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SALT LAKE CITY — The Road Home's new annual report indicates triple-digit percentage increases in the numbers of families and single women served in fiscal year 2015 than a decade ago.
The report says the nonprofit organization, which shelters, houses and provides case management to homeless people, served 7,216 individuals in fiscal year 2015, which included 679 families, 1,238 single women and 3,747 men.
While the total single men served outnumbered families and single women combined, the number of families served during the 2015 fiscal year was 257 percent higher than a decade ago. Meanwhile, the number of single women served in the last fiscal year was 151 percent higher than 10 years ago, the report says.
Matthew Minkevitch, executive director of The Road Home, said increased demand for service is tied to rising rents and a dearth of deeply affordable housing stock. Affordable housing both prevents people from becoming homeless and provides housing options as they leave the shelter.
"My reoccurring refrain on that front is the supply of deeply affordable housing keeping pace with the demand. While we have that imbalance, I think that we'll see these numbers continue to grow. When we correct that imbalance, we can see those numbers shrink. That's based on a fundamental assumption people won't come to shelters if they don't need to," Minkevitch said.
Homeless outreach teams are also serving growing numbers of women. Volunteers of America-Utah had a 26 percent increase in street outreach contacts with women in the past year, something veteran medical outreach worker Ed Snoddy attributes to growing rates of domestic violence and too few treatment beds available for women with long histories of trauma, mental illness and substance use disorders.
It is also due to a concerted effort to reach out to more women, he said.
Many of the women Snoddy serves while conducting homeless medical outreach have experienced trauma during childhood, including physical, emotional and sexual abuse.
Many women are victims of domestic abuse, he said. Some women outreach workers attempt to help trade sex for a place to stay, drugs or other things they need.
One great frustration, he says, is that there are few behavioral health treatment slots available for women when they need them most, let alone long-term comprehensive programs that can help women address multiple issues.
For too long, Snoddy says, services for women have been lacking in part because providers believed that "women take care of themselves. They become mothers. They're the responsible ones. Well, they're not. It all depends how they grow up and where they come from. There are much more complicated issues with women and recovery."
(Women) become mothers. They're the responsible ones. Well, they're not. It all depends how they grow up and where they come from.
–Ed Snoddy, outreach worker
Unfortunately, the population of women on the street is also getting younger, Snoddy said.
"I'm seeing a lot newbie young girls on the streets who are, in my opinion, being groomed to work the streets," he said.
Some of the young women are 18 years old, according to the dates of birth they provide outreach workers, although Snoddy says he has seen some girls he suspects are even younger.
Jenn Oxborrow, executive director of the Utah Domestic Violence Coalition, agrees that Utah's rising rates of domestic violence contribute to homelessness.
Utah has fewer of victims services providers compared with surrounding states, which means domestic violence shelters are generally filled to capacity, she said.
In Utah, 1 in 3 women will experience domestic abuse at some time in her life, according to the coalition's statistics.
Snoddy said when victims of interpersonal violence leave home, often with children, they cannot afford market rates for rent so they tend to double up with another family or end up at the homeless shelter.
"We're on a real slippery slope here," Oxborrow said.
"We have women here who have the lowest earning potential. We have the highest birth rates and the fewest number of victim services in the Mountain West corridor. Mix in a high degree of patriarchy and a lot of firearms, and it's a pretty deadly combination sometimes," she said.
Minkevitch said The Road Home is also serving more senior women. "The women who come to us are a little older and more frail," meaning they have poorly treated chronic health or mental health conditions.
Staff at The Road Home works to place senior women in more appropriate settings such as senior housing communities or even nursing homes, but caseworkers sometimes learn that some women who come to the shelter have been asked to leave those settings because they violated community rules or conditions of their rental agreements, he said.
Part of the increase in percentages of Utahns seeking services from The Road Home is due to an increase in the state's general population, Minkevitch said. It also reflects changing service models, under which people experiencing homelessness have been placed in housing under Utah's "Housing First" practice.
"We did things along the way that helped us to serve more people. That's the part we say, 'Thank goodness.' It's a testament to our team. It's a testament to our community, our partners and those who support us," Minkevitch said.
It took the commitment of private and public partners to develop these options and it will take a like effort to build up a supply of deeply affordable housing, he said.
"We need to work that other side of the equation if we're going redirect that demand," Minkevitch said.
The Road Home's new annual report indicates triple-digit percentage increases in the numbers of families and single women served in fiscal year 2015 than a decade ago. Email: marjorie@deseretnews.com
