Inside the laundry room at Homeward Bound, a homeless shelter in Wooster, a volunteer folds the latest batch of bedding, while a washing machine spins a sudsy load.
"We do a lot of laundry as you can imagine. We provide all the bedding and the shower and towels and stuff like that," says Brandon Barnes, the shelter's executive director.
Homeward Bound opened earlier this year and can accommodate up to 44 people at a time.
Wayne County doesn't have as many homeless people as more urban counties like Cuyahoga and Summit. At the last count in 2023, there were 110 unhoused people. But Barnes says that number is probably low.
“There are some folks that might have been hidden at that moment or weren't homeless at that time,” Barnes said. "And so we really don't know who's out there, what numbers we’re missing."
A rough winter
This time of year presents special challenges for both homeless people and the shelters that provide care for them. Warmth is the biggest issue — especially this year, with a “very cold, snowy” winter predicted in the Great Lakes.
Alivia, a Homeward Bound resident who asked that her full name not be used due to privacy concerns, says the winter months are an especially hard time to be unhoused.
“It can be brutal, especially if you don't have the right clothing, or if you have wet shoes,” she says. “It's trying to find a warm spot to even just sit.”
Without protection from the elements, people can experience hypothermia or frostbite, which can lead to death. Alivia says she and others would do whatever they could to stay warm.
“Sometimes, we’ll make a vent if you have a tent,” she says. “Sleeping bags, warm clothes; a lot of places give stuff away.”
Even outside the cold-weather months, finding housing in Wayne County is pretty hard these days, especially for lower and middle income people. According to one analysis, the average cost to purchase a home in Wayne County rose by almost 35% between 2021 and 2024, and the cost of rent rose by nearly 12% in the last year. Someone working minimum wage would have to work 67 hours a week to make rent for a two-bedroom apartment.
One shelter, three counties
That disconnect between pay and housing costs is a statewide trend. Amy Riegel, the executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio, says the state is missing 267,000 affordable housing units for low-income individuals.
“For 70% of extremely low-income individuals, they're paying more than 50% of their income on housing costs,” Riegel said. “That's a lot of your paycheck going towards housing. And we know that you can't keep that up forever.”
The pressure is especially high in rural areas and small towns. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, those areas often have lower wages, higher poverty rates and underfunded social services, which makes it harder to build more shelters and affordable homes, or to provide other essential resources for rural residents.
Riegel says many rural communities may not have the resources they need to help people experiencing homelessness, and these service deserts leave people without options.
“In some cases, it might only be one shelter in a three county area,” Riegel said. “So that means if you're currently unhoused, you could be up to 50 or 60 miles away from the nearest shelter. And that is a distance in a rural community that's almost impossible to traverse and be able to get to that shelter.”
But there are workarounds. The nonprofit Community Action of Wayne and Medina offers a subsidized transportation program for low-income Wayne County residents to get to shelters. Similar programs exist in Ashtabula, Medina and Tuscarawas counties.
Local solutions like that are likely to remain the norm — in the winter and year-round — as the federal government continues to cut funding for homelessness programs.
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