The nation’s rescue missions have seen an increase in women clients and are finding older people need their services more, a new survey by the Association of Gospel Rescue Missions (AGRM) shows. Unfortunately, the same is true in Alabama, experts say.
The 15th annual Snapshot Survey of the Homeless, involving 20,500 individuals, found that 23 percent of clients nationally were women in 2004, compared to 18 percent in 1994.
“Rescue missions responded to the extreme needs of homeless women and children and opened new shelters to care for families,” said Stephen E. Burger, executive director of AGRM, which is based in Kansas City, Mo. “We could be serving more females today, but most women’s facilities are usually at capacity.”
The study revealed that homeless women make up 15 percent of Alabama’s population in rescue missions. In Birmingham, sharply increasing numbers have led to the opening of two shelters for women in the last 10 years, according to Ricky Creech, Birmingham Baptist Association director of missions. “The fastest growing population group in the homeless community is women and children and the second is families,” he said. “The mythical skid-row bum no longer exists. The alcoholic single guy who doesn’t want to work is a small percentage in the homeless population.”
Before women’s missions were built by the Salvation Army and Jimmie Hale Mission in Birmingham, many shelters catered only to homeless men, Creech said.
“But in the past 10 years, the number of females and children increased so dramatically that these shelters had to be created,” he said.
Conducted at 154 missions across North America, the study also showed that mission clients are generally older than in the past. “In 1994 half were under age 35, and in 2004, nearly two-thirds are age 36 or older,” Burger said.
Likewise, the survey found 37 percent of the homeless population in Alabama falls between ages 36 to 45 and 33 percent between ages 46 to 65.
Other findings were similar to conclusions in previous years. For example, 62 percent of those responding nationally said they have been homeless less than one year, compared to 71 percent in Alabama. In 2003, 65 percent of clients said that was the case, compared to 56 percent in 1994.
Thirty-five percent of those surveyed both nationally and in Alabama in 2004 said they had never been homeless before, compared to 37 percent in 2003.
Creech has also seen an increased number of homeless seniors in the state. “Many retire and do not have enough retirement to provide for their basic needs, or they get into a drastic need because of a health situation and get caught in that downward spiral and end up homeless.”
As a result, seniors in dating relationships often decide to live together instead of getting married to help pay the bills.
“As a senior adult, if you are on government assistance and are in subsidized housing your check goes down and rent goes up (when you get married),” Creech said. “Out of mere necessity they have to live together because they both don’t want to be homeless.”
Creech suggests that there are many things churches can do to reach homeless people, but it starts with developing an outward focus.
“The church as a body in our nation has become too internalized,” he said. “You look at the decline in baptisms, evangelization, church attendance, church giving, increase in conflict — all of these are signs of people that have no vision.
“These are signs of a church that has forgotten its mission. What happens then is you focus on keeping the institution intact. I think that is the biggest problem in the church.”
Instead, Creech advises churches to look beyond their church campus. “The church has to go out onto the front doorsteps of the church and open their eyes,” he said. “Look at the people who live down the street. People are falling through the cracks, and it is the responsibility of the church to fill those cracks. If we can’t offer hope, who can?”
(RNS, Sondra Washington contributed)
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