CNY outreach organizations prepare for another winter left out in the cold

When winter comes around at the Rescue Mission Alliance, and other homeless shelters in and around Syracuse, things become anything but quiet. The 192-bed homeless shelter on Dickinson Street is at capacity nearly every night. Staff turn common room couches into makeshift beds, sometimes housing 30 or more residents in the lobby.

The Point in Time census count found a 75% increase in unhoused individuals living on the streets of Central New York in 2024. That’s on top of the 40% increase in 2023. For the shelters, this means more people to house, especially in the winter. A Department of Homeless Services policy called Code Blue requires shelters to accept as many clients as possible when the temperature drops below 32 degrees, disregarding normal intake procedures.

When all shelters are at capacity, social services designate where to send those seeking a bed.

“If you stab someone one month ago in the shelter, we have to let you back in,” Gary Mann, division director of housing for the Rescue Mission Alliance, said.

Last winter, the shelter on Dickerson Street was at capacity almost every night. With the summer months providing little reprieve, they expect this winter will be just as difficult, if not more.

Residents have to sleep in the lobby, sitting up on common couches. A required ratio of staff to residents means the organizations must hire people less qualified than they’d like and security becomes difficult to handle, Mann said.

“The people who work at the shelters, they work very hard and they care,” Shauna Bort, a former social worker in Syracuse who now works as a licensed therapist in Rochester, said. 

“They do the best they can, but there are still going to be instances of violence or drug use. It is not uncommon for people who sell drugs to hang outside of shelters to purposely sell and keep the money coming in,” Bort said.

The shelters themselves are all too aware of the problems.

“We’re going to accept you here,” Mann said. “But are you safe here? It comes down to that person’s decision. We’re here for you. Please tell us if something’s going wrong. But there’s a myriad of problems that can and do arise,” he said.

“It’s the least ideal thing possible, besides freezing to death outside, but it’s not great for anyone, for staff or for residents,” he said. 

Freezing to death is not hyperbole. Last winter, Mann received a text from one of the Rescue Mission’s outreach workers tasked with providing aid to those on the streets with a picture of two feet, black and rotten with cold.

“They looked like an Egyptian mummy, that far gone. It’s mummified stumped feet,” Mann said.

The most difficult thing for Mann and his team was that the woman refused to come inside. This resistance is something street outreach workers often encounter, either due to mental health issues, or the client having had a negative past experience in a shelter.

“They don’t like being around a lot of people,” James Holly, a street outreach case worker with the Rescue Mission, said. “Sometimes there’s fights; sometimes there might be some drug use going on. They don’t like to be around that kind of stuff.”

Shelters can be staffed as well as possible, but more people means more problems, and these are problems many of the unhoused are hoping to avoid at whatever cost, Holly said.

If they refuse to go to a shelter, their option is either to stay on the street or in an encampment, Diane Cooper-Currier, executive director at Oswego County Opportunities said. “The system isn’t adequate enough to manage affordable housing, and then very low-income housing or shelters.”

A lack of affordable housing and shelters is not an issue that can be fixed overnight, so outreach workers are forced to make do however they can. Instead of being able to provide personalized assistance to help clients find jobs or permanent housing, they’re only able to give each client enough to keep them alive.

“It becomes a depressing shift in your brain,” he said. “If you’re a caseworker you want someone to get better instead of just stay alive, then that kind of goes out the window. No one’s getting what they need”

Helping the people themselves takes more time than outreach workers have, Cooper-Currier said.

“This isn’t fast, because we’re talking about people’s psyche, so much trauma that they have probably experienced in their life that I couldn’t even begin to imagine that has built upon itself to get them to this place,” she said.

The hope is that a shift in focus to permanent housing can begin to alleviate some of the pressure on shelters in the future. The Rescue Mission is developing a housing project in Auburn where they can house clients and their families for longer periods of time.

Permanent housing fixtures allow for caseworkers to develop a significant relationship with their clients, and provide them with more substantial assistance.

“Shelters, that’s not the answer. That’s a band-aid,” Mann said.

However, these projects take significant amounts of time and money, which, with winter fast approaching, the shelters just don’t have. For now, Mann and his team make do with what they’ve got.

“You try to come up with the best plan you can,” Mann said. “ But it is a forced hand.”