[Virginia] Amid Fairfax County's wealth, 'hidden poverty' emerges

From The Daily Press

By the Associated Press

FAIRFAX, Va. -- One of the nation's wealthiest areas is seeing a spike in the number of people seeking emergency shelter this unseasonably mild winter.

The waiting list for families looking for room in one of the Fairfax County's five shelters has swollen since last year, from an average of 60 families to more than 90.

Fairfax's homeless population has hovered around 2,000 for the last five years, second only to Washington with its more than 8,900 homeless, according to the most recent figures.

This winter's increase may reflect more awareness of available services rather than actual growth in the homeless population. The whole picture won't become clear until March, when the results of the region's annual survey is available.

Homeless advocates told The Washington Post it should come as no surprise that a place as affluent as Fairfax with a median household income of $85,400 has homeless people.

"Where there is great wealth, there is also insidious, hidden poverty," said Bob Wyatt, director of the Lamb Center, a daytime shelter for the homeless.

The 60 or so who came to Centreville United Methodist Church one evening last month included chronically homeless single adults who usually opt to stay outdoors. They are overwhelmingly male and almost evenly split between white and nonwhite. About one-third hold some kind of job.

Their paths to homelessness vary, and personal histories can be murky or incomplete. Most held the kinds of service and retail jobs that sustain Tysons Corner and the county's other signature developments: busboy, janitor, security guard, sales clerk.

Fernando Pardo, 38, emigrated from Colombia at 16 and waited tables. After a car crash left him with a broken hip, a brother put him up for a time but then moved to Phoenix. For the last two months, Pardo said, he has spent days at the Lamb Center and nights usually behind shopping centers under cover of dump bins or service entrances.

"You have to hide somewhere," he said.

Andre Evans, 28, was a security guard until he suffered a head injury in a car crash and lost his apartment six months ago. Evans said he lived in foster homes from age 6 until he enlisted in the Army in 1998. He considers a foster couple in Spotsylvania to be his true parents, but he hasn't told them he is homeless.

"I feel like I've failed them," he said quietly.

Depression is endemic among the homeless. A 2005 study of single adults identified 80 percent as seriously mentally ill, chronic substance abusers or both.

Yet many homeless people and their advocates bristle at the assumption that drugs or alcohol sparked their collapse. It's more often the other way around, they say: The pain of a life that imploded leads to substance abuse or psychiatric issues.

After a recent visit to a church shelter, Fairfax County Board Chairman Gerald E. Connolly proposed creating a mobile medical clinic to treat the chronically homeless.

"We've got to reach them," he said.