New Direction
The fall and rise of John Shelter, homeless advocate turned entrepreneur
(Jan. 19, 2012) It was a bad day for John Shelter. The slightly stocky, mustachioed 53-year-old was trying hard not to cry. Despite the usual determined glare in his hazel eyes and occasional bursts of infectious guffaw, Shelter almost did cry when a man inside the North Coast Resource Center shuffled slowly by. The man was heading to the tables where he volunteered every day to sort through produce, picking out the good, tossing the bad.
“They call it the ‘thorazine shuffle,’” Shelter said. “He’s medicated — he has major mental health issues.” His voice caught when he added, “What’s he going to do tomorrow? The thing is, most of our mentally ill have a place here. They stack bread. Organize books. They’re in here contributing, and not out there in the public wandering around.”
It was Dec. 30, and it was a bad day for a lot of other people, too. It was the last day of operation for the NCRC, which was going on temporary hiatus. For nearly 35 years, the nonprofit organization had been devoted to helping the poor and homeless. It had grown from a simple food pantry to providing a range of services, everything from basic needs — food, cleanliness, legal resources — to long-term housing and employment. In exchange for such help, the recipients volunteered their time, helping run the center and even doing trash and weed cleanup and festival support projects.
Shelter had worked here since 2005 and had been the executive director from 2007 until 18 months ago, when he and four others were laid off because the center had run out of money. Shelter kept working as a volunteer.
Now, still funding-short, the NCRC’s board of directors had decided to shut down and regroup, saying it hopes to reopen the center sometime in the future as a trimmer, more tightly focused operation. If and when that happens, Shelter will not be part of the restructured organization; he has not been asked to come back to serve as executive director.
So this is a pivotal moment. Will he despair, slip into a homeless quagmire like the last time he’d lost a job he passionately loved? That was 20 years ago. Back then, he’d lost his business and his home, and his ex-wife had gained custody of their two daughters. It devastated him. This time, although finances are tight, he has his third wife, Jill, by his side. His kids are grown and living engaged, healthy lives nearby. He is deeply committed to helping homeless people, especially the single ones upon whom society casts the most disapproving glances (he can relate). And he has a plan.
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John Shelter says his separation from the NCRC was not his idea. “I never quit anything,” he said defiantly as he walked quicklyabout the center on its last day, stopping now and then to chat and laugh with clients and fellow volunteers. He was wearing a black “Humboldt” hoodie over a striped blue-and-white button-up shirt, a ball cap with a big American flag and bald eagle head on the front, and blue jeans with a cell phone holster snapped through a belt loop. He looked comfortably like one of the regular folks, but he moved purposefully, in charge, eyes darting about to take everything in.
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on the cover
Railroad!
Proposed lines ‘set rich blood a-tingling’ in early 1900s
Some Other Proposed North Coast Railroads
Choo-choo Fantasies
Exposing this east-west rail nonsense
seven-o-heaven
Undeterred Will
Will chides Andrew for lack of attention to detail and makes plans for his inevitable victory.
Recent on the cover
May 17
Ring of Fire
Sun and moon will perform a rare pas de deux in Humboldt skies on Sunday
May 10
District Soup
Racing for the top county seat in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd districts
May 3
A Place in the Woods
As park closure deadline nears, a scramble to save what we can
Today
44th Annual Kinetic Grand Championship Race
STAFF PICK / events, art, outdoors, sports, for kids, free / 9 a.m.-6 p.m. A 3-day, 42-mile kinetic sculpture race over land, sand, mud and water! LeMans start at the Noon Whistle on the Arcata Plaza. Follow the race through Manila, Eureka and into Ferndale on Memorial Day for the Glorious Finish. kineticgrandchampionship.com. 889-3024.
Flow 2012 Fashion Show
STAFF PICK / events / 8 p.m. Arcata Theatre Lounge, 1036 G St. Student designed and produced clothing. Fundraiser for Arcata Arts Institute. $35/$25 students. artsinstitute.net. 822-1220.
Woodside Preschool's Rummage/Bake Sale
events / 8 a.m.-noon. Woodside Preschool, 900 Hodgson St, Eureka. www.woodsidepreschool.com. 445-9132.
Lanphere Dunes Restoration
STAFF PICK / outdoors / 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Meet at Pacific Union School. Help remove non-native invasives at the Lanphere Dunes Unit of the Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge. Tools and gloves provided, wear work clothes and bring water. Carpool to the protected site. 444-1397.
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17 Comments
Comment / By Shannon / Jan. 19, 7:14 a.m.
John is a great guy, and his wife Jill is awesome too. I wish John all the best on his efforts!!
Comment / By Tim / Jan. 19, 10:43 a.m.
Major mental health issues became treatable with the advent of Thorazine. You take your choice - the “thorazine shuffle” and / other e.p.s. or a person totally out of touch with most aspects of “reality.” If you feel patients with major mental health issues should NOT be involuntarily detained or medicated, you should try living with someone displaying fully blown symptomology of schizophrenia, etc.
Comment / By Heidi Walters / Jan. 19, 11:07 a.m.
Thanks for your comment, Tim. Just to clarify, nobody in the story was advocating against the use of Thorazine. Forgive me if it appeared that way. Shelter was strictly making an observation.
Comment / By A Good Start / Jan. 19, 2:38 p.m.
Homelessness gets little media coverage locally, or nationally.
It’s the same with the faces behind today’s plague of unemployment, outsourcing, foreclosures, bankruptcies and the unpredictable human tragedies and “insured” illnesses that are the common catalysts.
The worst unemployment since the Great Depression; the highest income disparity since the Gilded Age; every measurable environmental, economic, health, and social indicator is in sharp decline, all constituting the CONTEXT of every poverty/homeless story.
Yet, from the NCJ to the NYT., the context is thoroughly and completely obscured by self-censorship.
We are living in a time when media’s irrational focus on staying “positive” confines local and national economic catastrophes within a human-interest frame, completely isolated from its context, with devastating negative consequences to the fundamental purpose of community-interest reporting….to inform.
For example, reading about the excitement of job scalpers, the police chief’s willingness to hassle “non-cooperators”, the Chamber of Commerce “homeless-fatigue”, and the gripes of well-healed NCRC board members, is fine.
However, even our tiny rural community boasts of a dozen academic professionals who could provide the brief context of this story. Even a cursory view of statistics offered by the U.S. Department of Commerce, or the U.S. Census, offer a shocking glimpse of the context and scale of poverty and homelessness in the U.S..
We have yet to read a local story about the well-known impacts on communities being saturated in big boxes, the homes these workers can’t afford, and the predatory industries that follow, and how this has hastened family’s economic collapse.
Until the truth is repeated about the poor, as often as the lies, ignorance and bigotry will persist and little will change.
Comment / By Tim / Jan. 19, 7:18 p.m.
I did not have the impression, Ms. Walters, that this article advocated against the use of Thorazine. It’s mention, in the context of a descriptive (adverse) side effect simply provided an opportunity to educate that in the greater context of mental health treatment, our best and most current psychopharmacological approaches (1) come with risks, and (2) still beat the alternative of untreated psychosis in most cases. When criminal behavior is not involved, some advocates of a voluntary treatment approach (solely) feel the individual’s right to refuse tx supersedes the rights of caregivers, family, and society.
Comment / By John Post / Jan. 20, 9:12 a.m.
Good story. Go John!
Comment / By Nikki Parker / Jan. 21, 12:07 a.m.
Bravo to the Board members of the NCRC who, for whatever reasons, stood united and bold in no longer allowing the egocentric behaviors of John Shelter to hold the NCRC hostage.
Executive Directors have clear reporting responsibilities to their Board, partners, stakeholders and its organization. Shelter obviously was not taking direction, nor focusing on his duties, or making sure that the organization was properly funded while developing proactive partnerships and marketing the organization. Instead, he was quick to blame everyone, but himself, while being crowned the Betty Chinn of Arcata.
Shelter’s “moving on” is a human resources issue. Handling or speaking publicly about an HR issue at all has to be done with kit gloves. The NCRC’s Board chose not only to be as transparent as legally possible, they handled it with professional grace and options by giving Shelter the opportunity of claiming one of its programs as his own with their blessings of success. Now, this Board is left behind to confront and clean up the mess, take the blame, apologize to stakeholders, and rise, hopefully, out of the ashes of its thorny management to embrace what they also are passionate about - volunteering their time to serving the poor, underserved, homeless and working at keeping the NCRC’s doors open. Ms. Walters choose not to report on the feelings of the volunteer Board left behind to pick up and move on from this debacle.
My other concern on the reporting of this story was why didn’t any other organization that works with the homeless or marginal population discuss with Ms. Walters NCRC’s issue about its former ED? Take my word for it, people knew. Was the reason for this reporting gap because Ms. Walters was so busy writing her editorial lovefest of Shelter she didn’t bother to research her story further, or did these organizations chose not to talk to her on the record because they knew it would further damage the NCRC by hurting the people, the population they all work and serve? Shelter seems to have not taken that matter as seriously as himself.
Homelessness has bigger problems and issues than just one person. Homeless assistance programs were never intended to provide permanent solutions to mass homelessness. Mr. Shelter is not the NCRC. I was really at a loss to what was the motivation of this story, or who was its target audience, the homeless? Or, was it simply allowing Shelter one more drop kick into the face of the organization that gave him his administrative start and is now allowing him to carry on the torch of one of its programs into the greater community as NCRC crumbles? Because as you pointed out, “he never quits anything.” The poor reporting and meager research of this story just made everything about local homelessness issues a lot grayer.
Comment / By Patti Stammer / Jan. 21, 2:31 p.m.
Thank you Nikki Parker for presenting some sort of balance to this piece of fluff reporting by Heidi Walters. I, too, could not figure out why it was written other than to promote John Shelter. Whom does one have to pay to get this kind of advertising? To say it was a flawed representation of NCRC is a grand understatement. Those of us who have served on the NCRC board are not ‘well-heeled’ as one comment suggests, but a very small group of people who tried to reign in a director who was out of control, pay the debts he incurred, serve our clients to the best of our abilities with a budget that did not exist. Unlike John Shelter, we have chosen not to air all the dirty laundry in public. It serves no one to keep anything less than a positive outlook on the future of NCRC. We hope to rebuild our connections with other organizations and the City of Arcata that were damaged and move forward. Ms. Walters article pointed out to a wider audience what the board of NCRC and most other organizations who tried to deal with Mr. Shelter have known for years…an ego out of control is a bad mix with service to a community in need of help.
Comment / By A Good Start / Jan. 21, 3:02 p.m.
“It serves no one to keep anything less than a positive outlook on the future of NCRC”.
Hence, my point that the NCRC is “well-heeled”.
There’s little “positive” about a national disgrace being dumped onto individual community organizations acting as if they can/should be able to cope.
The irrational quest for “positive” tears apart personal and professional relationships of all kinds.
Boards lack all credibility when they whine about an employee….after a decade of service.
Comment / By mary jane / Jan. 24, 8:28 a.m.
Get a job, John!! One that isn’t off the backs of the poor~ You have lead them to no where. Journal, please quit writing about this guy. Why don’t you name the article John Shelter is looking for a new honey hole, where he can get grant money, community money, any money!! I smell desperate~
Comment / By pujari / Jan. 24, 9:40 a.m.
a lot of non-profits have the 1 % executive directors and the 99% volunteers hoping to get a job. What happens to them?
Comment / By John Shelter / Jan. 24, 6:36 p.m.
Someday we will all be able to live in peace. However, I will no longer just sit back and let people that have not even been around for the last 6 months state I have done something wrong. I did do something wrong I believed in the NCRC. like you said I am not the NCRC the board was. I volunteered for 18 months because I was promised a future helping people with real programs not enabling ones. I volunteered everyday overseeing the centers operations and working with new directions our Social Enterprise that supported the services. While the BOARD was to find funding to pay staff. The Board’s only solution was to have the homeless work to pay my wages. THAT IS NOT OK! I asked the Board to pay me and their response was that they were going to shut down and restructure without me. To add insult to injury it was stated at a board meeting that they had a person who was going to donate $60,000 when I was no longer in charge. I tried to stay silent but I will not let individuals boost on something they have no knowledge of. Now grow up, people need our assistance not for us to fight on who is going to do it. As far as getting a job, I think I did…… I guess we will see if I fail, or better yet why not help me so I dont.
Comment / By Good work, John / Jan. 24, 7:04 p.m.
John, you’re doing right. Don’t waste your time arguing with the internet, there is no end, and half these responses are trolling.
I’m the only member of my immediate family who has not been homeless, and I don’t take that for granted, and we certainly don’t take people like you for granted.
Comment / By pujari / Jan. 25, 9:16 a.m.
Same ole good ole boys and gals on the boreds
Comment / By NOTaTroll / Jan. 25, 10:24 a.m.
“The Idiot’s Guide to Buying a Congressman” coming soon…….2012 pre-election Special Edition now in print.
Comment / By Magdeline Pereira / Jan. 25, 10:51 a.m.
A local property management lackey in Eureka actually told me that they could not rent me an apartment with a garage because I would bring all my relatives from India to live in the garage. All this humiliation because I could no longer afford to own a car. And when I rode my bicycle they spread a rumor that people who ride bicycles have lost their drivers licence due to DUI and not due to the love of fresh air. And when I do not wear a helmet they say it is because I do not work in an Extreme Sports Bar and can’t afford to buy one.
Comment / By Carla Ritter / Today, 8:27 p.m.
I was the Director of the NCRC when it was known as the Arcata Endeavor. During my time there I learned what it is like to work with a Board of Directors that was overwhelmed with the needs they faced every day. A few of them occasionally were able to tolerate ‘volunteering’ at the agency they were supposed to be supporting. One of the biggest difficulties was getting the Board to raise $ to keep the place going.
As a former Director, I can say from experience that it is at least challenging, and at most heart-breaking to have a Board that isn’t supportive.
I’ve known John for years. in fact, I tried to get him to come to work for me when I was there. He has the heart, knowledge and will to make things work. It is unfortunate that there are some in the community so judgmental as to castigate a hard working, good-hearted person just because he speaks out. It takes a strong person to do what he does, every day, day in and day out, with little help. Some call it ego. It looks more like commitment to me. John, thank you for all you have done, and continue to do. I also don’t understand why, in the dead of winter, the current Board has closed the doors to ‘re-organize’. The re-organizing that needs to be done is PAPERWORK!! The day-to-day work of feeding people is done by volunteers, NOT the Board. How can they justify this? There are hungry people that are still asking me why. How do I answer them?
Blessings to the Arcata Presbyterian Church for taking on the responsibility of distributing food boxes again. That’s where the Endeavor started. I hope that’s not where it ends…