Annette John-Hall: Homeless have it tough in Bucks County

I don't have to tell you this latest stretch of winter is the coldest it's been all year. And we can probably expect more days of single-digit, two-log, long-johns kind of cold before winter's over.

But while we complain about spending extra time warming up the cars or putting on a second layer before we face the deep freeze, there are some people for whom bitter cold is a blessing.

For the homeless, a night that dips below 20 degrees is, mercifully, a code-blue night. Which means a newly homeless man like Steve can sit down to a hot meal and get a good night's sleep in a warm, safe environment at Langhorne Terrace Ministries in Bucks County.

"The volunteers here have been fabulous," says Steve, 58, who didn't want to give his last name because he didn't want to look like a loser to prospective employers.

If not for the shelter, he'd be trying to sleep at the 24-hour post office in Levittown. Or standing around the Giant supermarket until closing because it's too cold to go anyplace else.

Or worse.

"I'm telling you," Steve says, "people would be dead if they couldn't come here."

See, Steve doesn't have a reliable safety net. Few of the homeless do.

You have even less of one if you're homeless in Bucks County; chances are you can't come in from the cold. The Red Cross shelter in Levittown, the county's only shelter, has a waiting list as long as the cane Steve uses to hobble around on his bad hip.

As unbelievable as it sounds, there wasn't one code-blue shelter in Bucks County - home to 600,000 residents - until last year. That's when a group of congregants from interfaith organizations helped create Advocates for Homeless & Those in Need, whose mission is helping people attain self-sufficiency "with dignity and compassion."

Rotating among four church sites, the shelter stays open from December through March, program coordinator Penny Martin says. Good thing, too. The shelter has hosted 33 code-blue nights this season, compared with 36 for all of last year.

Running it isn't easy. The operation depends on volunteers who work the kitchen, do intake, drive the bus to pick people up, and work the overnight shift. It takes 15 volunteers for a night. "If one overnight position is not filled," Martin says, "we can't open the shelter."

On a brutally cold, 14-degree Sunday night, warm vibes flowed out of the fellowship hall at Langhorne Terrace Ministries. Steve, along with about 25 other people, feasted on minestrone, turkey casserole, and biscuits while watching the Steelers play the Jets.

Though Sunday's group consisted of mostly men, a few women milled around, unfolding their cots. Last year, the shelter took in eight people under age 30.

Here's the thing: The face of homelessness is no longer that of some drug addict pushing a shopping cart down a city street. In this economy, everybody can be one paycheck away - in the city or in the suburbs, says Allen Johnson of the Reach Out Foundation, a homeless support group in Morrisville.

"The number increases daily," he says.

It's impossible to guess how many homeless people there are in Bucks County; the annual HUD surveys (the latest are out today) don't get everybody by a long shot. But homeless people do tend to congregate in encampments along the Delaware Canal and behind the Pathmark off Route 413 in Lower Bucks.

Trickier to count are the newly disenfranchised, the folks who live in their cars, or live doubled up with family members.

"They need to know of our services, too," Johnson says. "I call them the proud ones."

The ones like Steve, who figures he has one more night of comfort at the shelter before he has to plot his next move.

"It's going to warm up," he says. "I don't know where I'll go."