Homelessness Not Just an Urban Problem in Wisconsin

Wednesday, September 28th, 2022 -- 12:00 PM

(Leah Treidler, Wisconsin Public Radio) Homelessness is often seen as an urban problem, but evictions, deteriorating housing and a lack of rentals have left people throughout rural Wisconsin without a home and many miles from the nearest shelter. 

According to LeahTreidler of Wisconsin Public Radio, until this year, there were no shelters in Taylor County, a rural county west of Wausau with a population of around 20,000.

That left many people with no place to stay and nowhere close enough to get help, said Amanda Newberry, the director of Taylor House. Since the shelter opened in April, they've seen hundreds of people walk through their doors, looking for a place to stay and services, like haircuts and help paying for groceries.

Last week, their 17 bed shelter was full, with four people on the waitlist, which is not unusual, Newberry said. One reason, she said, is the booming housing market, which pushes rent prices up.

"People are selling the houses that they're living in," she said, "and then (our clients) can't find that rental or that place to go that was affordable for them." Especially right now, with pandemic relief drying up, more people in the area are finding themselves in dire situations, Newberry said.

"Those stimulus checks were amazing, and they helped a lot of people," Newberry said. "We have a lot of people that said, 'I lived off of my stimulus check until this point, and now we're here.'"

Many clients come in because they've been evicted, she said, and with an eviction on their record they can't find a landlord who will rent to them. Others seek help because they've aged out of foster care and now have no place to go, she said.

Those issues are spread across the state, in both rural and urban areas. In 2019, over 20,000 people across Wisconsin sought help from homeless services, like shelters and rapid re-housing programs, according to the Homeless Management Information System Report.

Most of those people were clustered around urban areas. But pinning down the actual level of need in rural areas is hard, because homelessness in those parts of the state looks different than what most people envision, said Brad Paul, the executive director of Wisconsin Community Action Program Association, a statewide network of organizations fighting poverty.

"In urban areas, you tend to have people in shelters. You notice homelessness on the street more," Paul said. "In rural areas, by comparison, you don't have congregate shelters very often. You don't have people sleeping on the streets. You have people living 'doubled up' with neighbors, with family, living in campgrounds, living in abandoned barns. So it just looks different, and so it tends to escape the public eye."

That lack of visibility curbs federal funding, Paul said. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development defines homelessness as living in a shelter or on the street, which rules out a lot of people in rural areas, he said.

According to a HUD count on a single night in 2020, 4,515 people in Wisconsin were experiencing homelessness. In comparison, the state Department of Public Instruction found 17,179 students experienced homelessness in the 2019-20 school year.

Roughly 77 percent of those students stayed in the houses of neighbors, friends or family. Twelve students in the Medford Area Public School District, where Taylor House is based, experienced homelessness, with nine living doubled up.

"So as a result, the HUD resources aren't available to communities in rural areas as much because they're not considered homeless," he said. "So that's one of the primary breakdowns in policy that really hurts rural areas."

With less funding, fewer services can operate in rural areas, regardless of need, Paul said.

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