National conference aims to help women and children who are homeless

Homelessness in Massachusetts and across the country surged to historic highs over the last few years and still has yet to recover to pre-pandemic levels. And though their experiences often remain less visible, women and single mothers make up an increasingly large portion of the unhoused and housing insecure population. Every year, advocates, shelter leaders, and experts gather at the National Women’s Shelter Network conference to workshop ways to help women and families experiencing homelessness. For more, GBH’s Morning Edition host Tori Bedford spoke with Alexis Steele, the president of St. Mary’s Center for Women and Children, and Jennifer Hanlon Wigon, the CEO of Women’s Lunch Place. Both are on the board of the National Women’s Shelter Network and represented Boston as featured speakers at the conference. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.

Tori Bedford: So let’s talk a little bit about this conference. Every year, advocates, shelter leaders, experts get together collaborating and sharing resources. What does that look like, Alexis, if you want to start?

Alexis Steel: So the National Women’s Shelter Network was established during COVID, which is when we saw a huge boom in women experiencing homelessness. We saw also a lot of intersections between domestic violence and children living on the street. And it was an incredible time, we really stated as a whole that we really need to start collaborating. We need to start sharing resources. We need to start really talking about and bringing to a head the point that so many women and children are experiencing homelessness each year, and it’s a growing number that is so undercounted and underrepresented in reporting or in standards across the U.S. So when this was first established, it was really used as a means to form a coalition. It’s grown so much since then, where it’s really becoming not only a way to share these best practices, it’s also becoming a voice for advocacy and education.

Bedford: And Jennifer, you were there representing the Women’s Lunch Place. Can you describe the Women’s Lunch Place for us?

Jennifer Hanlon Wigon: Well, it’s a very welcoming, bright space community, and we really work hard in our hiring and our onboarding and our training to have folks understand who the women are that are walking through the door. Women who have experienced trauma. So let’s just say 57% of women in homelessness are driven there from domestic violence, right? It’s the immediate cause of their entry to homelessness. And 90% of women who experience homelessness have had severe physical or sexual assault in their histories. And that’s about understanding the needs of women, But really, we go deeper. We go like, what does traumatic brain injury look like in a woman who walks through our door? It means that she’s going to forget her appointment. She’s not going to have her documents. It’s going to be frustrating. And yet you have to understand that, meet it, and just break it down into small chunks. And so we try to be that generous, hospitable, understanding, but also have expectations, right? I mean, because these people are, incredibly resilient and warm to each other, and they lift each other up. And we just want to make sure that we’re ready to meet those needs.

Bedford: Based on your research and your conversations you had at this conference, how bad are things in terms of homelessness in Massachusetts right now?

Steel: Yeah, so St. Mary’s Center for Women and Children, we also focus on women, but we also focus on women with children. So it’s families experiencing homelessness and the reality is that this group is very undercounted. So in order to be defined as homeless within Massachusetts, or in many states this is the case, but in particular with policy changes in Massachusetts, families experiencing homelessness can only be qualified for experiencing homelessness and entering shelter if they have very, very specific qualifications. And so these qualifications include, do they have proven documentation of living in Massachusetts for a minimum of six months? If they have evictions on their record, even no-fault evictions for nonpayment of rent as the only qualifying, they’re not counted.

Bedford: So just to clarify, if you have a no-fault eviction on your record, you are not qualified for homeless services?

Steel: Correct.

Bedford: OK.

Steel: So the reality is for families experiencing homelessness, this number has been largely diminished, I would say, nationally. But in Massachusetts, it’s been largely diminished because of these qualifications of what it takes to get into homeless shelters, which is the point-in-time count. You talk about point-in-time count of how many folks are experiencing homelessness. It’s based on who can have access to these systems. So if you don’t have access, you’re not going to be counted. So for Massachusetts, we are still considered to this day the third-highest rate of families experiencing homelessness in the U.S. And as we know, depending on what data source you look at, those experiencing homelessness that are in families are largely women and children, anywhere from — we heard at the conference from HUD who joined that it’s 86%, but at the National Women’s Shelter Network and at St. Mary’s Center, we see it’s as high as 96%. But women are often undercounted because it’s such a high risk of child removal if you say you are homeless.

Steel: So, families are often underrepresented because they’re also couch surfing, living in their cars, going out to their networks. Because they’re terrified of their children being removed.

Hanlon Wigon: I just think about some of the most basic work we do around documentation for women. Let’s think about proving your residency when you’re not on the lease, and you can’t get the lease, or because your abusive partner won’t give you access to it.

Steel: Or couch surfing. Yes. Or you don’t have a license, or using your network.

Hanlon Wigon: Right. Exactly. So I mean, I think that what sounds like, for the average person, “well, I can prove that I’ve lived here,” is really difficult for women. Getting your birth certificate, getting just the basic documents together that you need for a housing application is really yeoman’s work for our caseworkers.

Bedford: And then Alexis, I’ll just end with you. When the federal resources are so limited, what are some of the long-term kind of solutions being presented or things that make you hopeful?

Steel: So one is there really needs to be public-private partnership here. So we’ve seen a lot of corporations really focused on supporting vulnerable populations see those gaps on the public side and step up. So I find that some of the positives has been this collaboration and brainstorming around how do we creatively use these private dollars to support and how do we leverage partnerships and collaboration.