In much of the Southern Tier, homelessness rates have increased by almost 200 percent over the past 15 years.
People living in shelters or outside are susceptible to chronic illness and premature death, especially when winter temperatures drop below freezing.
Homeless people in rural areas face a particularly high risk, according to local outreach workers. Towns are far apart, which makes it harder to get to food pantries and shelters. It’s difficult to find and keep a job or housing with no transportation. Outreach workers report that some people stay in shelters, but many others stay outside in fields or near riverbanks, leaving them vulnerable to biting cold winter storms and sweltering summer heat waves.
Those challenges are exactly what a homeless outreach program in the Southern Tier is trying to address. Called Safe Options Support, or SOS, the program provides food, warmth and stability, in the midst of what outreach workers say is an affordable housing crisis in the Southern Tier.
The program is part of an expansion of a statewide initiative started in New York City in 2022 by the New York State Office of Mental Health.
Run by Catholic Charities of Cortland County and Rehabilitation Support Services of Tioga County with $5 million in state funding, the regional team serves about 150 people across Tompkins, Cortland and Tioga counties.
Since July, outreach workers have been driving around the area, stopping at encampments and shelters to make sure the people living there have food, supplies, and warm clothes.
It’s work that can be lifesaving, especially as temperatures drop and essentials like zero-degree sleeping bags are hard to come by, according to Catholic Charities of Cortland County outreach worker Amanda Howlett, who leads the regional SOS team.
“We'll go and grab whatever it is the person identifies that they need,” said Howlett. “Because we want to try to keep people as healthy and safe as possible while we're working towards getting housing.”
A focus on survival
For people living outside or in shelters, daily survival – from staying warm to finding food to eat – can be a never ending challenge. That's why the SOS team's first aim with anyone they work with is to make sure their basic needs are met.
The team also helps people get their IDs, birth certificates, and social security cards, so they can apply for assistance and housing.
“Chasing down things when you're homeless is your entire day, getting your needs met,” Howlett said. “So how do you have time to do anything else, when you're just trying to figure out where you're going to sleep tonight, where you're going to eat? You know, am I gonna get wet? Is my tarp going to hold another storm?”
Bundled in purple jackets with the SOS logo on them, the outreach workers bring people supplies and help them get to job interviews, doctor appointments, court dates and meetings with social services.
Howlett said it’s often difficult for people who are living outside to make it to those kinds of appointments when they are struggling to find food and shelter.
“Gathering the things that they need for their day to survive is so much more important than going to a follow-up appointment at a doctor,” Howlett said. “It's all about choices, and how are they going to get there and back and then to the pharmacy, when everything is so spread out?”
‘I go right up to their camp and honk the horn’
With limited or nonexistent public transportation in rural parts of Tompkins, Cortland and Tioga counties, outreach workers often set up cab rides or drive people to appointments themselves.
SOS peer advocate Becky Hillman remembers when she first connected with a homeless couple living in a tent in a cornfield who were at risk of losing their benefits from the local Department of Social Services
“I had gotten a call from DSS that a couple was sanctioned for missing their appointments, because a cab can’t drive out into the middle of a cornfield,” Hillman said.
Hillman started driving her own truck into the field. Now, she gives them rides almost every day.“I go right up to their camp and honk the horn and yell to them, make sure they're awake and get them to their appointments,” said Hillman.
In a rural place where resources are few and far between, Hillman said it’s especially important to meet people wherever they are, rather than expecting them to travel to an office to sign up for help.
Hunting for solutions
Even with the added outreach, Larissa Brower, the SOS program director at Rehabilitation Support Services, said workers are seeing more people living in shelters or encampments, or facing homelessness because they cannot afford rent.
New York’s homelessness rate is almost double the national average, and rose almost 40 percent from 2023 to 2024.
To Brower, building more affordable housing would make a huge difference. She said an increase in funding for rental assistance and subsidized housing would help many people avoid homelessness.
“A lot of these people are on fixed income, social security, things like that. So they don't have another option,” Brower said. “They need a subsidy to be able to afford any kind of apartment in the area.
Brower said the lack of affordable housing causes a bottleneck, with years-long waitlists for affordable housing units. In some places, like Tioga County, the waitlist for federally subsidized affordable housing is completely closed because there is too much demand. For people who are recently homeless, their expected wait time can feel indefinite.
Advocates and outreach workers say finding permanent housing for someone living on the street is only the first step, and that continuing to provide support is necessary to help someone land on their feet.
After a person finds and moves into permanent housing, the SOS team continues to work with them for a year.
“That period when they are first housed is so, so important to making sure that they feel comfortable and that they are able to maintain that housing, so that they don't end up going back to homelessness,” Larissa Brower, the SOS program director at Tioga County’s Rehabilitation Support Services, said.
In the meantime, the SOS outreach workers say they’ll keep traveling around to find and help people, whether they’re living in shelters, on riverbanks or in cornfields.
“There hasn't been a great solution,” Brower said “I think the SOS team is a really great part of the puzzle, but there's a lot more work to do to increase the amount of housing for people.”