Philadelphia overwhelmed by the homeless, turning many away

Inside the waiting room of the Appletree Family Center at 15th and Cherry Streets, women and children, plus a few men, fill the seats. A young mother nurses a tiny baby. A little girl sleeps on a woman's lap. Fidgety toddlers color in notebooks.

They are waiting for the city to place them in shelters. All but a few will leave disappointed.

James Sanders, 49, has gone to the intake center with his wife and five children every day for the last four weeks - some mornings walking four miles just to get there.

After shuttling between the homes of two relatives, he and his family were temporarily placed in a hotel by the city Tuesday. "I'm struggling," said Sanders, who used to wash cars and needs to find permanent housing before he can start fixing the other broken pieces of his life.

Sonia Redden, 37, who lost her housekeeping job with a medical center last year, spent Monday night sleeping on the floor of a shelter with her daughters, 8 and 10.

She was told by workers at Appletree that unless she could find a friend or relative to stay with that night, they would have to call the Department of Human Services about her children.

"I'm down, but help me get up," said Redden, already fretting at 9 a.m. about where she would stay that night.

The city's ability to help families without homes is getting weaker.

"The city is very blatantly turning away folks," said Marsha Cohen, a lawyer for the Homeless Advocacy Project, which provides free legal help to individuals without homes. "It's never been like this."

Cohen said the city is telling people to find their own housing as a way to determine who truly needs emergency help and who still has friends or relatives to lean on.

All of the 1,544 beds for families at city-funded shelters are occupied. Dainette Mintz, the director of Philadelphia's Office of Supportive Housing, which funds shelters and places people, conceded that more families than usual are being denied immediate help.

She said for the year ended June 30, the city had to turn away 591 families at the Appletree Center - double the rate of two years ago. Of those families last year, 17 percent came back, claiming they had nowhere else to turn. Two years ago, about 10 percent returned.

Several factors are affecting the city's ability to assist the rising number of homeless families.