Point in time
A look through the window of homelessness in Gillette
There was a trail of footprints in the snow from the sidewalk to the culverts underneath Warlow Drive.
The prints were new in the otherwise fresh snow.
An SUV pulled over to the curb and three men got out with flashlights. One was holding a clipboard. The group split up. Two men took the north side of the culverts and the other one eased his way down the slippery embankment following the prints.
Hugo Naranjo went by himself and followed the trail. Art Beyersdorf and Elliot Basner went the other way.
The temperature was well below freezing outside, but the culverts could provide some warmth and shelter from the wind.
Naranjo clicked on his flashlight and pointed its beam down the tunnel. No shadows were cast, no sleeping bodies on the ground revealed. The footprints trailed down and then stopped.
There was no one down there.
Maybe they’ll check back later when the bars let out at 2 a.m.
Finding the homeless is trickier than one would imagine.
Being homeless is even more complicated.
The count
Every January, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development — better known as HUD — administers its Point-in-Time Count for sheltered and unsheltered homeless people in local communities.
HUD requires organizations that help the homeless population on a continuous basis to conduct the count on a single night in January.
Other than supplying paperwork and general guidelines on how people are counted, the federal agency is mostly hands-off when it comes to the count.
In Gillette, all the responsibility falls to the Council of Community Services and a small team of dedicated volunteers who are passionate about helping one of the most vulnerable, yet looked-over, populations in the city.
Tracy Obert, the housing coordinator for the Council of Community Services, leads the annual effort.
Every year, Obert struggles with the idea of the Point-in-Time Count, mainly because it’s difficult for a small group of volunteers to accurately count the homeless population and to depict what homelessness looks like in Gillette.
The reason the count is so important for the Council of Community Services is because it determines how much money the organization is eligible to receive from federal grants.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development also considers the performance, procedures and strategic planning of Wyoming’s Continuum of Care.
The state’s Continuum of Care has a board that meets periodically and focuses on how to better manage the homeless population.
Some states have one Continuum of Care that oversees homeless issues while other states, like Florida, California and Illinois, have several boards.
California has the most by far with 43.
Last month, HUD announced Wyoming would receive less than $289,000 in federal grants. States like Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota and Delaware, all states with similar homeless populations to Wyoming, received much more money.
Montana received $2.68 million, South Dakota was given $1.32 million, North Dakota received $1.88 million and Delaware received a staggering $8.25 million.
Mikel Scott, the executive director of the Council of Community Services, said one of the reasons Wyoming has secured underwhelming funding from HUD is because Wyoming’s Continuum of Care has underperformed in the federal agency’s eyes for many years.
“It was dysfunctional because we didn’t have (a lot of) state support,” Scott said. “Once you screw up with HUD, it makes it hard to claw back to where we should be.”
Scott and the rest of the Council of Community Services staff received good news earlier this year when HUD announced the agency was the only “Tier 1” organization in the state to receive funding.
The Council of Community Services secured about $55,000 of the $289,000 that the federal agency allocated for the state.
Scott said one of the reasons this happened was because the staff has been putting a major focus on the prevention of homelessness, rather than just addressing homelessness after it happens.
Scott said that Obert and case manager Tammy Burbank use Rapid Rehousing and Homeless Prevention money for those who qualify and are in imminent danger of becoming homeless to keep them in their homes.
Obert also has been in charge of the Street Outreach program to find people who are homeless, unsheltered or those who are in danger of becoming homeless.
Even with the successes of these newer outreach programs, money is consistently an issue.
The Council of Community Services receives nothing from the state. It relies heavily on federal grants, donations and a small percentage of the Optional 1 Percent Sales Tax that is distributed by the city and Campbell County.
“Homelessness will never be the №1 issue in Wyoming,” Scott said. “Part of that is because in a city, homelessness is more visible. In a rural community it’s very hidden.”
Because it’s so hidden, Scott said that the Point-in-Time Count is “famously inaccurate.”
“To count people for one day, for one night of the year, in the middle of winter, is not going to give you an accurate number for your homeless population,” she said.
Scott added that the Department of Housing and Urban Development has been trying to improve efforts for homeless counts in rural areas, but she and the rest of the staff struggle with the idea of the annual count.
“It’s so important for Wyoming to catch up to where we should be,” she said. “You only get that one chance and if you don’t do the best that you can do, they say, ‘Too bad.’”
The daily struggle
Casey Teakell first came to Wyoming a few months ago for his father’s funeral in a small town outside of Cody.
He was in Iowa before that, working odd jobs and at an auction house.
Since coming to Wyoming, he’s been drifting. He came to Gillette around Christmastime. Teakell doesn’t have permanent housing and is staying with a friend.
He has used the Way Station a handful of times for a night’s sleep and is a regular at the Soup Kitchen.
The day after the Point-in-Time count, Teakell was having lunch with Lorna Abell. The two have been close since Teakell came to town.
Teakell spends most of his days looking for work. He has a lot of roofing and construction experience, which is tough work to find in the middle of winter.
Teakell’s brother is at the Volunteers of America correctional facility and is scheduled to be released in early March.
“I’m in a bit of limbo right now,” he said.
Abell was most recently staying with the Gillette Abuse Refuge Foundation (GARF) at the crisis shelter before she slipped and broke her hip. She had surgery in June and still recovering.
Medical expenses have piled up and the Council of Community Services has done a lot to help her find permanent housing, she said.
Because she can’t get around very well, the agency has allowed Abell to stay at the Way Station during the day.
That’s one thing Teakell would like to see in Gillette.
“I think having a day room for the folks would be a good idea,” he said.
Scott has thought about that, and said the idea has its pros and cons. Having a room for homeless people during the day would be convenient for them, but would also require more staff time and could potentially affect people’s motivation to get themselves in a better situation.
“Once you’re in the shelter, it’s harder to get out,” she said.
Scott likes to look at the Way Station as a trampoline. It’s a safety net that should always act as a resource for people to use to quickly bounce them back and get them back on their feet.
Abell said she is trying her best to find a job because her hip has felt better. However, the first week of February was the deadline given to her to when she needed to be out and making transitions.
“People are in the shelter for so many reasons,” Scott said. “The longer someone stays, the harder it is for them to get out.”
In the middle of the night
It was well past midnight when Naranjo walked behind a water service building near the airport to look for a group of squatters that might be living in a mobile home without utilities.
Dawn Dillinger, a transitional living case manager the YES House and frequent volunteer for the Council of Community Services, had a hunch that people were living there.
The rules for the count were to find people who were sleeping in conditions that aren’t meant for human habitation.
Naranjo spotted a light on in the mobile home and heard a space heater running. He decided to leave the mobile home alone. He mumbled something about a fear of guns behind the door. You never know.
Casey Starr was back at the YES House listening to the police scanner and monitoring a group text of more than 15 volunteers who were looking for homeless people.
“It’s really a story of two Gillettes,” Dillinger said. “There’s the life that a lot of us know. Moms with their SUVs busy on the weekends with soccer tournaments. Then there’s this other side that people have a blindness to.”
Beyersdorf, one of the volunteers for the homeless count, said he signed up for two, three-hour shifts because he wanted to see what this part of Gillette looked like.
Dillinger and Obert checked out an abandoned car underneath the Gurley Avenue overpass but found out it belonged to a resident at the Howard Johnson hotel.
A waitress at the Lariat Cafe said a woman comes in and sleeps on the bench in the entryway sometimes but that she hadn’t seen her in a while. She said she would keep her eyes open.
Driving south on Gurley toward Smith’s, Obert recognized a woman named Mary Linder and flagged her down. She gave her a bag full of toiletries and a warm blanket after jotting her information down for the count.
Around the same time, Starr got a call on her cellphone.
One of the search parties found a family of three sleeping in an unheated RV in the Kmart parking lot.
