During the 2007-2008 season, Rainbow Place gave shelter to 65 different women.   We provided a total of 3,601 bed nights and 10,803 meals (hot dinner, breakfast and bag lunch) to our clients. 

There was a continued decrease in the number of women served but, once again, an increase in the number of bednights, as compared to last year.  Over 50% of the women served at Rainbow had never been to the shelter before.  This is very important to note because while many programs help end chronic homelessness, the "new" homeless, caused by the economic and housing crisis, are beginning to emerge.

Nearly 12,000 people in the Washington metropolitan area are homeless. That total includes people who are living on the streets, staying in shelters, or living in transitional housing. More than 40 percent are in families; about a third are children. "Street homelessness" is the image commonly presented to portray homelessness, yet less than 13 percent of the homeless people in our region regularly live on the streets. Almost a third of the region’s homeless adults are employed; in some areas, the share of employed homeless people is even higher. In Montgomery County, for example, almost half of all homeless adults in families are employed.

The primary cause of homelessness is the shortage of affordable homes in the Washington metropolitan area. A worker earning minimum wage no longer has sufficient income to afford a safe and decent apartment. And with regional fair market rents averaging more than $1,000 for a one-bedroom apartment, many working families are struggling to find homes within financial reach.

Challenging life situations also cause people to become homeless. People get evicted from their homes because they cannot afford steep rent hikes. People lose their jobs and wind up on the streets. Single mothers show up at shelters with their children because they cannot afford to work and pay for child care. Other people end up homeless because they are too sick to work or were forced to flee an abusive home. Some people who ran away or were pushed out of their homes as teenagers cannot afford to live on their own. While everyone’s story is different, all homeless people have one thing in common: They have no permanent place to call home.

Yes, preventing and ending homelessness is possible. One of the keys to ending homelessness is increasing the supply of permanent affordable homes for people with low to extremely low incomes. Today, more than 4,000 Washington, D.C., residents are no longer homeless, because they were able to access permanent affordable housing. In addition to stable housing, such preventive and supportive services as employment training, substance abuse recovery programs, and mental health assistance are often needed to help families get back on track.

In the Washington metropolitan area, efforts to eliminate homelessness are already under way: Alexandria, Montgomery County, Fairfax County, and the District of Columbia are all developing and implementing 10-year plans to prevent and end homelessness.

Information courtesy of the Fannie Mae Help the Homeless.

For information on Montgomery County's 10 Year Plan to End Homelessness, please visit the MC Coalition for the Homeless by clicking on their logo:

Tell Them Who I Am: The Lives of Homeless Women
By Elliot Liebow
The research for this book was not done in a far away library but rather in women's shelters and soup kitchens in the Washington DC area. In this book, Dr. Liebow explores the multitude of ways that "the humanity of the women is under constant threat" and gives the reader an in-depth and intensely personal view into the different facets of the lives of homeless women. Dr. Liebow continues throughout the book to deliver the facts to the reader in such a way that they reveal the brutal truth of the women's lives without dragging the reader to a place where (s)he is overcome with pity and shame. Instead, he manages to connect the reader to the women, showing their humanity. The result is a fascinating book which details the trials of homelessness alongside the joys and sorrows of being human. Click here to purchase this book from Amazon.com.

It Was a Wonderful Life
Narrated by Jodie Foster with music by Melissa Etheridge
This 1992 documentary won several awards for its depiction of homeless women--the "hidden homeless" who don't sit on the streets and beg for change, but who live in motels and cars, often with children, while they desperately try to set their lives right. Several of the movie's subjects were left helpless from a bad divorce; one woman, a former singer, was abandoned by her affluent husband while pregnant with his sixth child. He now avoids paying child support, trusting in an over-loaded bureaucracy with limited power to enforce the law. After listening to the revealing stories of these women--all struggling but determined to survive--you'll find yourself sizing up your own life, wondering if a brief illness or a lost job could steal your own life away. Click here to purchase this movie from Amazon.com.

The Glass Castle
By Jeannette Walls
Freelance writer Walls doesn't pull her punches. She opens her memoir by describing looking out the window of her taxi, wondering if she's "overdressed for the evening" and spotting her mother on the sidewalk, "rooting through a dumpster." In The Glass Castle, Walls chronicles her upbringing at the hands of eccentric, nomadic parents--Rose Mary, her frustrated-artist mother, and Rex, her brilliant, alcoholic father. The Walls children learned to support themselves, eating out of trashcans at school or painting their skin so the holes in their pants didn't show. But while Rex and Rose Mary firmly believed children learned best from their own mistakes, they themselves never seemed to do so, repeating the same disastrous patterns that eventually landed them on the streets. One by one, each child escaped to New York City. Still, it wasn't long before their parents appeared on their doorsteps. "Why not?" Mom said. "Being homeless is an adventure." Click here to purchase this book from Amazon.com.

The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness
By Elyn R. Saks
In this engrossing memoir, Saks, a professor, demonstrates a novelist's skill of creating character, dialogue and suspense. From her extraordinary perspective as both expert and sufferer (diagnosis: Chronic paranoid schizophrenia with acute exacerbation; prognosis: Grave), Saks carries the reader from the early little quirks to the full blown falling apart, flying apart, exploding psychosis. Schizophrenia rolls in like a slow fog, as Saks shows, becoming imperceptibly thicker as time goes on.- Along the way to stability (treatment, not cure), Saks is treated with a pharmacopeia of drugs and by a chorus of therapists. In her jargon-free style, she describes the workings of the drugs (getting med-free, a constant motif) and the ideas of the therapists and physicians (psychologist, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, cardiologist, endocrinologist). Her personal experience of a world in which she is both frightened and frightening is graphically drawn and leads directly to her advocacy of mental patients' civil rights as they confront compulsory medication, civil commitment, the abuse of restraints and the absurdities of the mental care system. To purchase this from Amazon.com click here.

Nobody but God: A Journey of Faith From Tears to Triumph
By Unnia L. Pettus
Rev. Dr. Unnia L. Pettus, opens her heart in a most vulnerable way in an attempt to save the lives of other individuals who are undergoing or have undergone the same kind of trials and pain that she has experienced. Dr. Pettus offers insight on physical and spiritual healing, deliverance and restoration. Click here to purchase this book from Amazon.com.

Talley’s Corner
By Elliot Liebow
This study of Black streetcorner men by noted anthropologist, Dr. Elliot Liebow, was his doctoral dissertation. It became recognized as one of the more important sociological treatises, at the time it was written; a time during which Blacks or African Americans were still referred to as Negroes. Dr. Liebow's year and a half long study of a group of disaffected black males, who routinely frequented a streetcorner in Washington, D.C.'s inner city, provided the basis for the dissertation that gave rise to this book. His analysis of this particular societal subculture, in the context of the overall social milieu in which it exists, is still relevant today. While scholarly, the book is written in an engaging conversational tone, which makes for easy reading. This book should be read by all those with an interest in the social sciences.
Click here to purchase this book from Amazon.com.

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