Wendy Shumway and Rosa Vicinte, at the Downtown Chapel for help, explain their struggles.
Sentinel photo by Ed Langlois
Two months ago, Pierre Osborne was a research assistant at an Oregon Health and Science University cancer lab.
Now he’s scraping by. He stretches out his rent money by coming to Portland’s Downtown Chapel for a free haircut. He intends to stave off homelessness.
Osborne, 40, lost his job when OHSU laid off hundreds of workers early this year. He’s one of the estimated quarter million unemployed Oregonians. At 12.1 percent, Oregon’s jobless rate is the second highest in the nation, behind only Michigan.
Perched in a barber chair in the chapel’s colorful social services room, Osborne feels optimistic. But this economy is the worst he’s seen.
“It used to be, if you left a job, you could find a job,” he says. “Not now.”
Osborne has been applying wherever he can, facing competition from as many as 70 peers for positions in his field. He now volunteers at OHSU, hoping to be in a prime spot to regain his job when times get better.
A graduate of St. Mary School in Albany, he has relatives around the Willamette Valley. Osborne also lends a hand at Blanchet House, where free meals are served. There, he tucks in to breakfast and lunch himself.
The chapel, a Catholic parish in the neighborhood where most of Portland’s homeless congregate, offers a warm room, food, clothes, art supplies, foot care and even musical instruments. Staff have logged a 35-percent increase in daytime guests since this time last year. This March, for example, 105 guests sought help. Last March, the number was 78.
“Every day we welcome more and more people who have never before had to ask for assistance and who are struggling to navigate the few resources that are available to them,” says Andy Noethe, the parish pastoral associate.
Carleen Corbett, who volunteers at the chapel, says job loss can quickly push residents of Old Town into homelessness. Many are mentally ill or in recovery from drug or alcohol abuse. They may just have entered housing and gotten their lives together.
“This is hitting people who maybe have an apartment, but don’t have any backup,” explains Corbett, a small silver crucifix pinned to her flannel shirt. Her own son has been out of work for a year.
Sometimes, financial troubles can be fatal. This month, the chapel held a memorial service for a man who committed suicide after he lost his house to foreclosure.
Wendy Shumway, 37, is trilingual — English, Spanish and Tagalog. This native of Port Angeles, Wash. has experience as a nurse’s aid, caterer and shipyard worker. But jobs have been scarce lately. Abusive boyfriends and a drug habit have hurt her chances, but Shumway says she is on the mend.
Staying in a women’s shelter, she is using the Downtown Chapel as her daytime base to launch a new career in ministry. She figures her hard life has given her experience and compassion that might help other people. Her nearby church will help her through training. Shumway’s task, she says, will be to be able to help people without utterly taking on their burdens.
Also at the chapel on this day is 51-year-old Rosa Vicinte, who lost her janitorial job downtown last year after eight years. She’s been sending money to Mexico that whole time to support her ailing husband. Everywhere Vicinte turns, scores of people have already applied. Younger workers tend to get the nod.
Some highly educated yet unemployed people have been volunteering at the chapel, wanting to do some good while they have the time. Among them are engineers and accountants.
Helping hand out toiletries to homeless people at the chapel is 23-year-old Andrew Martin, visiting his sister from Seattle for a few days. The brother of a chapel staffer, Martin is a 2008 history graduate of Boston University.
He held a temporary post with an environmental group during the 2008 presidential campaign and now works at a Seattle restaurant that is about to close.
More conservative than many of the Democrats with whom he worked, this Catholic is ready to settle down after living a troubadour’s life — 10 places in eight months.
He’s applied to work for a hedge fund in New York. Right now, he says, that sounds like a dream job.
