Germantown Crisis Center Gives Home – and Hope – to Homeless Young Adults

By Dan Geringer, Philadelphia Daily News

Jan. 7–SHEMAIAH JOHNSON was 18, enjoying her first year away at college, when she was sexually assaulted at knifepoint by a trusted friend and his three male companions.

She returned home to Germantown, emotionally devastated, looking for the loving support she desperately needed to begin putting her life back together.

But, Shemaiah says, her parents believed she was somehow responsible for putting herself in harm’s way, that she should have known better.

Angry and hurt, Shemaiah left the house.

For the first time in her life, she was homeless.

A social-service-agency counselor advised her to go to Covenant House Pennsylvania’s crisis center in Germantown.

As soon as she walked in the door, the staff embraced her with loving-kindness.

From that moment, Shemaiah began to heal. Six years later, she is restored, healthy, joyful.

Shemaiah was one of hundreds of young Philadelphians between 18 and 21 years old who become homeless each year because they are past the age limit for foster care or for public housing as a dependent, or are thrown out of their homes or leave in anger due to family conflict, or are running from abusive situations.

These young people tend to shy away from the older, hard-core homeless on the streets of Philadelphia.

They do not hang out with the dozens of homeless men on the Parkway.

They do not panhandle on Center City streets.

They are invisible to the public.

At the very time in their young lives when they should be starting college or careers, when they should be filled with promise — they are filled with despair.

Many find hope at Covenant House Philadelphia, part of a 21-city chain of privately funded crisis centers in North and Central America that provide shelter and support to young people who are no longer eligible for children’s social services.

There is no place like it in the city to get homeless 18-to-21-year-olds back on their feet and back on the road to recovery.

“They’re coming in here with only the clothes on their back,” said Jonathan Clark, residential director. “The first thing we ask is: ‘Are you hungry? Do you need something to drink?’ Most do. It’s never just, ‘Fill out this form.’ We want them to know right away that this is not a factory.”

“This is a sanctuary,” said Executive Director Hugh Organ — offering food, clothing, 51 beds, medical care by volunteer University of Pennsylvania doctors, job-training and as many “second chances” as it takes to succeed.

“We are a Catholic-based organization, founded on the principle of unconditional love,” Organ said.

“Some young people show up here with drug, alcohol or mental-health issues that they’re not addressing,” Clark said. “They say, ‘How am I going to address my drug issue when I’m working on where I’m going to sleep tonight?’ They can sleep safely here.”

“We have open intake,” said Colleen Landy, girls’-floor coordinator, who has a master’s in psychology from St. Joseph’s University. “You don’t need a referral. Just show up. They come to our door in dire need and look around nervously.”

“When they realize they are safe from the street,” said David Quinn, boys’-floor coordinator, who formerly worked in the criminal-justice system, “they leave a lot of that street culture on the outside. We have 31 boys and a surprising low number of fights.”

Six years after she arrived at the crisis center, Shemaiah, now 24, is convinced that Covenant House saved her life.

“My first priority back then was to get a safe place to stay,” she said. “I was nervous. I was scared. I thought I’d sleep on a cot with about 50 million other people and I’d constantly have to watch my back. But it wasn’t like that at all.

“It was clean. They give you three meals a day. They sit down one-on-one with you and find out what you really need. They spent quite some time with me.”

Her Covenant House counselor got Shemaiah together with Women Organized Against Rape — a relationship that continues to this day.

The court convicted her attackers and sentenced them to prison. Shemaiah and her parents reconciled.

She worked at McDonald’s for two years, saving as much as she could for college. In 2003, St. Joseph’s University, which has a supportive partnership with Covenant House, awarded Shemaiah a full scholarship after she achieved the highest SAT scores among competing applicants.

She graduated last spring with a degree in business administration. She works in a Center City mortgage company, has her own apartment and has reclaimed her life.

“I’ve been truly blessed,” Shemaiah said. “Every time I think that the blessings from Covenant House are going to stop, they just keep coming.”

Frederick Jackson of North Philadelphia was raised in the city’s shelter system by his chronically homeless mother.

When he turned 18, he no longer qualified as a dependent child in a family shelter and was afraid he wouldn’t be safe in a men’s shelter filled with street-tough adults.

So Frederick lived hand-to-mouth — sometimes sleeping at a friend’s house, sometimes on the street — until he found Covenant House.

“First thing they asked me was, ‘Are you hungry?’ ” Frederick, now 20, remembered. “They made me feel welcome. They gave me sanctuary.”

But when a fellow resident made a remark about Frederick’s homosexuality, he fled the crisis center without telling anyone.

After a day’s reflection, he returned. “He told us why he had left,” Organ said. “We told him we would handle it, and we did.

“This has to be a safe place for everyone. Some kids coming in have issues with homophobia. They have to deal with those issues. We will not tolerate anyone picking on people or intimidating people. For most of the kids, this is the first time they’ve had a safe place in a very long time.”

Today, Frederick has a steady job, plans to attend Community College of Philadelphia and lives in a Covenant House transitional apartment in North Philadelphia, well on his way to independent living.

“Thirty percent of my check goes for rent, but I’ll get 75 percent of that back when I leave,” he said, “so it’s like savings towards my future.

“The people at Covenant House are always there for you if you do for yourself. I want to do right. I want to help my mom.”

Dexter Young of West Philadelphia, who said he was rejected by his family in 2001, went into the homeless-shelter system at 18 but was quickly referred to Covenant House by a men’s shelter that feared for his safety.

“Younger kids in shelter sometimes get targeted by the older population,” Organ said. “This shelter felt Dexter would be safer with us.”

“I loved it here because it had a staff who really cared,” Young said. “It felt warm.”

“He’s always been just a real good kid,” Organ said. “Motivation, at times, has been the question mark. The biggest thing with Dexter was getting him to believe in himself. His family is very negative. Once he came to us, he got his eyes opened as to what he could do.”

Young worked a construction day job, and spent his afternoons volunteering at Covenant House’s after-school program in Kensington for 30 at-risk teens — mentoring them, playing basketball and flag football with them, earning their trust, convincing them to stay in school.

“I liked the whole way he carried himself,” Organ said. “Dexter’s not a judgmental type of person. He accepted the kids for who they were. Some of these kids are in really tentative living situations. There’s no family involvement after school and there aren’t a lot of positive male role models in their lives.

“Dexter’s been where some of them are, so he’s able to talk to them. He gets a kick out of the kids and they get a kick out of him. Those guys look for him every day.”

Organ was so impressed that when Young was laid off from his construction job, he quickly became the first person to go from Covenant House client to paid staffer.

He’s come full circle from homeless teenager on the streets to a mature, 26-year-old man with a job, a home and a solid future.

“None of our kids are perfect,” Organ said. “They make mistakes. It’s not that they’re not trying to do better. Our philosophy is: We’ll continue to give you chances and to work with you. We’re not going to give up on you, no matter what.”

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Copyright (c) 2008, Philadelphia Daily News

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