In the nooks and crannies of our cities

SALT LAKE CITY — Katt Fackrell, 21, cradles her son, Aiden, in her lap and tries to coax the child to eat a little lunch. Aiden is only interested in play and eying his surroundings in the Homeless Youth Resource Center at 655 South State Street in Salt Lake City.

Fackrell and her husband both have jobs, but together they don’t earn enough money to pay for food, utilities, rent, child care, and transportation. The three spend their nights in the home of friends. Katt and her husband depend on Katt’s mother-in-law and friends for child care while the couple are working. Otherwise, their days are spent at the Homeless Youth Resource Center, where they can get two warm meals a day and enough groceries to tide them over.

Unfortunately, Fackrell is no stranger to homelessness. Her father, a single parent, was homeless off and on while Fackrell, born addicted to heroin and crack cocaine, was growing up. Aiden represents the third generation of homeless Fackrells.

"I admit I’ve made a lot of mistakes," Fackrell told the Intermountain Catholic in a Dec. 6 interview. "I ran away when I was 12, and I spent time in juvenile detention for running away from Department of Child and Family Services (DCFS) custody, but they treated me like I didn’t know how to take care of myself, and I thought I knew better."

At 16, Fackrell was hitch-hiking around the country and riding the rails. She was arrested again, and at 18, the age when young people max out of the DCFS system, she was released from jail to the streets. She married, divorced, and remarried. The expenses of Aiden’ birth pushed the family over the edge. They could no longer make their rent payments.

"Our car barely runs," Fackrell said. "I’ve been coming here to the resource center regularly since I was 13 or 14. They’ve helped us a lot. I got tutoring here, and earned my GED. I’m participating in a life skills group, and the center helps us with food and diapers. Right now, I work selling sunglasses for a family-owned company, and my husband is working in construction."

When Fackrell’s mother-in-law comes by the Center to pick up Aiden, Fackrell insists the rough talk from other clients stop. "Let’s have a little respect here," she demanded.

Jeff St. Romaine, executive director of Volunteers of America (VOA), who runs the Homeless Youth Resource Center and eight other programs in the Salt Lake Valley, Davis, Tooele, and Emory Counties, said Fackrell’s story is not unique.

Teresa Stocks, program manager for the Center, said Fackrell’s determination to break the cycle of homelessness might mean a better life for Aiden eventually.

"Katt has a job, and she can keep it," Stocks said. "She is high functioning, and she doesn’t suffer from mental illness, like so many of our clients do. She just needs a little help."

The Center is open only during the daytime, and offers food, clothing, hygiene items, baby food, counseling, and skills training. Clients can earn three food items and three non-food items a day by signing up to do chores and learn skills, Stocks said. The Center serves two warm meals and four snacks a day for clients, some of whom spend their nights in the Road Home Shelter, the overflow shelter in Midvale, the Rescue Mission, or on the street. Staying nights with friends, as the Fackrells do, has come to be known as "couch surfing." Clients come to the Center to get warm, wash their clothes, take a shower, and find safety. Time before the shelters and mission open are often spent in libraries and coffee shops.

"We try to encourage our clients to participate in one or more of our five groups," Stocks said. "We have groups that teach life skills, work study, GED preparation, and health issues. We also have a ‘zine’ group which offers opportunities for creative expression, drawing and playing music.

"Getting out of homelessness is not an overnight process," she said.

Stocks used to work with DCFS. At school, she met Nicole Campolucci, who had just been promoted from program manger at the Center to director. Stocks applied for and got Campolucci’s previous job.

The Center depends on the Salt Lake Food Bank, the Bishop’s Warehouse, and generous donors for canned goods, meat, and fresh fruit and vegetables. At the Center, clients have access to computers, where they can prepare resumes, and where they can get up-to-date information on available housing.

Open to young people from ages 15-22, the Center has a large clientele of those from 19-21. The average time a young person is apt to remain homeless, Stocks said, is about five years.

St. Romaine said the Center exists on community development block grant funds, a grant from Ivory Homes, and the Pamela Atkinson Homeless Fund, The United Way, the Bastian Foundation, the George S. and Dolores Eccles Foundation, the Hemingway Foundation, the Larry H. Miller Foundation, and the Senator Orin Hatch Utah Families Foundation. "We’ve received other monies from generous donors, and during the holidays we’ve gotten a lot of attention from the press. But where does it say in the Bible that you can only give during the holidays?"

The Center also provides referrals to other agencies and staffs an outreach van, which offers food, water, hygiene products, and takes basic intake information. "With the van we can be more certain that the young people on the streets are having their needs met," St.Romaine said.

The question begs asking: Where are these young people’s parents?

St. Romain is blunt. "They’re dead, in jail, in a homeless shelter, or addicted to drugs, and either cannot or will not take care of their children."

Campolucci said the Center is seeing more and more young people who are on the streets for reasons of sexual orientation.

"Sadly, some parents throw their children out of the house when they come out," she said. "The young people fall in with a group of people, all of whom are engaged in what we call survival sex; sex for money, sex for a bed, sex for a warm place to stay.

"So these young people end up engaging in just the behavior their parents were afraid of. It’s a vicious cycle."

The Center, said Stokes, is the most stable place some homeless youth have ever known. "We’re they’re final safety net."