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A Perry County group spent thousands on hotel rooms for unhoused people as commissioners voice their concerns about establishing a shelter
By: Theo Peck-Suzuki | Report for America
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NEW LEXINGTON, Ohio (WOUB/Report for America) — Getting custody of his teenage son was a positive development in Paul’s life. Among other things, having someone to take care of sharpened his sense of purpose. Another positive: His son was adjusting well to school in Perry County.
But there was a problem: Paul (who asked that WOUB not use his real name) is homeless. He can’t work anymore because of a bulging disc in his spine from a fractured vertebra, and he lost his last apartment in 2022 after a breakup. When his son first came to live with him, the two stayed at the house of some friends. Tensions rose, and that arrangement fell through.
Paul was used to sleeping in his car, but he didn’t want that for his son. He reached out to the principal at his son’s school and got hold of a handful of local organizations that support people experiencing homelessness in Perry County. Among them were members of the Perry County Housing Coalition, which pays to put people like Paul and his son at the Relax Inn outside New Lexington.
As homelessness grows throughout the region, some counties have responded by establishing new shelters. Perry County has not. The Relax Inn is the only place in the county unhoused people can go, and the money to keep them there doesn’t stretch far. In Paul’s case, it lasted six weeks. That’s not even close to the time it takes to find affordable housing in southeast Ohio.
“I was 69 on one list, and then 120-something on the other list. A week before that, I was 65,” Paul said as his final week at the hotel drew to a close. “But like, it depends on the seriousness of it. So if a veteran needs a place to live, I’ll get bumped back.”
People like Paul are one of the reasons the Perry County Housing Coalition wants to set up an overnight shelter. Last week’s point-in-time count revealed 46 unhoused people in Perry County — a number that, coalition members caution, may be lower than reality. St. Vincent DePaul, which contributes money to the hotel effort, spent $4,644.70 on rooms in the previous fiscal year. A church representative said that marks a 600% increase from the year before.
“If we had a temporary shelter to house some of these individuals, we would be spending less money at the hotel,” said coalition member Brenda Carney.
In spite of the statistics, the group has struggled to get the buy-in it needs from local stakeholders.
“It’s just a lot easier to bury your head in the sand and pretend that it doesn’t exist,” Carney said.
Money, staffing and understanding
Carney criticized government officials in Perry County for their lack of initiative in addressing homelessness — though she noted the New Lexington police chief was an exception. Since taking the job, Carney said, the police chief has come to realize just how big an issue homelessness is in Perry. He now attends the coalition’s meetings and works with them to support the local unhoused population.
The group said other local officials, in particular the county commissioners, have been slower to acknowledge the situation.
“We attempted around four times to get money from the ARPA fund or the CARES Act, and received nothing for our requests,” said the coalition’s chairman, David Weber.
Commissioner Ben Carpenter said he isn’t convinced a shelter makes sense in Perry County. He noted that he and commissioner Scott Owen sit on the board of HAPCAP, which is in the process of converting the Sunset Motel in Athens into a shelter. He said the Sunset and other shelters in surrounding counties should be able to meet Perry County’s needs.
Carney gave two reasons why she doesn’t like that approach: first, studies show most unhoused people want to stay in their communities. Second, sending them away just makes them another county’s problem.
“Our people are becoming a burden on other counties because we’re not able to help them here,” Carney said.
Carpenter said the commissioners would support a shelter in Perry County if it were already operational. However, he said the county itself cannot operate such a facility.
“We don’t have the finances to own and operate a homeless shelter, and I did some checking with the Ohio Housing Coalition — nowhere in the state of Ohio does a board of commissioners own or operate a homeless shelter,” Carpenter said.
Carpenter isn’t convinced the Perry County Housing Coalition has the capacity to operate a shelter, either. That’s why the commissioners did not grant the group’s request for ARPA funding.
“They’re a great group of people, doing great things for homeless folks, but they’re a group of volunteers. They all have day jobs,” Carpenter said.
Other counties have used ARPA funds to build new shelters. The Sunset Motel project is one example; the Ross County Community Resource Center in Chillicothe is another. In the second case, the project had the explicit support of the Ross County commissioners. However, both of these projects had a large organization of paid staff behind it from the beginning.
Carpenter said he was worried the housing coalition’s long-term funding plan was not viable, either.
Judge Luann Cooperrider, who helped found the coalition in 2006, believes the group could fund the operation of a facility through grants. However, she said they can’t start applying until they have a building.
In general, funding for overnight shelter projects has been shrinking as governmental strategies to address homelessness shift priorities. The short-lived federal funding freeze in late January has also raised concerns that federal funding could undergo a massive reduction in the coming months under the new presidential administration.
Carpenter said he doesn’t see a problem with continuing to rely on the Relax Inn.
“I think it’s far more efficient to have that option to rent a room in a hotel, as opposed to trying to maintain that (shelter) building 365 days a year,” he said.
Awareness, education and cold in Perry County
Paul’s six-week stay at the Relax Inn ended in early December. He still didn’t have a place to go, so he went back to living in his van. On the bright side, he was able to make arrangements for his son. Paul said he now parks his van close to wherever his son is staying.
During January’s cold snap, Paul stayed in his van, covered in blankets, occasionally starting the engine to run the car’s heating system.
“(You) get it kind of hot, to where you almost can’t stand it, and then turn it off and let it get cold again,” Paul said.
As the cost of living outstrips incomes and housing becomes less affordable, stories like Paul’s become more common.
“People have got to understand, it could be me on the street tomorrow, it could be Brenda (Carney),” said David Weber, the housing coalition chairman. “It could be yourself.”
Experts are in overwhelming agreement that the long-term solution is to build more housing, but that takes time, money and expertise that the economically distressed parts of southeast Ohio struggle to drum up on a large scale. When someone does try to build more housing, it can draw fierce opposition from members of the community.
Carney said many people in Perry County don’t recognize the scale of the problem.
“When people think of ‘homeless,’ you think of — you’ve seen TV shows and movies, you’ve got people sleeping on the streets and on the sidewalk. That’s not the case here. They’re back in the woods, they’re in a tent, they’re on a country road,” Carney said.
Weber said he believes the way forward is to stay calm and educate the public.
“Here in New Lexington, we had a battle. But they are seeing that there is a problem now,” Weber said.
The battle was over an ordinance the village passed to prohibit the establishment of a shelter. Weber said that ordinance was later repealed.
“They are talking now because they are realizing there’s a problem. They just — I don’t think they understand the severity of the problem,” Weber said.
While the coalition still doesn’t have its shelter building, it continues other efforts to support Perry’s homeless population. That includes filling blessing boxes with food — Weber said the boxes are sometimes filled more than once a day — and giving out hygiene bags.
Carney recalled an encounter she had with a local resident — not unhoused — who complained to her that homeless people are all drug addicts.
“You know what, so what if they are? They’re still human beings. It is still our responsibility as good humans to offer some support, because maybe that’s all they need,” Carney said.
Weber agreed.
“It’s just making them feel like a human being, because they’ve already been kicked down so far that they’re homeless. They have nothing except what can fit in a bag that they can carry. You can’t go much lower than that unless you’re six feet under,” he said.
As for Paul, he remains focused on what’s most important to him.
“Just a stable household for my son,” he said. “That’s all that matters.”