Published: September 06, 2008 10:53 pm            

Job losses adding to ministry, agency woes, officials say

Before he came to work at Providence Ministries, Mark Pate said he tried many times to hold jobs gotten through temporary agencies.

“At the end of the shift on the 89th day they tell you to report back to the ‘temp’ office so you don’t hit that 90th day where you’re supposed to start getting benefits,” he said. “You get your hopes up and then, nothing. It happened to me a number of times.”

Now, as Providence’s homeless shelter supervisor, Pate said he sees another downside of an individual being unable to keep work.

“There’s been an increase of homeless people in the last two months,” he said, noting the 28-bed space on the second floor of Providence’s storefront operation at 711 S. Hamilton St. “It’s mainly jobless folks who say they lose their place because they can’t find work. Some of them say they get a job through a temp agency, and then just like it happened to me, when they get to 89 days they get laid off.”

The outlook is much the same at Harvest Outreach.

“Our volunteers are hearing that people are being laid off from work and losing their homes,” said Shelia Reed, director of the food and homeless referral ministry. “There’s just not any jobs — it’s like a dead horse in the desert.”

Reed said the Harvest Community Kitchen at 207 E. Morris St. was serving around 35 meals at mealtimes from January through March, but since then the rate has risen steadily to 75 meals.

“We’re out trying to get donations of food right now,” she said. Ken Snyder, who picks up food for the ministry, said he was hitting the ministry’s normal outlets for bread and “couldn’t find any anywhere.”

Pat Thompson, office manager with the Salvation Army at 1101 N. Thornton Ave., said their four transitional housing units are “staying full, with families on the waiting list.”

“We’re hearing people say ‘I can’t find a job’ and ‘I’ve been laid off’ over and over again,” she reported. “We got one family into a Habitat for Humanity House, and another family moved right in where the mother lost a job. Another man had his hours (at work) cut back so much he got an eviction notice at his apartment.”

Although the Salvation Army attempts to help families who are down on their luck with rent and utilities funds, Thompson said an average of 75 to 80 families a month are turned away for financial assistance because there is no money left.

“No one is turned away for food, though,” she said. From last October until the end of June the outreach helped 138 families with rent and utility assistance. During the same period, they served 1,779 families at the food bank, and Thompson added there had been an increase recently.

Michelle Smith, director of information and referral at the United Way of Northwest Georgia, said the agency is “seeing an increase of individuals asking for food and saying they’ve been laid off from work.”

“In the last two months we’re hearing more about layoffs and shorter working hours,” she said.

Betty Brant of the Dalton Organization of Churches United for People (DOC-UP), which provides utility/rent assistance and referrals to food banks, also said they are seeing people come in due to job loss and shorter working hours.

“We’re increasing by at least 10 families a day,” she said of those coming to the facility at the corner of Emery Street and Valley Drive. “We’re having a lot of requests for mortgage assistance, but that’s almost impossible for us to do. Most mortgage companies want a full payment, not a partial, and we’re not able to do that. There are more people coming in and less money to distribute.”

Although the city of Dalton does not contribute direct funds to indigent care, finance director Cindy Jackson said the city co-ops with Whitfield County to pay 100 percent of administrative costs for the Dalton-Whitfield Community Development Corp., which deals with housing issues. The city also helps eligible nonprofit agencies apply for Community Block Development Grants to get “public service funds.”

Reed, for one, is not optimistic.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen to Dalton,” she said. “Here at the street level we’re in a crisis situation.”

        

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