GOVERNMENT
Life on the streets Homelessness is on the rise in Maricopa. Here’s what we know BY MONICA D. SPENCER
It’s difficult to say how many homeless people live in Maricopa. City spokesperson Monica Williams said the city does not track that data. However, a point-in-time count by the Pinal County Coalition to End Homelessness estimated 219 people — representing 165 households — experienced homelessness last year. That’s up 332% from 2017, according to the Arizona Department of Housing. Two-thirds of those tracked last year said they had been without a permanent home for at least one year. Most cited losing a job or earning too little to afford housing. Others said legal problems or traumatic family issues — divorce, death and familial disputes — contributed to their situation. About 1 in 8 listed domestic violence as a contributing factor. Men were more than twice as likely to experience homelessness compared to women, according to the PCCEH data. White people made up 55% of the population of Pinal County but more than 70% of its homeless population. Half were between 45 and 64 and less than one-tenth received any government benefits. People identifying as transgender were four times more likely to experience homelessness. Health conditions play into these situations as well. People living in shelters are twice as likely to have a disability compared to the general population, according to data from NAEH. One-third experienced serious mental illness and one-fourth had conditions related to chronic substance abuse. When combined, those factors can snowball into a situation difficult — or even impossible — to escape. Teaching a man to fish That was the case for Groh, who spent nearly two decades living on the streets of Phoenix. “I was chronically homeless,” he said. “You know, over and over, you get up and out of it. And you end up falling back to it.” For him, it was a sickening cocktail of trauma, substance abuse, financial trouble, ailing mental health and poor choices. “It’s a choice,” Groh conceded. “It’s not a choice of something bad over something good. It’s a choice between a bunch of the crappiest things.” Groh struggled to get back on his feet several times before finally landing assistance with his health and housing in 2014. That began a decade-long transition off the streets and eventually relocating to Maricopa, a period dotted with arrests for drugs and assault.
Left: After 19 years living on the streets in and near Maricopa, Gary Groh knows how to get by. Above: Transient “Thor” rides his bike, carrying a backpack and several plastic bags, along a canal in Thunderbird Farms near West Thola Road on July 16, about 4 p.m.
GARY GROH CAN’T REMEMBER HOW HE BECAME HOMELESS. “This one guy let me live in the back of his auto shop and one day he asked, ‘Hey, why are you homeless anyway?’” the Hidden Valley resident told InMaricopa . “I’m like, ‘You know, if I could put a finger on that, I could probably reverse engineer it.’” Three decades later, Groh, a 62-year-old Phoenix native and former machinist recalls it was in the wake of a devastating divorce when he first slept outside. “The first place I went to was a park behind Grand Canyon University,” he said. “Just a place I was comfortable. I played there when I was a kid.” In the months that followed, Groh struggled to find a place to rent with his bad credit and settled under a bridge on 51st Avenue in Phoenix, then the canals in Sunnyslope. Thus began 19 years of struggling to survive on the streets of metro Phoenix. Tracking homelessness Groh isn’t alone in his experience. The number of Americans who experienced homelessness last year topped 421,000, a record high according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness. That number has risen 6% over the last seven years. Locally, however, the increase has been exponentially higher. In Arizona, more than 13,500 people reported experiencing homelessness in 2022. The majority live in metro Phoenix where more than 9,000 people were homeless any given night that year.
InMaricopa.com | August 2024
August 2024 | InMaricopa.com
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