June 19, 2011 Run-away throw-away teens a silent crises www.privateofficer.com
SPECIAL REPORT
ERIN QUINN
TENNESSEAN.com
Nashville TN June 19 2011 Madeline is a pretty blond teenager who picks scraps from Nashville garbage cans for food.
She and three of her high school friends sleep in parks, under bridges and in abandoned buildings, many of which crawl with drug-addicted homeless people who are decades their senior.
They stink. They don’t shower or shave. Picking ticks off each other is a daily, sometimes hourly, ritual.
The Tucson, Ariz., natives walk the highways, ride the rails and call themselves “travel kids.” Advocates call them runaways or throwaways, teens who either left home on their own or were kicked out by their parents. They are part of a growing subculture of teens so elusive it’s difficult for national and social service agencies to help them.
While more than 1,800 Tennessee teens called the National Runaway Switchboard last year, Tennessee shelters have room for just 40. Homeless shelters either are too dangerous for them to brave alone or cater to mothers and younger children.
Each year in the U.S., an estimated 1.6 million to 2.8 million youth are homeless. It’s a growing number because of the down economy — parents working two low-wage jobs, losing homes, abusing alcohol or drugs to deal with the stress.
“Teenagers on the streets is a silent crisis that needs attention,” said Maureen Blaha, executive director of the National Runaway Switchboard. “Kids who run from home don’t want to talk about it. They do their best to blend in and often migrate to larger cities. Parents don’t like to talk about it because to have a child run away from home is embarrassing.”
Many younger than 18 avoid shelters, soup kitchens and social services — all potential paths back to homes they’ve escaped or been kicked out of.
Others leave to escape bullying at school, said Tammy Roth, director of crisis services at Nashville’s Oasis Center, a nonprofit organization that helps young people in crisis. The problem is more inescapable than ever because of social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, she said.
And Nashville tends to lure downtrodden teens with promises of a better life, said Debbie Miller, executive director of the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services Office of Well-Being.
“Nashville ends up with more than its fair share of runaways who find themselves on the street,” Miller said. “It’s at the intersection of two major interstates and has that Music City tag, so teens think there will be more opportunities for them here.”
Older teens fall through the cracks
Roth runs the nonprofit Oasis Center’s 12-bed emergency shelter. It is the only shelter for homeless teenagers in Middle Tennessee, she said.
“Most of the kids we deal with are brought here by their parents,” Roth said. “They just say, ‘I give up. I’m done.’ ”
The “throwaways” who call the National Runaway Switchboard have increased by 21 percent since 2009, 48 percent over the past three years and 68 percent from 2000.
Teens stay at the shelter for two weeks and receive counseling and schooling. The shelter has a 96 percent success rate of avoiding foster care by placing the teen back home with parents or with another family member willing to care for him. The center also has an outreach team dedicated to finding homeless teens and getting them the help they need.
“There are just not a lot of advocates for older teens,” Roth said. “The systems that are out there are not really working in their favor. There are so many kids that are falling through the cracks.”
Younger teens find themselves on the streets, too.
The number of Nashville public school students classified as homeless increased from 465 in 2005 to 2,049 this year. School districts in Rutherford and Wilson counties also had significant increases.
But 75 percent of Metro’s homeless student population are middle school age or younger, said Catherine Knowles, the district’s homeless education program supervisor. Children that age are most likely to have slots available with their parents in homeless shelters.
Most homeless shelters and social services are geared toward either adults or families with young children. Miller said some older boys want to stay there, too, but can’t because they’ve hit puberty.
“They can’t stay with mom at a homeless shelter,” Miller said. “But they’re too young to fend for themselves at the men’s shelter.
“So, a mother has to ask herself: What’s worse, leaving him at the men’s shelter where he might get raped or beaten, or leave him in a car with a Happy Meal, tell him not to leave the car and come back for him in the morning?”
The women’s shelter at the Nashville Rescue Mission recently added nine rooms in which boys 11-17 can stay with their mothers and younger siblings. The women’s mission alone can take 224 people and has been running at or near capacity most nights — especially in the summer.
“We’re filling up because more people get evicted in the summer,” said Mary Crutcher, director of guest women’s ministry at the shelter. “From June to September, more landlords evict people. In the winter, they have more of a conscience.”
Families often don’t find the shelter until they’re in crisis.
“We are their last resort,” Crutcher said. “When you come to the mission, you’ve exhausted all means. You’ve already stayed in cars, stayed with family and motels and friends. When you’ve come to the mission, you’re at your end. We’re the last hope.”
Bullied boy dreams of starting new
For the past nine months, Jeremy Brusseau, 12, has lived in one of the nine rooms for teens and their families with his mother, Rebecca, and 9-year-old brother, Joseph.
The family is not guaranteed the room every night, so they must pack up their few belongings and keep them in Rebecca Brusseau’s car. When school was in session, she would drop off Jeremy at school every day in the crowded car. Many times he’d be wearing the same outfit as the day before.
The other kids caught on quickly.
“Kids are mean,” Jeremy said.
Brusseau, who lost her job as a caregiver for the mentally ill and was evicted from the family’s apartment, is trying to get Social Security money from the boys’ father, who died a few months ago, and then buy a house for her and her sons.
She said the shelter teaches her children compassion. But shelter life also adds to Jeremy’s stresses. He lets the kids at school pick on him because he doesn’t want to get beaten up. There are enough of those threats from the other shelter kids. He dreams of moving to Florida or California and starting new, somewhere where the other kids won’t know he’s homeless.
‘A very different kind of kid’
The self-proclaimed “travel kids” — Madeline, Zoe, Brian and Rune — share his resistance to the label of homelessness.
“There are times when I’ve broken down crying because someone is so mean to me,” said Zoe, kicked out of her home at 16. “People try to convert me to their religion. They tell me I’m going to hell. I’m just a very different kind of kid. I’m just stubborn, and I don’t like to be told what to do.”
Through mutual friends, Zoe and Madeline met up in Tucson with Brian and Rune, who both left a halfway house for drug-rehabilitated teens. Three months ago, the four decided to run.
The night before she left, Madeline’s mother organized an hours-long intervention.
“She is so worried about me, just so so worried,” Madeline said. “I just had to tell her I can’t live off her any more. I’ve been waiting on something my whole life. I was just so sick of sitting on Facebook for hours. So sick of watching TV for hours.”
All she has is a backpack, filled with a sleeping bag and a picture of her and her dad when she was 4.
The four share two cellphones. Madeline’s mom texts every day.
“She thinks I’m going to die,” Madeline said. “My parents were really, really overprotective. They controlled my every move. My mom is one of those people who all she ever wanted to do with her life was be a mom. She was good at it. But I just do better on my own.”
Mila, a cute but flea-ridden pit bull mix, travels with the foursome for protection and companionship. Homeless people are more likely to get money from strangers if they are accompanied by a dog, Roth said.
The group’s main source of income is from “spanging,” or begging for spare change. But they also “busk,” which is the street term for playing the guitar for money.
An afternoon for the ‘travel kids’
On a hot, sunny day in Nashville, they sat under the shade of a tree next to a downtown gas station.
In two hours, four homeless men approached the group. One asked if they were old enough to drink beer. They weren’t, the teens replied. Another dropped off a few pieces of bread. He was met with an encouraged round of “Thanks, dude” and “Thanks, man,” followed by a discussion of the collective generosity and hospitality in the South.
A mentally ill man stood near them, holding a dead bird and picking apart its wings. The teens ignored him the best they could.
The gas station manager came outside and nicely told the group to stay off his property. He apologized and told them they could move behind a nearby fence and no one would bother them.
Again, a round of “Thanks, dude,” “No problem, man.”
“People are genuinely nice, you just have to give them a chance,” Zoe said. “My parents were good parents. My stepdad was difficult, but mainly I just do better with less structure.”
Seeking help through hotlines or social services is the last thing on her mind.
And so the advocates for this niche homeless population are tasked with somehow finding these kids who try their best to evade them and letting them know the streets are no place for them. But Blaha often finds call-takers on the national hotline have nowhere to send teens when they do call for help.
“We’re not always able to refer kids to safety and resources,” Blaha said. “Sometimes, there is just nothing there, so we have to be creative and call churches and other groups. We, as adults, know better than they do. These teens say they’re not in crisis. But we know they’re not safe.
“We need more beds for these teens. We need better mental health services and rehabilitation services. Fixing the problem has to begin with better attention brought to this group.”
The Tucson travel kids filled up water bottles at the gas station. Zoe bandaged her badly injured feet.
They took cardboard from a garbage can and wrote “Louisville.” And then they perched themselves amid busy interstate traffic with their thumbs in the air.
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