Published: March 14 2009
The men shuffle in around dinner time, bruised, disheveled, beaten badly by life on city streets. This is just another night at Ridge Avenue Shelter, a dismal place off Broad that sleeps a maximum of 360. Every night, it sleeps 360.
Mark Tadlock works as a guard at Ridge, Philadelphia's largest homeless facility for men who are barely coping. It's the guard's job to cope, to keep some semblance of order.
"People hollering. People saying they're going to kill you. Getting spit on. These are hostile individuals," Tadlock says. Drugs, razors, alcohol and knives are confiscated, then stashed in a beatup picnic cooler.
"There are no easy nights," he says. "Never. None."
Weekends are brutal. First of the month, when clients receive checks, are worse. Fights are a constant. "Six or seven, every night," says guard Dwayne Shelton. "It's chaos - but it pays the bills."
Tadlock and Shelton are calm individuals, the default position when you work in such misery. "But I'm mad," Tadlock says.
Last spring, the 27 guards working at three city-funded shelters secured SEIU union wages through a collective bargaining agreement, $13.02 an hour, plus Blue Cross health insurance and 13 paid days off a year. They're employees of Scotlandyard Security, which is paid by the city. When the government hires contractors for a certain category of work, union officials say, they should be paid the prevailing minimum federal rate.
Which ends next week, due to city budget cuts, which slashed funding to the security firm. Union wages? Gone. If the guards get sick, they won't get paid. Their compensation will drop to $9 an hour, a 46 percent drop in salary and benefits, fast-food wages working in an intensely hostile environment.
Tadlock takes two different meds for high blood pressure. With the SEIU prescription drug plan, they cost $7 each. When he loses coverage, they'll total $270. That's $18 less than he'll make working 32 hours a week. Before taxes.
A growth state
The city is getting out of the homeless-guard business. That's what union officials were told when funding was cut last month.
"We're trying to find efficiencies," says Dainette Mintz, director of the Office of Supportive Housing and deputy managing director of Special Needs Housing. "My responsibility is to provide homeless housing. If the union is upset, they need to deal with the companies that contract for security."
The problem is that all the money for that contract comes from the city. By the union's calculations, the cut in guard wages and benefits saves the city $300,000 annually. "My first reaction was 'Are you kidding me?' This is not a living wage," says local SEIU district supervisor Wayne MacManiman Jr.
Homelessness grows in a slow economy. "There's a lot of pressure on people on the bottom economic rung," says homeless advocate Sister Mary Scullion.
City and federal officials know this. Three weeks ago, as part of the federal stimulus package, the city received $28.6 million in homeless grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, $26.3 million to create new transitional housing, $2.3 million for emergency shelter grants "to create, improve and operate emergency shelters for homeless persons."
Like Ridge.
Shelter from the street The city wants to get out of the shelter business, not just the shelter-guard business. Homeless advocates applaud the move. No one likes Ridge. No one thinks 360 men should be housed nightly in a decrepit facility.
"Everyone's goal is to have a place of one's own," says Project HOME's Sister Mary. "It just doesn't look like that's going to happen in the foreseeable future."
In the foreseeable future, the homeless men will flood into Ridge. Tadlock and Shelton will guard them for $9 an hour, without insurance or a single paid day off, working in a place where there are no easy nights. Never. None.
