As winter arrives, hundreds of people remain on the street in Saratoga County. The journey to supportive housing can be difficult, but for some, securing shelter and services is a lifeline.
This article was originally published in WAMC Northeast Public Radio.
While Saratoga County is one of the fastest-growing regions of New York, and has the highest per-capita income in the Capital Region, hundreds of people face homelessness.
For over a year and a half until the spring of 2024, Colleen Bowers was one of them. That’s when she moved into the Dominic Hollow Apartments in Ballston Spa – a 60-unit supportive housing program created through RISE Housing and Support Services.
Bowers had been living in temporary situations – spending six months on couches, a year at her father’s house, and two months at Shelters of Saratoga.
“Since I was in my late 20s, I was in and out of rehabs. I went to the Hedger House when it was open here. I became pregnant with my oldest son who’s 11 now, and that helped tremendously. I was sober for six years, so I had two other kids after that, so that was my sober years,” Bowers said.
Bowers says her health concerns were a contributing factor that led her to become homeless.
“Me and their father went through a lot of stuff. And when I was with him, he took care of all the bills. And then through the time I got, I was getting really sick. I have RA, I have a lot of health issues, so I can’t work. And I tried to do like SSS by myself and I could just, it was, it was too hard. So then, I ended up becoming homeless.”
In Saratoga County, the work to combat homelessness is primarily executed by non-profit human service agencies like RISE and Shelters of Saratoga (SOS).
Both SOS and RISE provide supportive housing, designed for people with mental health diagnoses and other life challenges.
RISE Executive Director Sybil Newell says guidance goes along with the shelter.
“So, it helps people not only afford the housing that they’re going into, but then they would be assigned a case manager, essentially, who would meet with them on a regular basis to make sure that they’re doing everything they need to do to stay safe and healthy in the community,” Newell said.
Supportive housing is made possible in part by the state-funded Empire State Supportive Housing Initiative (ESSHI).
For people like Bowers, supportive housing does not just provide stability, but also a chance to address personal life challenges.
When she was still homeless, Bowers felt disconnected from her family after the loss of her parents and with limited time with her children.
“And it’s definitely the struggle of knowing I have family out there that could help me, but refuse to, you know? And then I’ve lost my mother. I’ve lost my father. Like after I left him, he passed away. So, you know, then feeling orphaned on top of it all. It’s just, I don’t know. Like I said, scary,” Bowers said.
Now, she describes a growing sense of stability.
“It was just like, I finally just felt at ease,” Bowers said. “And then especially like coming here, they had all the furnishings, you know, the furniture, the bed, the, you know, pots and pans, all that kind of stuff ready. My kid’s grandmother only lives five minutes away from here. So now I have them on the weekends, school vacations, all that stuff, so it’s like the family dynamics coming back.”
For others like Steven Mattice, RISE offered him a fresh start.
Mattice, who has been living in the Dominic Hollow Apartments for a year and a half, was homeless for two years, living out of his car. His parents helped set him up with care managers at RISE.
“I was working at the time but it wasn’t enough to like afford an apartment or anything so I was kind of stuck. But then I ended up getting into RISE because I have a major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders and Asperger’s. So, I qualified for transitional housing so I was able to move into that,” Mattice said.
After securing transitional housing through RISE, Mattice says he was slow to engage with the treatment offered.
“At first, though, I was kind of avoiding the treatment because I just didn’t want to do it. I was just basically there to live. But once I got out of that mindset and started like doing what I was supposed to, it started to get better,” Mattice said.
One challenge for Mattice has been dealing with others’ perceptions regarding his and his friends mental health issues.
“I think the biggest thing is people, when you find out you have mental health problems, they kind of assume that you’re, like, crazy,” Mattice said.
He says it’s not uncommon for people in his position to confront prejudice.
“Especially a lot of the guys I’ve lived with had stuff that was more, I guess a nice way to put it is more noticeable than my mental illness. And they would get weird looks in public, and it really offended me because they were my friends – people I lived with, and they were good people, and they didn’t deserve to be looked at like that.”
These support programs are high in demand. The 2024 Saratoga-North County Continuum of Care Point-In-Time Count says 188 more people are using emergency shelter and transitional services than in 2023.
Newell says getting onto the waitlist can take years.
“I would say the average would be somewhere between two and four months to get into our housing programs. For supportive housing, which is our most independent level of care, but which is still overseen, those wait lists can sometimes be a year, two years, a long time,” Newell said.
For people like Peter Rounseville, who moved from Columbus, Georgia, to Saratoga Springs a little over a year ago, Shelters of Saratoga has connected him with much-needed healthcare.
Back in Georgia, Rounseville was homeless and suffering from health issues. It was his friend’s idea for him to seek assistance in New York.
“Because I have health coverage now, I understand why I’m having a hard time with my legs, and I had a suffered a stroke. I would have never known that in Georgia. I would have never even begun to even had an opportunity to get the help that I need,” Rounseville said.
Rounseville says he is looking at getting a place of his own within the next year. He says it’s easy for others to take housing for granted.
“I’ve been without a bed, been without a shower, been without this and that people have every day. And it’s just so easy for people to take it for granted, because, you know, it could go just like that. Look at the hurricanes. Where do people go now? Shelters,” Rounseville said.
Lee Burns Jr., who now is in supportive housing, was brought to SOS by a friend after being evicted from his trailer home and being kicked out of a temporary living situation. Before coming to SOS a year ago, Burns says he struggled significantly with his weight and diabetes.
“I was like close to 400, sometimes the meter wouldn’t even read. And when I came here, the food, the way they push you to do what you can do, not too much. So they gave me some exercise. You know, they were like, ‘why don’t you take the bus, if you can walk to it, see how far you can do, so you got some exercise in?’ And like I said, it worked out for me,” Burns said. “Once I ended up getting a G7 monitor, and know where I was, I started taking insulin less. Like if I wanted something, I’d get something sweet, like a piece of fruit. If my blood sugar was high, I’d get up, go take a walk.”
According to the 2024 Saratoga-North County Continuum of Care Point-In-Time Count, there were 515 individuals living in shelters across Saratoga, Washington, and Hamilton counties.
For Dewey Adams, who was a pipefitter for 35 years, going to Code Blue and then transitioning into supportive housing allowed him to start working again after losing his job.
Saratoga County’s Code Blue, established in 2013, is operated by Shelters of Saratoga and has been relocated a number of times since its establishment. Per state law, it opens when the temperatures are freezing.
While still homeless and working toward sobriety, Adams wanted to get back to work, but didn’t know how.
“I know I could work, but I didn’t have any ID on me or anything, how to get that, go through all that steps and that, and um, once I got through all the steps of getting my life in a little bit of order, these guys helped me,” Adams said.
Adams now works as a Maintenance Technician at SOS and lives in supportive housing with his wife. As someone who has both stayed and worked at Code Blue for four years now, Adams advocates for expanding the Code Blue shelter.
“Some people don’t like the homeless in the areas, but we got to have somewhere where we can house them and keep them safe and from not freezing to death, you know. And the place we got right now, we had 74 people last year, and it was just a little hectic, but when we get the new place, it’s gonna be bigger, and it’s gonna be more laid out, so we can just take care of everybody, you know,” Adams said.
The future of the city’s unhoused and mental health services is unclear.
Advocates and city leaders have been pushing for years to locate a year-round low-barrier emergency shelter. A previous attempt was stopped short amid public outcry when a proposed location was deemed too close to a Catholic school.
This August, the city voted to approve the purchase of a 1.4-acre plot on Ballston Avenue to build a new Code Blue shelter.
Saratoga Springs Mayor John Safford says establishing a permanent Code Blue shelter is a step in the right direction.
“This year, it looks like we’re going to be able to, with the help of the county, have a permanent center here, and that is going to be very good for a number of reasons, mainly management and additional services for those people. Because the way it’s been done in the past it can’t be managed very well especially now it’s kind of in a motel,” Safford said.
For Burns, going to a stable shelter and then transitioning into supportive housing helped him address his health, giving him a sense of redirection.
“I wouldn’t say this place is a shelter. I think they need to find a new way of saying it, because people come here thinking it’s like a meal and a bed. And for me, it was a lot more. It was a place where I could start being a decent human being again and see how that came out,” Burns said.