This is Part 2 of One United Lancaster’s interview with Milan Koneff and Thomas Tuten. Part 1 is here. Both parts have been edited for length and clarity.
Tenfold’s supportive housing department operates a street outreach program, where outreach workers conduct wellness checks for the unhoused community throughout Lancaster County. Outreach workers, Milan Koneff and Thomas Tuten, are on the front lines of community engagement. Koneff and Tuten connect with unhoused individuals, encourage them to seek safe shelter, provide personalized support, and regularly check on their well-being.
One United Lancaster: What trends and changes have you noticed in homelessness around Lancaster?
Milan Koneff: Our trends have changed because of how we do things around the city. Most recently, boxing up Bins Park and telling unhoused people to limit their presence in the city. Now we have encampments warming everywhere which we have had in smaller forms, but never to this degree and it’s never been such a big talking point. Now, they’re in larger numbers and near businesses. This year, we’ve had to deal with those encampments, whether we’re just trying to assist them or trying to help them move to another spot because they’re getting kicked out. We just didn’t have to do that to this degree before. So that trend is much larger. A big part of that is because we are reacting unkindly to unhoused people in our local areas. No one, is making sure that unhoused people are in safer spaces like the park. Then, we’ll just send them down the road, where they have to walk on a dangerous highway, and go live out in the woods and hope for their safety. As opposed to being closer to society.
Thomas Tuten: Shelter availability in Lancaster County, not just in the city. A lot of people may not know this, but during the winter there is a fair amount of shelter. Last year we had Food Hub shelter, that was 80 beds. We of course always have Water Street Mission. In the outlying areas of the county, there is a shelter that opens in Ephrata briefly, only for 60 days. There is a shelter in Elizabethtown, called Echoes (Elizabethtown Community Housing and Outreach Services). Those programs close in the spring. So this past spring, when the Food Hub shelter closed, Water Street decreases beds because their winter program ends, Echoes closes, Good Samaritan is already closed. There were two shelters open in the county for a very long period, including around the time when enforcement at parks stepped up a lot. Every year we do the P.I.T Count (point in time count) which is a way of figuring out how many people are homeless in Lancaster County. Last year, we had a count of around 600 unhoused people (Give or take). By the end of May, we were working with probably 200 beds in the county. So, if you do the math, there was this huge uptick in people who were unsheltered. I think people didn’t notice but authority figures did, and the solution was to step up law enforcement. What happed after that was, everybody goes out to Highway 30, and now they’re in East Lampeter. There’s a little bit of a hot potato situation where, when people are forced to leave Lancaster City, they are human beings who exist in the third dimension. They don’t just magically disappear because you can’t see them. They have to go somewhere. That was a huge thing we were dealing with all summer, people just being kicked around from spot to spot.
One United Lancaster: With the shelters shutting down, what are the trends that you saw in the summer and fall? And then how did those trends change once the Tenfold low barrier shelter opened?
Thomas Tuten: When we lost those beds initially people went to the places that they had traditionally gone to. A big one was the area around the county building. The community started to witness a bunch of unhoused people suddenly pop up around the city and it was possible that there was going to be a backlash to that. In the summer, we got this huge step up in enforcement of clearing the parks. That led to the decrease of people in the city and the increase in encampments around the city, especially on Highway 30… I would imagine that from some people’s perspective that was a successful policy because what they wanted was to not see our folks. What you don’t realize is, like I said earlier, these are human beings who exist in the third dimension. They have to go somewhere. What was happening is we were just getting lots of calls from East Lampeter township… These unhoused people wanted a place to go where they weren’t seen as a problem, and that didn’t exist. Us kind of, constantly begging for that and wanting to tell these people something. I think it was a big part of what led to the existence of this shelter.
Milan Koneff: They forced people out to Highway 30, which is a spot that has places to grab food and access to the city through bus stops. Also, there’s these woodsy in between spots where you can hide, even though in the winter its harder… We had people get pushed out there during the winter. However, just because it happens seasonally, we do have more beds open up around the county for this time of year when people need it the most. The worry is a lot of this stuff ends in March. We’re going to lose a lot of these spaces close, like we do every year, even the ones that we want to stay open. We don’t have anything seasonally that will shift back and forth. The presence of unhoused people will cause backlash in the community. All of that is going to shift come spring because they will be more visible. They’re going to go right back out there after everything we do this winter. It’s going to come back and forth. That is the trend, the seasonal back and the fourth.
One United Lancaster: With the upcoming point in time count coming in mid-January, what are you guys expecting to see? What could be done with the data that is collected?
Milan Koneff: I wish I could show people how useful it is for us because after we collect this data it is our homework as a county to go back to the people that we report on/to and say, “hey, look, we are doing our job.” We get to go back and show how well we’re doing as a county and examine the numbers. Let’s look at our bed numbers. Let’s look at our meals and all that type of stuff and compare. Does it seem like we’re meeting this population? Does it seem like we’re hitting these numbers overall and in the long term over this year? Hopefully, most of that is, yes, but it does help us poke holes in our weak points….It reflects the community because a lot of the community looks to the point in time count numbers for the facts, and for the rest of this year they will come to city council meetings and use these numbers as talking points…We’re in the ball park. It feels like we can be accurate enough to the conversation the community is having about homelessness. I want the education piece. I want advocacy. I want people to understand the struggle, the good, and the bad because we get it from both ends.
Thomas Tuten: It’s not the gravy train here. There’s not this infinite amount of funding being dished out. It’s administratively and practically quite difficult to get funding for an individual to do things… It’s hard to get all the nuances of it out there… Housing supply, and particularly the availability for low-income individuals. Not just people who are looking for rent stabilized homes but people who are looking for single rooms to rent. And that type of housing is maybe less profitable or most likely a zoning issue. We don’t have enough of that. I certainly think that if there were 40 more single room places, I would be able to fill them. A huge obstacle that we end up running into is the type of housing our people want to live in does not exist.
One United Lancaster: How can individuals and communities effectively contribute to helping those experiencing homelessness? Are there any specific actions or initiatives you would recommend
Milan Koneff: Go and put your time with people because that is the hardest thing to give. If you can sacrifice one night a month to come into shelter and then have your friend pick up another night, that would go such a long way because we need more human connections. We need more help in these spaces beyond us workers at times. Since COVID, volunteering has dipped down and we’ve been crawling to get back those numbers. Look at local shelters social media pages because they have links for people to sign up and volunteer…Education and advocacy. There is a significant human history event going on that we have such a large homelessness problem for the last four decades. We need to realize that it’s never going to get better unless we take big steps up. And a big part of that is just taking down these barriers, misunderstandings, and just treating unhoused people like people….Again, sounds like a hippie theory at this point, maybe a little bit, but I truly do believe that the education piece goes a long way because a percentage of volunteers may have their opinions changed. They’ll tell their friends, they’ll go to city council, they’ll go volunteer because they know better now. So many people just don’t get the life of homeless people and all the different angles that you’re being stressed from…. Volunteer, volunteer. And then after that, educate yourself and advocate.
Thomas Tuten: If you want to contribute in the way of giving things. I appreciate it when people want to take their own initiative, but it probably is the best use of the donation, especially when it comes to things like food or money. If you go through established works, like this one. …. A lot of people will jump into volunteering without realizing exactly how much is involved. A problem we used to have in the past was people would want to go feed the homeless and then they leave a huge amount of trash there because they didn’t consider that it takes a lot to clean up after a big meal… Go through these established organizations because these places have the experiences working with large groups of people… Volunteering is so important because you will learn to be a better advocate if you just do a little volunteering time and you deal with people one on one.
