She's just homeless, and there's no help
for that
By Emily Minor,
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
The Palm Beach Post
April 22, 2004
If only Joan Pace were an addict. Or a drunk. If only she had
three small children, and a husband who beat her.
Then she might get help.
As it is, Pace, 52, is broke and in poor health. She's also homeless, with no help on the horizon.
This is her story, according to Pace and some of those who have met her the past 18 months. Pace has never been arrested, according to Florida records. She has never been held under the state's Baker Act, the provision that allows police to restrain the mentally ill and hold them for observation.
Indeed, until the late summer of 2002, when she became too ill to work, Pace held a job -- for a long time, with a major airline. She was one of those agents you see at the US Airways gate, taking your boarding pass, smiling, solving your problems.
"Three years ago, she was leading the normal American life," says Tim Kilby, pastor at the First Church of the Nazarene on Forest Hill Boulevard in suburban West Palm Beach. "She lived in Wellington; she had a good life."
In recent years, Pace was diagnosed with something called "low vital capacity," worsened by her emphysema. Kilby says Pace barely has the breath to cross a street, which is why she can't work.
After Pace's life disintegrated -- she says she lost her airline job in a corporate downsizing -- Pace took her cat and lived in her car, a sporty white Mustang. This went on for 18 months, until the car was recently repossessed. Now she uses part of her $500 monthly Social Security check for the occasional hotel room, which is no solution at all.
Joan Pace has no real place to sleep, no place to get mail, no place to do laundry.
"I have never been in a situation where I couldn't find some agency that could help an individual," Kilby says. "I have not been able to find housing for Joan, other than putting her in a cheap hotel."
Going down the list
Pace is the icon for America's homeless. In Palm Beach County, there are an estimated 2,500 single homeless people, but only about 80 beds for them. When I first talked to Pace, she impressed me with a list of places she'd called for help. Indeed, her tenacity is known from agency to agency.
This is about one-fourth of that list, and the responses she says she got:
The Red Cross: "I was told they help people in disaster, like when their house burns down."
St. Ann's Place: "They'll let you get a meal and a shower, but that's it."
Florida Resource Center for Women and Children: "They only do domestic violence."
West Palm Beach Housing Authority: "They told me they have waiting list" -- which is now closed.
The Lord's Place: "I was told they only take families with small children." Shelley Gottsagen, executive director of the Coalition for Independent Living Options, says Pace "used to spend every day sitting in our lobby, and we would give her a phone to use."
What they couldn't give her was a home.
"It's terrible, especially for women in her situation," Gottsagen said. "All the shelters that exist, you have to fit into certain categories."
Last year, when someone on Gottsagen's staff persuaded a local TV station to feature Pace on the news, the crew came out and taped Pace, and her car, and her cat. She got one phone call.
"One lady did call to say they'd help with vet bills or food, or whatever the cat needed," Pace said.
Maria Bello, with the Homeless Coalition of Palm Beach County, talked to Pace this month, and was forced to tell Pace what she already knew: The choices are very slim.
"We talked for a very long time, and she was very nice," Bello said. "I gave her some options, but she had already tried all those places. She had been very thorough."
Thorough, but homeless.