Sitting on her neighbor's patio, Kay Maisano watched her furniture being loaded onto the moving van and wondered where she was going to go.

It was October 2007, and Maisano had just been evicted from her apartment because of complaints about her son's noisy friends and her dog. Now the 79-year-old was homeless.

A half-year earlier, Cynthia Peters had been trying to figure out her next move, too.

She had to leave the Domestic Violence Services shelter after her time ran out, and because she didn't have enough income for an apartment, she rented a room. But the situation was so bad that she and her three children were sleeping in their car.

Both women wound up at the emergency shelter at Crispus Attucks Community Center. From there, Maisano and Peters found the help and support they needed to get off the streets and back into homes.

By next summer, that option might not be available.

Crispus Attucks has decided to reorient its mission away from shelter care and toward preventing homelessness. Unless the timetable is extended, the center is expected to stop admitting new clients by April 15 and to close the shelter by summer.

Faced with the influx of Crispus Attucks' 300 residents a year into a stitched-together safety net for more than 700 homeless people, members of the Interagency Council for the Homeless are scrambling to replace those 20 shelter beds.

The long-term goal is to start a new shelter — or maybe more than one. The Interagency Council has been talking to real estate brokers and builders about properties. They've termed the effort "Safe Beds and Warm Blankets."

But in the short term, the council is asking houses of worship to consider extending their commitment to an emergency winter shelter and asking the Crispus Attucks board to keep the shelter open a little longer.

A coalition of agencies recently produced a plan to end homelessness in the county within 10 years. That timetable could be in jeopardy, both because of the Crispus Attucks decision and because of the confluence of a recession, record rates of foreclosures, rising unemployment and the return home of Iraq War veterans.

"It's a perfect storm," said Valerie Case of Mid-Penn Legal Services.

"… What do we do when it's really, really cold and we don't have enough beds?"

Nowhere to go
Kay Maisano never figured she'd be caught in the storm.

She'd worked for the state welfare department and had been a research technician for RCA. She'd been a homeowner, but the two-story house got to be too much for her after her leg was amputated in 2004.

When her landlord told her she was being evicted, Maisano was at a loss. She didn't have enough money to stay at a hotel. The only thing she could think of was to put her furniture into storage.

Providentially, her case manager from a home health agency stopped by just as the van was being loaded.

"Where are you going?" the case manager asked. Maisano didn't know.

The case manager began to make phone calls.

"I thought, 'Oh my Lord, if she can't find anything, what am I going to do?' " Maisano recalled last week.

But Crispus Attucks had a bed. The case manager took Maisano, who doesn't own a car, to 407 Howard Ave.

She only stayed five nights. Patrick Cronin, the shelter case manager, arranged to move Maisano to the Transitional Living Center on East King Street when he noticed she was having respiratory problems. Eventually she was admitted to Conestoga View nursing home, where she lives.

But in those five days, Maisano said, she got a lifetime's worth of education into homelessness.

"It was a humbling experience, one I appreciate," Maisano said.

"I learned never to judge somebody else. You just don't know what their circumstances are."

Crispus Attucks serves a challenging population. The Interagency Council says the 15-year-old shelter cares for chronically homeless people, many of whom have mental or physical illnesses, drug or alcohol dependence and few job skills, with its 20 beds. Residents stay a maximum 60 days.

From 2004 to 2008, according to data collected by the council, an average of 300 residents have passed through the Crispus Attucks shelter. Eighty percent, or 240, are from Lancaster. The remaining 20 percent are from the county or came here from other places, "refuting the myth that this county is sent homeless people from other areas," the council said in a statement.

Of 299 clients from July 2007 to June 2008, 246 were from the city, 26 were from the county and 27 were from out of the area. Forty-two had been referred to Crispus Attucks from the other main emergency shelter program, Water Street Rescue Mission. Thirty-eight were referred by hospitals, 33 by the county Mental Health/Mental Retardation agency, 25 by the police and 64 from other agencies. The remaining 97 showed up on their own.

In August, the Crispus Attucks board announced plans to phase out the shelter as part of a change in vision geared toward strengthening families and preventing homelessness.

The news prompted the Interagency Council to assign its outreach committee the job of figuring out what to do. If those beds aren't replaced, the council said, "there will be more people on the streets, in their cars, moving into crowded apartments where they don't belong, as well as those who will be repeatedly jailed and hospitalized."

Ending homelessness?
Over the years, the council, which represents agencies serving homeless people across the county, has secured $17 million in federal Housing and Urban Development funds for the chronically and transitionally homeless.

With the help of that money, the council, along with the United Way of Lancaster County, city and county government, began to develop a "Housing First" strategy aimed at moving homeless people into permanent housing. The strategy was outlined in a report, "Heading Home: The Ten-Year Action Plan to End Homelessness in Lancaster County," presented to the public in October.

Those goals are "premised upon our ability to maintain the existing numbers of beds in our emergency shelters," the council wrote in its statement. The council "suggests that the existing infrastructure is not sufficient to allow an absolute loss of these emergency shelter beds in this community."

Indeed, statistics and anecdotal reports indicate the demand for shelters is growing, with the current economic crisis a prime factor.

The council says Crispus Attucks turns away an average of four people a day because its beds are full. "For the first time in 10 years," Water Street's emergency shelter for men, with 42 beds, is also turning away people.

"Compared to last year at this time," said Maria Schaszberger, a spokeswoman for the mission, "… we have seen almost a 10 percent increase in clients coming for shelter."

In 2004, a count showed 537 adults and children were homeless countywide; in 2008, that had risen to 707. The most recent count was taken one night in January and found at least 74 people had no shelter at all.

Those figures do not include those who are "doubled up" with other families.

The Community Homeless Outreach Center, or CHOC, is part of the Interagency Council's efforts to reach "unsheltered" homeless. CHOC opened a year ago in the chapel at Water Street, offering people a warm place to spend the day, to get a shower and to launder their clothes.

CHOC has been overwhelmed, said Director Adrian Rodriguez. The center expected four to six visitors a day; last week it was averaging about 88.

People who use CHOC, which will mark its anniversary with an open house from 2:30 to 4 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 4, aren't connected with any other shelter program, Rodriguez pointed out.

"Hopefully, we've been a refuge," he said.

But the refuge is crowded. CHOC furnishings are set up and taken down daily so the chapel is free in the evenings. Case said the center needs lockers so clients can store medications and belongings, and transportation to CareerLink offices at Liberty Place.

"The weather's getting colder," Rodriguez said. He expects demand for CHOC to grow.

Cold weather also means more demand for the emergency winter shelter, another Interagency Council outreach that opens Dec. 1.

Houses of worship in the city take turns hosting the shelter through April 1. Two weeks later, if Crispus Attucks maintains its closing schedule, its shelter will stop accepting new clients.

"We will be overwhelmed," Case said.

From homeless to home
Cynthia Peters knows what it's like to feel overwhelmed.

In April 2007, she had finished a stay at the Domestic Violence Services shelter and had to find more permanent housing. She and her children, now 18, 13 and 6, wound up sleeping in their car when their rented room on Queen Street turned out to be a bad choice.

She went to Water Street, but the mission was full. She went to Crispus Attucks, which also was at capacity.

"But Patrick said, 'I can't have you and your children sleeping in the car,' " Peters said last week. He put them up on sofas until beds became available.

Cronin guided Peters to the services she needed, including connecting her with Case to get her disability benefits, so that the family was able to move in July 2007 to a rented house in Ephrata.

Crispus Attucks was a big adjustment for Peters and the children: "We're country people," she said.

Still, "I don't regret going through it," she said. "Even as scared as I was, I took it as a life lesson."

Crispus Attucks Executive Director Cheryl Holland-Jones was quoted in newspaper stories in August as saying the decision to close the shelter was a difficult one, but necessary.

She said last week that the board has not yet replied to the Interagency Council's request to postpone the shutdown but is considering it.

The council expects that eventually, Crispus Attucks will close the shelter and is working to replace those 20 beds.

The most immediate solution is expanding the winter shelter so it opens earlier in the year and ends later.

Rabbi Jack Paskoff of Congregation Shaarai Shomayim, one of the houses of worship, said he hasn't yet heard about the extension request.

"It seems logical to ask," he said. "I'm not sure of our ability to sustain the project year round, though."

He said the shelter can handle as many as 50 clients.

Case noted that the council envisioned the winter shelter as a five-year commitment for the churches and synagogues, and it's already year four.

"I can only speak for myself, and not the congregational lay leadership," Paskoff said. "We are not going to allow people to be in a life-threatening situation, where avoidable, but relying on the houses of worship as more than a stopgap measure is probably not the best idea. There are too many variables and changes on a regular basis, as well as volunteer burnout to be taken into account."

The long-term solution is a new shelter. But that will take money, volunteers — and time.

Council members are working on building or renovating a shelter that can house 40 to 50 people. This might mean more than one location, Case said.

Because hospitals have been a significant source of referrals to Crispus Attucks, the council will be approaching those hospitals for financial aid. Case said one idea involves a building near Lancaster General Hospital where people discharged from LGH's psychiatric unit can stay, with a psychiatric nurse available to dispense their medications.

The council also has been talking with construction companies and developers, including Community Basics, and has been working with real estate brokers to identify possible sites.

The United Way is serving as fiduciary agent and has set up the Lancaster Emergency Shelter Fund to accept donations.

In addition, the council is hoping to tap funding sources that underwrite the Crispus Attucks shelter. Those grants and tax credits total $234,000, plus about $25,000 from private donors. Another $7,000 is anticipated from program fees paid by residents who hold jobs or are on public assistance.

The council is asking citizens, houses of worship, contractors and others to help finance and lead the drive for a new shelter.

"If we do nothing, we will be responsible for some of our family members and neighbors becoming homeless on a multigenerational basis," the council said in its statement.

Kay Maisano agreed to tell her story because she believes it's important to continue the work that Crispus Attucks has been doing.

"This town is not a poor town," she said. "This is a town with a lot of wealth. … They should all have to spend 72 hours at Crispus Attucks."

Cynthia Peters celebrated her 40th birthday on Thanksgiving Day.

"I'm thankful I'm still able to be where I'm at," she said.

"It can happen to anybody."

For information on the shelter project or to donate, phone 397-3034 or e-mail lancasteremergencyshelter@yahoo.com.

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Helen Colwell Adams is a Sunday News staff writer. E-mail her at hcolwell@lnpnews.com.