Meet Community Partner Ocean Aiello of The Haven

Ocean Aiello is Community Engagement Manager at the Haven, a Perkins Fellows community partner. I met with Ocean over coffee in late October. Here’s what we talked about! –MD

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How did this organization start? In your own words, what is this organization’s purpose?

In the 70s and 80s there was a rise in people experiencing homelessness for a variety of reasons, including the eradication of social safety nets, higher numbers of veterans, etc. In Charlottesville, several groups came together to address food insecurity and housing in the community, including business owners and librarians. Librarians were especially aware of these issues because the central branch of the public library was becoming the de facto day shelter in town, as is commonly the case across the country; the public library is often the only place in a community where one is allowed to use the bathroom and get a drink of water while mostly free of harassment and without having to purchase something. The library, however, is not well equipped to address someone in a housing crisis. During this time, Tom Shadyac, a UVA Alum and Hollywood director (Liar Liar, Ace Ventura) was in Crozet filming Evan Almighty and got connected with the living wage movement in Charlottesville. After a near death experience he began to give money to address homelessness and extreme poverty in the area, purchasing First Christian Church on Market Street to use as a day shelter; the property was sitting empty after the congregation moved out of town. This was right around the same time that Dave Matthews purchased the Zion Baptist Church on Ridge Street to become the Music Resource Center… 

After several years of renovation, the doors of the day shelter opened in 2010. The day shelter is open every day of the year from 7am to 5pm. Originally intended to be an overnight shelter as well, we were only given a permit to have a day shelter after pushback from the community. We’re what is known as a low barrier shelter. Low barrier means that we don’t have to screen people upon entry for alcohol or drug use, we don’t require photo ID, and we don’t require people to prove that they’re unhoused. There are rules for being in the space, of course, but I think being low barrier helps us to meet people where they are. For example, as a low barrier shelter we let people sleep during the day. Insomnia is endemic to people experiencing homelessness– you might be up all night moving to protect yourself, your belongings or to stay warm. The forbidding of people to sleep in a day shelter is often rooted in a prejudice that unhoused people are lazy and don’t work, while really the vast majority do have jobs and work.

So we opened the day shelter in 2010. The goal is to offer people a safe space and respite from the elements, helping them meet their basic needs while they’re working to get housing. We have showers, hygiene products, laundry facilities and detergent, computers, phones, mail service, and basic medicines. We serve breakfast every day of the year at 7:30AM and lunch on Fridays. We also have bin storage. There are a total of around 70 bins now where people can store their things in waterproof containers. 

It’s important to remember that every person who comes through our doors is different. The only thing that connects them is a need for safe and stable housing. So some folks might need food, while others might need to get their photo ID in order to apply for benefits, a job, or an apartment. We have a whole range of programs just around photo IDs, including volunteer teams that drive people to the DMV and meet with folks about how to get their photo ID, which might involve applying for a birth certificate or filling out forms. That’s where our housing programs come in. 

Our housing programs range  from preventing people from falling into homelessness in the first place to more involved housing programs intended to support individuals who have either experienced chronic homelessness (only a small percentage of the overall population, those who have lived homeless for a year or more or repeatedly over the course of their lifetime) or are under the age of 30 and have interacted with the foster care system. Assistance might look like helping folks pay back owed rent or security deposits, finding more affordable places for people to live, assisting folks in navigating housing applications when they have a felony (with a felony you can legally be barred from apply to every landlord in town!), etc. More involved housing programs include rental subsidies and case management services for folks who have been homeless for the longest amount of time, which is about 10-20% of the overall homeless population. We also work with people 18-30 who have engaged with the foster care system, as the correlation between long term homelessness and the foster care system is huge. Just in the last 2 weeks these programs have housed 3 people! A lot of people are surprised about these programs because the day shelter is more public facing.

There is potential for a study paid for by the city to assess the feasibility of having an overnight, low barrier, year round shelter at the Haven. There’s a lot more emphasis on this, especially in the wake of the Market Street Park encampment. But shelter is not housing–it’s not permanent–so if we invest a lot of money in a shelter, we have to be able to invest the same, if not more, in affordable housing. 

How did you get drawn to this specific work? 

I studied communications and advocacy at JMU, then was a classroom support in schools in AmeriCorps after college. After that I worked as the hospice volunteer coordinator at Bon Secours in Richmond. Hospice is radical and holistic and I learned a lot about sitting with human suffering. I worked with volunteers in the community–the goal is to have people at home instead of in the hospital and to empower them and their caregivers; the goal is to make the death one of dignity and as little pain as possible. If I see a through line between that job and this one, it’s that they both understand home as a place of care. One thing I heard over and over in that job is “that’s SO hard! I can’t imagine how hard it is to work with death all around!” And it’s true, it was difficult–but also I learned how death is natural and began to accept that. Homelessness, on the other hand, is not natural–even though many people experience it and are resilient within it, it’s not something we should be content with, and that’s a big separation between that job and this one. Many people who land on our doorsteps didn’t just run out of money, they ran out of relationships, they ran out of social safety nets,or these weren’t ever there to begin with. This pushes back against the stereotype that it’s the individual’s fault when they are unhoused. There’s this dehumanization of unhoused people, because you’re implicated if you acknowledge them. There’s a similar dehumanization of people who are dying, because you have to face your own mortality when you see them as human. So the job at Bon Secours prepped me to be Community Engagement Manager at the Haven where I organize the volunteers and have planned major funding events and donation drives.

What gives you hope?

We have a new director, Anna Mendez, which has been really great. We recently had an educational event about Housing First, the philosophy that informs all of what we do at The Haven. About 150 people attended and learned about our success in the community and also the challenges we’re facing. I’m really excited about bringing more people into the fold of our work. I want to find people who have questions or who feel hopeless about the issue of homelessness and show them what’s already happening here at the Haven. I’m hopeful about being more intentional with narrative this year.

What has been the Haven’s relationship with the Perkins fellows and Theological Horizons? Do you have any insights or opinions on service learning?

We’ve had several Perkins Fellows become volunteers with us over the years, and I think that’s really the best thing to do–attend a training and volunteer regularly, once or twice a month. It’s tough when folks come in from UVA and want to volunteer just for a semester. When you think about it, that’s only about 3 months, which is a tiny drop in the bucket. I want to encourage UVA students to think about how projects and initiatives they start will continue after they’re gone. You have big ideas, but what is it rooted in? Do you actually see a need for x project? Has this need been determined by the  people who will be impacted? Or are you trying to put something on your resume? Sometimes when students have a certain volunteer hour requirement or a very specific project in mind it can create more work for us at the shelter to accommodate that need. Something that might be helpful is considering how the volunteer experience could be transferable to the next group of people. Our volunteers attend a training session, but there’s only so much you can do in an hour and a half. It would be great to have an overview of the experience and best practices for people as they come on board.