Closing of Wheeler's Bloomington women's shelter brings fear, uncertainty
Angela DuBois' descent into homelessness started with a 2021 rear-end collision that left her with whiplash, a concussion, back injuries and chronic pain. The driver who ran into her brother's Kia, which she had borrowed for work, sped away.
DuBois, 55, was a home healthcare aide, a job she could no longer do after the crash. She had debilitating back pain, no car and was denied Social Security disability compensation.
It wasn't long before she could no longer afford the $550 rent for her apartment in Greencastle. She rented a storage unit for her belongings and moved out.
Just like that, DuBois was homeless. It's something she never expected.
Across the United States, 38% of people experiencing homelessness are women.
DuBois was born and raised in Solsberry, a rural community just across the Monroe-Greene county line. At 54, she experienced homelessness for the first time.
Over the past year or so, she's resided in homeless shelters in Terre Haute, Bedford, Indianapolis and now Bloomington, where the safe place she's depended on is closing in just days.
Where to go?
Sometimes it's family discord or failed relationships that land someone homeless. Or a lost job, an arrest, an eviction, a debilitating injury. Domestic violence, drug addiction or mental health issues can play a role.
Most shelters, especially those serving women, are full and some have long wait lists. This is the case around the nation, and in Monroe County.
Wheeler Mission's unexpected announcement on Aug.7 has raised local concern about the city's unhoused women. Wheeler's Women's Shelter in Bloomington stated the 40-bed facility was out of funds and shutting down in less than four weeks.
On Aug. 23, 14 women were still at the shelter. "One week to go," DuBois said the next day.
Wheeler Mission reports profits in 2021
Despite the lack-of-funding claim, IRS records show that Wheeler Mission generated a profit of $13.7 million in the fiscal year that ended May 31, 2021, up 72% from the prior year.
The tax records show the not-for-profit's revenue increased 25%, to $29.3 million, during that fiscal year. Expenses totaled $15.6 million, a 1% increase.
Former Wheeler Mission President/CEO Richard A. Alvis, now retired, received compensation totaling $211,000 that year, according to IRS records.
Christian-based Wheeler Mission started out in 1893 in Indianapolis as a small shelter for women called Door of Hope. Wheeler has expanded to nine locations, soon to be eight, in Indianapolis and Monroe County. Its website lists a $16.1 million annual budget and more than 180 employees.
Wheeler's two Bloomington shelters assisted 1,017 people, served 69,094 meals and provided 30,808 nights of shelter in 2021, according to a Wheeler statement.
Wheeler's goal: safe relocation
The residents being displaced by the Sept. 1 closing are on waiting lists for area shelters such as Becky's Place in Bedford, Magdalene House in Martinsville, Catalyst in Jeffersonville. Several of the women are in their 50s and 60s.
Case managers are encouraging the women to go to Wheeler's women's shelter in Indianapolis. According to the organization's website, Wheeler every month "receives nearly 700 requests from women for beds we can’t provide."
They set up cots and lay sleeping mats on a gymnasium floor at night to accommodate as many women as possible. "There's about this much space between the mats," DuBois said, holding her hands up with an 8-inch span between her palms.
She knows because during the year she's been homeless, she stayed at the Indianapolis shelter for weeks. "My medicine and my clothes got stolen. I've told them I'm not going back there."
Dana Jones, Wheeler's director of community engagement and services in Bloomington, acknowledged the closing has upended Bloomington's homeless community because it displaces so many women.
Jones' statement about the shelter closing said Wheeler's case management specialists "will be compassionately working with each guest to safely relocate them to fellow local/regional service providers."
'Why didn't we get more time?'
DuBois has been scrambling to secure a place to stay come Sept. 1. Her future rests on the decision made regarding her appeal on her disability denial. She expects to know after an Aug. 31 court hearing, the last night she can stay at the shelter.
Either way, her options are few. "They've known about this for a while and they've waited this long to tell us? Why didn't we get more time?" she wondered.
She described other women who stay overnight at the shelter as being in worse situations than hers: a 59-year-old with a blood disorder and portable oxygen tank, a blind woman and a woman who uses a motorized wheelchair to get around.
She said unhoused women are vulnerable when they don't have a roof over their heads or a safe place to sleep. At Wheeler's women's shelter on Opportunity Lane, guests arrive at 7 p.m. and wait in line to go inside. They shower and get ready for bed; lights go off at 10.
Eight hours later, a manager turns the lights back on. The women must be gone by 7:30 a.m. They aren't allowed to use the kitchen to cook or the washers and dryers to do laundry.
Some board a Bloomington Transit bus and head downtown, some walk a few blocks east on West Third Street to free breakfast at Wheeler's main shelter. The rest of the day is often unchartered.
'I just don't want to be in a situation where I'm in fear'
You won't find DuBois at Seminary Park, a downtown gathering place for some people in the unhoused community. She doesn't feel safe there, or at Shalom, the city's day center for unhoused people, or in the crowded coed dayroom at Wheeler's men's shelter.
DuBois gets steroid injections for back pain and may need surgery to repair damage. She was taken to the hospital by ambulance from Wheeler's day center this month when her blood pressure plummeted, and spent the afternoon in the emergency room.
Her anxiety and depression deepen with the stress of homelessness weighing heavy on her mind.
Her high school diploma and the urn containing her mother's ashes are among items lost during her moves the past year. She's left without things of value to her and no one else, important things she's unlikely to see again.
DuBois said abuse by her former husband makes her leery of sleeping overnight at Bloomington's Friend's Place, where her Wheeler caseworker suggests she go. Most of the 40 overnight guests there are men. "I don't think I'd feel safe. I just don't want to be in a situation where I'm in fear."
She wants to stay in Bloomington. Her brother lives close by. He brings his dogs — she loves them — to see her when they meet in town for visits. She's worried, but not without a plan, one that would keep her in Monroe County, and possibly a few other women too.
"What if I get my disability, and then find a three-bedroom apartment and two of the other ladies could live there too? We could pool our money to pay for it and live together. That's three homeless women not homeless anymore."
Number of women experiencing homelessness increases
A 2020 report from the National Alliance to End Homelessness said the number of women experiencing homelessness in the U.S. increased 17%, to 115,635, from 2016 through 2020.
It said the number of "unsheltered" homeless women sleeping in "somewhere not meant for habitation," such as cars, parks and illegal encampments, increased 35% during that time.
The report cited a study of unsheltered homeless women that found "the health outcomes of women were worse than men ... at a higher risk of dying prematurely, that they had more chronic medical issues, and had to use acute health care more often."
Numbers from a federally mandated homeless count taken every January showed that on the night of Jan. 25, 2023, Monroe County had 339 unhoused individuals, about the same as the previous year. About 130, or 38%, were female.
$5 million to find solutions
Mary Morgan is director of housing security for Heading Home of South Central Indiana, a six-county initiative tasked with addressing issues of homelessness and getting people housed in Monroe, Morgan, Owen, Greene, Lawrence and Martin counties.
Morgan's organization holds more than $5 million in funds from the City of Bloomington and Monroe County given in 2022 and this year to fund initiatives that address the homeless crisis. The city has given $2.7 million and the county, $2.4 million.
The money is nearly all unspent.
Morgan said she's protective of the funding, unwilling to parse it out for stop-gap measures in emergencies. The money is intended to address the underlying crisis, she said, and is for developing long-term, substantive change.
Getting people off the streets, out of shelters and into stable housing. Making homelessness rare, brief and non-repeating. These are Heading Home's goals.
"We are not a direct service provider," Morgan said. "We have no authority ourselves to do anything."
She said news of Wheeler Mission's women's shelter's impending closure came as a surprise. Heading Home and its local stakeholders are concerned and have met twice since the announcement.
She said there are no simple solutions, but she hopes the needs of unhoused women like DuBois will be met.
"I'm confident this community will have a place for the women who need shelter to get shelter," Morgan said nine days before the Wheeler women's shelter was to shut down. She wouldn't elaborate.
Since Heading Home has partners from local agencies on the homeless front lines, and control of millions of city and county dollars, why not use it, Dubois asked, to create possibilities for people experiencing homelessness right now?
"Continuing to talk about it is going to put more women out on the streets," she said. "If they've got that kind of money, why can't they do something? Why can't they keep a shelter for women open?"
'They say it's very complicated': Another woman's story
DuBois was the only women's shelter resident willing to talk on the record about the Sept. 1 closure. Others worried that speaking to a newspaper reporter might affect their efforts to find a safe place to move.
The Herald-Times considered these concerns alongside our policy on the limited use of unnamed sources.
We're telling another woman's story, respecting her request to be anonymous, to help people understand the challenges unhoused women face.
She's ridden a Bloomington transit bus across town to College Mall to charge her phone. She steps off into 90-degree heat and takes a seat on a bench.
"Can I sit beside you?" a young man asks.
"Of course."
He surveys the 65-year-old woman who's wearing a sleeveless purple knit tunic, earrings and perfectly applied lipstick. Her eyes are sad. "You look like you could use a prayer."
"Yes," the homeless lady says. "Yes I could." He touches her arm. They bow their heads. Praying can't hurt, she says. Kindness offers hope.
She's turning 66 the day Wheeler's shelter for women closes. She'll wake up the next morning, exit the front door and stay someplace else that night.
On Aug. 23, sitting on a bench outside Target, she doesn't know where that will be.
She's reluctant to tell her story, canceling two interviews before mustering the courage. She's afraid of jeopardizing her chance for a new start in a place of her own. She doesn't want to make anyone mad.
She's grown weary of feeling like people tasked with helping the displaced women just want to move them on, anywhere, during a time when shelters in south-central Indiana for women are full. "They say it's very complicated."
Caseworkers want this Bloomington native to stay at Friend's House, where 16 of 40 beds are available for women. But she wants a small apartment or assisted-living slot, one she can afford with her Social Security disability income. Wait lists are months-long.
She spent two decades working in room service at fancy hotels around the country, The Drake in Chicago among them. She struggled with mental illness and stopped working when she was 47 after qualifying for disability.
She lived in Spencer for awhile after that, then moved with her son to Bloomington, staying in their mobile home after he moved away.
In January of 2019, her lot rent went up $120 a month and the trailer park owners added two monthly fees: $70 for water and sewer service and $70 for trash removal. Her bills exceeded her income, and she fell behind.
In the spring, she walked away from the trailer she owned. She took her German shepherd and two cats to the animal shelter. She can barely say the words. "It's so hard to pass by there. Every time I go by on the bus, I think about that day."
Family heirlooms, including her mother's lamps with hand-painted birds, went into a storage unit she's paid for the past four years.
She's spent months sleeping at the women's shelter. Sometimes she leaves for stints with family in another state. "I always come back. You can't stay with relatives forever."
Being homeless for the rest of her life isn't something she wants to think about. "I can't keep doing this, because when you return to homelessness, it really drags you down."
She's been hospitalized with bacterial infections three times since June. The last time she was discharged, she spent the day out of sight, lying on the ground under a tree on Wheeler Mission property. When someone found her, she picked up her blanket and moved on.
"I'm tired. I'm so tired. As soon as I hit that bed at 8:30, I'm gone. And then right away it's 6 o'clock and they turn on the lights." She dresses, puts her hair up, does her makeup, fills the water bottle in her purse and goes out to wait for the 2 South bus. The day begins.
City buses are air conditioned in the summer and heat-infused in the winter. Some unhoused people in Bloomington spend a lot of time riding the bus.
"It might take us three or four hours to get to Kroger. We take our time. We've got nowhere to be. The transit drivers are really nice to us ladies. They know we're homeless."
Contact H-T reporter Laura Lane at llane@heraldt.com or 812-318-5967. H-T reporter Boris Ladvig contributed to this story.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Women concerned by Wheeler Mission closure of Bloomington facility
