By Maryann Schroder
Toney Kitchens wakes before sunrise each morning. He selects from among clothes he has on hand and heads out to breakfast prepared by Action Ministries. Within the hour he will be sitting on a bench, his home base for the rest of the day and into the evening.
Kitchens has been homeless for three years since losing his job as a live-in farm hand. He knows how to get by, where to go for meals, showers, and laundry. He claims a bench on College Square as his daytime spot and locates places to sleep at night – a bed of pine straw in good weather, a stairwell in foul conditions.
But another winter is approaching, and Kitchens hopes to find a place to live. The problem is that he does not know how to escape from the net of circumstances that entrap him.
As a 52-year-old unskilled laborer, Kitchens can expect low wages. The job posting website, Indeed, gives an average annual salary of $22,000 for full-time laborers in Athens, six percent less than the national average. And many of the openings are for part-time work.
If Kitchens were able to land a full-time position, he should pay no more than $550 per month to avoid being “cost-burdened,” defined by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as spending more than 30 percent of income on housing.
Finding an apartment at that rate is not easy, given an inadequate supply of affordable housing, as cited in a 2015 report by Athens-Clarke County Housing and Economic Development. And the wait list to get into public housing is long. Kitchens’ name is on it, but reaching the top of the list is not within sight.
Housing programs for the homeless may not work for Kitchens either. Funds from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development must be allocated to those most in need before others, according to Ryan Halsey, community development specialist with Athens-Clarke Unified Government. Veterans are designated among those, as are families, and the chronically homeless – a classification that requires disability along with long-term homelessness.
Kitchens is in none of those categories.
“For your general just-happen-to-be-homeless individual, there are very few financial resources,” said Halsey.
Kitchens thinks of himself as a working man who has fallen into hard times. The idea that he could qualify for disability based on seizures developed since homeless does not appeal to him. He wants a job.
From time to time he finds one. He worked part time in the basement of the downtown Subway, unpacking supplies and rotating stock. But he quit after six months when his hours dwindled to next to nothing. He dog-sat for a few weeks, pit bull hitched to the leg of the bench where he sits. But the client got a job out of town and no longer uses his services.
Kitchens recently applied for a job as meter reader but has not heard back. And when strangers stop to say he should get a job, he suggests they offer him one.
Some opportunities do come. A local business owner asked him to move to a bench in front of his bar to count pedestrians passing by. An acquaintance offered farm work with housing, currently his best chance of getting off the street for the winter, if it comes to fruition and lasts through the cold months.
Day to day living is not as easy as his relaxed presence on that downtown bench suggests, with constant need for problem solving. Maintaining semblance of normal sleep-wake cycles is a challenge never really met. Belongings are stolen or removed by clean-up crews. Threatening characters are around at night. And, Kitchen cites boredom as his biggest nemesis.
He copes by reading, doing crossword puzzles, and socializing with passers-by who stop to chat and friends who come by regularly.
As time goes on, it becomes harder to escape homelessness. David Pirtle, education director at the National Coalition for the Homeless, explained that strategizing to meet daily needs expends coping skills. And that is echoed by Jocelyn Crumpton, social worker at the Athens Area Homeless Shelter.
“Being homeless puts someone in constant survival mode,” she said.
Of the short term, Kitchens says that he will get by if he has to remain outdoors for the winter. He has pride in his survival skills.
Of the long term, he remains hopeful that he will find a way out.
“I didn’t choose to be in this situation,” he said, “And it doesn’t mean I have to stay here.”
But for the foreseeable tomorrows, Kitchens will wake before sunrise, head over to breakfast prepared by Action Ministries, and spend his days sitting on a bench on College Square.