Bethel. And this allows us to then give those numbers to funders and say, 'Hey, we need X, Y, and Z,'" said Jaela Milford, executive director of Bethel Winter House, the only homeless shelter in town.
Milford said that the Winter House had already served around 200 people since opening at the beginning of October.
While the goal of turning the Winter House into a year-round shelter has yet to be achieved, a 24-unit permanent supportive housing facility next door is on track to open next spring. Michelle DeWitt, executive director of Bethel Community Services Foundation, the project developer, sat behind one of the tables at the Nov. 7 event.
"So before you build a project, you need to know if there's a need. And figure out if there's a need, you need to talk with folks," DeWitt said. "And that's how we've been using Project Homeless Connect events."
DeWitt was gathering information from applicants interested in calling one of the 24 single-occupancy units home, which she said ultimately comes down to meeting standards set by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
"I think on any given day we probably have somewhere between 50 and 100 people who are unhoused in the community," DeWitt said. "That does not necessarily mean that all of them are eligible for permanent supportive housing."
DeWitt came to Bethel with the Jesuit Volunteer (JV) Corps 25 years ago, and has since passed the torch of community outreach to numerous JVs spread throughout the community. One of the most recent is Ian Poole, who is several months into a stint as the volunteer assigned to the Kuskokwim Consortium Library. He spent Nov. 7 dishing out chili and ensuring the smooth running of the event.
"This has kind of become a tradition for the JV at the library to run this event. And they've left me some really good notes," Poole said. "So it's kind of cool to see past JVs kind of leave their little bits of wisdom with me."
Poole grew up in a midsized city in Georgia and has noticed the way that homelessness in tight-knit rural communities like Bethel is hard to ignore.
"I guess it seems more acute because it's a smaller population here in general," Poole said. "So, you know, you're seeing the same faces on the people who are experiencing homelessness. And that can be tough."
The cultural center will be hosting the next Project Homeless Connect event in late January to mark the annual “point-in-time” count, a nationwide snapshot of homelessness gathered through in-person surveys on a single day. The model provides nowhere near a perfect picture of homelessness, especially in a remote under-reported region like the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, but the data it provides is absolutely essential for bringing in the federal funding needed to support the effort.
