Robert already had a plan for what he’d do when the shelter closed.
On Saturday, April 13, he’d wake up on a sleeping pad on the Trinity Presbyterian rec room floor. He’d pack his bag, head out the door and into a van that brought him from the church on Fontaine Avenue to the Downtown Charlottesville area.
Between working shifts at a local diner and welding classes at Piedmont Virginia Community College, he’d need to find a place to hang up his rope hammock and get some shuteye.
“Gotta find somewhere safe to set it up,” he said. When it rains, he’ll pop a tarp over the hammock to stay dry.
Robert, who did not want his last name published because he doesn’t want his homelessness to interfere with possible job or housing prospects, is one of dozens of people who is without a place to sleep now that the People And Congregations Engaged in Ministry (PACEM) roaming overnight congregate shelter is closed until the fall.
PACEM’s shelter is seasonal so this happens every year. It opens each fall, when the weather gets cold, and closes every spring when it warms up. But that doesn’t make it any easier for shelter guests, who are left with few options for safe overnight shelter all summer.
And while homelessness has been at the forefront of many conversations throughout the city since a tent encampment came and went at Market Street Park, nothing has really changed for the folks who experience it — except that more people need more help.
PACEM opened its shelter on Oct. 21, 2023, a week earlier than planned, in order to help shelter the dozens of people who had been camping in Market Street Park since mid-September.
Many of the folks who came to the park told Charlottesville Tomorrow that they had previously been sleeping in mostly hidden places all over the city and Albemarle County — in sheds, under porches and bridges, in the woods, next to rivers. Some left what they said were bad housing situations, for the park.
Charlottesville City Manager Sam Sanders reinstated the park’s curfew on Oct. 21. The city said that it cleared the campers from the park without incident, and that some of those folks went to PACEM’s seasonal shelter.
PACEM’s shelter is a roaming, overnight, congregate shelter. The shelter location moves every week or two, and guests can stay overnight and enjoy a hot meal. It’s a low-barrier shelter, which means people who are not eligible for other shelters either because of criminal histories or substance use, can stay there.
This past shelter season was PACEM’s 20th year, and it was an unprecedented one. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, PACEM had space for 70 people total — usually 50 men and 20 women. But it reduced that capacity to about 50 (35 men, 15 women) in 2020 to try to minimize the risk of guests spreading and catching the virus. In the congregate shelter model, everyone stays on a cot or a sleeping pad in one room.
“It was a lot better to not try to pack people in. It improved the ability for folks to come in, feel comfortable, and go to sleep,” said PACEM’s interim executive director Liz Yohn.
And yet, PACEM served more guests than ever this season.
Previously the record was 250 people served in a single winter shelter season. This year, PACEM served 252 by February, with six weeks still to go. Yohn estimates they served more than 260 by the time the season ended.
More guests than ever, despite a reduced capacity. How did that work?
“It was really hard,” said Yohn.
Many nights, PACEM was asking its host church if they felt comfortable with more people staying there. If the host said yes, then PACEM staff would usually run to its storage unit to pick up extra sleeping pads and blankets. If more people couldn’t fit, PACEM staff had to figure out, on the spot, how to get folks places to stay for the night.
Staff asked for guests to go to the Salvation Army’s warm room, which can fit an additional eight men and eight women. If no one volunteered, staff would choose (carefully) who would go. They also asked people if they had a friend or family member they could stay with overnight, so that they could squeeze one more person into the shelter. PACEM was also able to shelter some guests into hotel rooms with the last dregs of pandemic relief funding from the Blue Ridge Area Coalition for the Homeless.
Sometimes, guests volunteered to go to the warm room before being asked, or willingly gave up their cot for someone they thought needed it more.
“Our guests were absolutely amazing,” said Yohn. “They really saw what we were trying to do.”
This year, the men and women’s shelters were at separate sites, and the men’s shelter was regularly over capacity, said Yohn. From December to February, the men’s shelter was at least 20% over capacity most nights.
Additionally, PACEM hasn’t seen the dip in attendance that it usually sees by this time in the season.
Yohn isn’t sure why that is.
“That’s another question for us: What’s going on? Is it that our folks are either not able to, or not motivated to, find their long-term solution? What are we missing, that we’re not seeing more folks leave on their own?” she asked.
She has a few ideas, based on what she’s seen: Inflation, skyrocketing housing costs, more people competing for the same few housing vouchers and subsidies. Figuring out whether there’s something more PACEM, or another community organization, could do, is work for the summer, said Yohn.
Still, Yohn estimates that PACEM helped more than 20 people move into permanent housing this season.
Homelessness is always a very complex, complicated issue. And we’re just doing what we can, now, to serve the immediate need. We’re only one organization and we are doing our part. But our community is very richly resourced.
—Liz Yohn, interim executive director of PACEM
On top of serving more clients than ever, the organization ran up against a few other unforeseen challenges.
One is that Phaedrus Acgtblu, a private landlord who frequently worked with PACEM to get guests off the streets and into housing, died in an apparent homicide in December. Acgtblu, who was also known as Kent Schwager, gave many PACEM guests a chance when other landlords did not, said Yohn. Yohn doesn’t know what will happen to Acgtblu’s properties, or his tenants, going forward.
Another challenge was the dissolution of pandemic assistance programs, like expanded Medicaid — more than 150,000 Virginians have already lost medical coverage, according to this October report in the Virginia Mercury. That’s particularly concerning because anecdotally, the people PACEM served this season were generally older and had more acute physical and mental health needs than in past seasons, said Yohn.
Additionally, PACEM saw more people from out of town.
One of those people, Austin, who did not want his last name to be published because of the stigmas associated with homelessness, just moved from PACEM’s shelter into the Salvation Army. He moved to town a couple months ago with a friend, but when that friendship dissolved, he was left without a place to live here and he couldn’t go back to New York, where he lived previously — he wouldn’t say why. He’s applying for food stamps so that he can eat while looking for jobs.
“My first check is going straight to an apartment,” he said. “I don’t care if it’s just me and my duffel bag. I just need something to get me going.”
“I know [it’s] a complicated thing to observe,” said Yohn about people coming in from out of town. “We do our best to serve those folks. But we also have very valid questions about how to be good stewards of our local resources. So, how do we address that?”
She’s not entirely sure, but she knows it’s a question that PACEM can’t answer alone.
“Homelessness is always a very complex, complicated issue,” she said. “And we’re just doing what we can, now, to serve the immediate need. We’re only one organization and we are doing our part. But our community is very richly resourced.”
Back in the fall, when tents peppered Market Street Park, City Manager Sam Sanders presented a “homeless intervention strategy.” During an Oct. 2 City Council meeting, he said the city would take a multi-pronged approach to addressing homelessness throughout the city, but that its main focus would be figuring out whether, and where, the city could open a permanent overnight low-barrier shelter.
(The shelter Sanders said he envisioned was very similar to the one PACEM ran at Premier Circle from spring 2021 through June 2023, in addition to its seasonal overnight congregate shelter.)
In January, Sanders asked City Council to purchase two properties on the corner of Avon St. and Levy Ave., that could maybe be used in the future for a shelter or for supportive housing — if a study showed that’s what the community needed.
“There is no plan at this time for the Avon/Levy site,” Sanders told Charlottesville Tomorrow earlier this month.
As for the homeless intervention plan Sanders announced six months ago, the process is ongoing.
“We have not stopped looking at it,” he said then. “We do consider it a priority that we will be spending, I would say, a great deal of time on.”
The city hasn’t made any concrete moves yet, as staff are still having internal conversations, as well as talks with homeless services providers such as the Blue Ridge Area Coalition for the Homeless and the Salvation Army, about possibilities, Sanders said. They haven’t yet talked at length with PACEM.
But now, with PACEM’s overnight shelter closed for the season, guests are left with few options for the next six months.
Take Action
Here are some local shelter resources.
- Homeless information line: Call 434-207-2328
- Salvation Army: Call 434-295-4058, or visit 207 Ridge St. in Charlottesville
- PACEM: Call 434-465-2800
- The Haven: Call 434-973-1234, ext. 100, or visit 112 W. Market St.
The Street Sheet, which has information on everything from temporary housing assistance to meals to case management, is another helpful resource. It’s available in English (from March 2024) and Spanish (from Jan. 2024).
There’s the Salvation Army, a fixed site, year-round shelter on Ridge Street. But that’s not an option for all of PACEM’s guests because it does not take people who are using drugs or alcohol.
There’s the Shelter for Help in Emergency (SHE) Shelter, which is specifically for local folks experiencing domestic violence. There are almost no resources for families with children, said Yohn. That’s not a group PACEM really serves, in large part because it does serve sex offenders and people convicted of violent felonies. Sometimes local agencies like Families in Crisis and the city’s Department of Human Services can help out with ad hoc, temporary housing placements.
On the hottest summer days, people can go stay in the cooling centers hosted by the city and the county. Hot days can be dangerous, just like cold days — especially for people struggling with substance abuse, said Yohn.
And then there’s The Haven, which offers daytime shelter services like meals, showers, laundry, case management, and an address where people can receive mail. The Haven is open year-round.
Even without the seasonal shelter, PACEM said their case managers will keep working with people who are in the complicated process of getting disability benefits or finding an apartment.
And thank goodness, said Robert, who would much rather sleep under a roof than a tarp. He’s hoping to get some assistance with housing very soon.
“I’m just trying to stay out of trouble,” he said. “You get on a list, and hopefully you make it.”
