CITYWATCH Hardy homeless survive on the streets in the bitter cold BY STEVEN STYCOS

As temperatures recently dropped into the single digits, five homeless people were living outside in makeshift shelters on a trash-strewn lot within view of Rhode Island Hospital in Providence.

Steven and Donna, a couple in their forties who asked that their real names not be used, have lived on the lot since April. Using an old cement wall as an anchor, they built a home with sheets of scavenged plywood, plastic sheeting, and discarded windows. Inside, the eight foot-by-20-foot shack is furnished with a dresser, couch, food cabinet, and kerosene space heater. The floor is made of wooden pallets, covered with plywood and used carpeting. Candle-holding lanterns and paintings hang from the walls. Only two small leaks mar the ceiling tiles.

"We scrapped everything here," Donna, sitting on the couple’s double bed in front of a mirror, says proudly. "We actually do all right. We done a lot better than most homeless people." Their proximity to nature gives them particular joy. A hawk often circles overhead and a raccoon visited last summer as they sat outside under a discarded Samuel Adams café umbrella.

The couple has avoided homeless shelters this winter, they explain, because childless couples must separate and cannot even eat together. In addition, strict rules, like those at the state’s Welcome Arnold Shelter, typically require residents to stay inside after 6 p.m. and leave before 7 a.m. And shelter users must carry all their worldly possessions with them. Besides, says Steven, "I don’t need to be around riff raff."

When convenient, they eat at soup kitchens, but more often they eat at home, Steven says, recalling corn beef and fried chicken dinners he cooked atop the kerosene heater.

To earn money for cigarettes, food, and fuel, the two collect scrap from Dumpsters and building sites, and haul it to metal recyclers in a shopping cart. They receive 90 cents a pound for copper, and 40 cents a pound for aluminum. On a typical day they earn $10 to $15. They also occasionally panhandle, but stress that they do not have substance abuse problems.

"We’re not materialistic people," says Donna. "We got food. We got heat. We got each other." Whether it is the nearby coffee shop owner who gives them a free loaf of bread, the stranger who hands them a pair of gloves, or the police officer who brings them used clothing, the couple relates, people generously help them survive.

Their descent into homelessness began four years ago when Steven was fired from his job as a country club cook after he was arrested for failing to pay a 10-year-old motor vehicle fine. Living in an apartment would be nice, admits Donna, who says that going to the bathroom outside in the snow is especially unpleasant. But the cost of rent makes this prospect almost impossible.

High rents appear to be forcing more Rhode Islanders to live on the street, says Noreen Shawcross, executive director of the Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless. In 2004, 6020 people — an increase from 5700 the previous year — visited shelters, according to the Rhode Island Food and Shelter Board report. The demand forced four churches and the City of East Providence to open new shelters with an additional 50 beds in the last couple of years, she notes.

Homelessness, Shawcross comments, "has much less to do with people and their problems than it has to do with housing in Rhode Island." To help solve the problem, the coalition is working to convince the General Assembly to increase, to $7.5 million, the $5 million the state spends for affordable housing each year. So far, the four-year-old program has created 500 low-income housing units, Shawcross says. (On Tuesday, February 1, Governor Donald L. Carcieri announced the creation of a new office to tackle affordable housing needs.)

Steven and Donna are making a contribution. When the weather is especially cold, Sean, a 32-year-old former Florida shrimp boat captain who lives in a nearby primitive plywood enclosure, sleeps on their couch. They sometimes put up a couple that lives in a tent. And since the recent blizzard, a sparrow regularly comes into their home during spells of bitter cold. "Why do we let the bird in?" Donna asks. "Because it’s God’s creature and God’s helped us out."