RICHMOND – Virginia’s budget crisis has torn a hole in the safety net. Almost $1 million in state funding for services for homeless Virginians has fallen through the rip.

Among the programs cut:

• The shelter expansion program, which provides grants for new construction, expansion or rehabilitation of emergency shelter and transitional housing facilities.
• The homeless intervention program, which provides grants to nonprofits and local governments that in turn give money to persons facing homelessness. Funds can be used for temporary mortgage or rental assistance, security deposits and housing counseling.
• Child services coordinator grants, money to shelters to provide services to families with children.
• The child care for homeless children program, grants that aid homeless families with the cost of child care while the parent works, participates in a training program or seeks work.
• The homelessness intervention program stands to lose $191,000 of an allocated $300,000. The child services coordinator will lose $50,000, and the shelter expansion program will lose $343,900.

"These are the first major cuts that we’ve taken from the state," said Sue Capers, coordinator for public policy at the Virginia Coalition for the Homeless. "We had hoped they would hold homelessness harmless."

The General Assembly enacted the cuts while restoring funding for the Department of Motor Vehicles.

"It’s one thing to make people stand in line longer at DMV," Capers said. But she added: "Across the board cuts are not fair because some things really can mean the difference between life and death; they’re not all equal. What would we give up if we had to make a budget cut? We certainly wouldn’t cut our home."

Capers said the projected cuts for homeless services for 2003-2004 originally totaled $1.4 million. But the budget conference committee restored half a million dollars during the last week of the legislative session.

Despite the restoration, homeless-services providers must now work with $900,000 less than they had last year during a time of increasing demand, Capers said.

"It’s a really dismal outlook, and it’s worse next year," she said. "We’re not meeting the needs of people already. That’s what makes this so, so difficult."

For example, Capers said that 20,000 people who requested shelter were turned away because of lack of beds last year in Virginia. During that time, the Department of Housing and Community Development reported 50,844 requests for shelter.

Children under 18 make up a third of all homeless-shelter residents and the average age of a homeless person is nine years old.

Nationally, women and children represent the fastest-growing segment of the homeless population and make up nearly 40 percent of the total, according to figures from the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty.

Capers said that homelessness has been on the rise in the last few years.

"One of the most astounding figures -- and I think the saddest -- is the number of people living in shelters who have jobs. And that’s the majority," she said.

Homelessness occurs because of the gap between wages and housing costs, she said.

Education and better jobs would help solve homelessness, Capers said, but "we also need to value the work they do now. We need to pay them at least a decent wage so they can meet their basic needs. A loaf of bread costs the same for all of us."

Christ House in Alexandria, the homeless shelter for men operated by Catholic Charities of the Arlington Diocese, receives $14,400 per year as part of a state shelter grant. It’s unclear at this time whether that grant will be impacted by the state cuts.

As director of Fauquier Family Services, Bruce Jamison said his shelter and its related programs will suffer from each of the areas cut.

"I look at all government funding at various levels as at great jeopardy," he said. "Inevitably, if we have a serious revenue shortfall, we’re going to have to selectively cut back services."

For example, Jamison estimated that children make up roughly 40 percent of shelter residents.

Cuts in the child-services coordinator grants will eliminate many of the programs that, as Jamison puts it, "make the life of a homeless child more normal."

That includes activities such as kite flying, going to the movies or the zoo, or self-esteem counseling. The coordinator also makes sure that the children’s educational, health and mental health needs are met.

"We think it’s so important," he said. "If we lose part or all of that grant funding, it puts us under a great strain."

Jamison said in October, working parents at the shelter lost child care grants, which provide them with a subsidy to pay for child care.

Jamison said he hopes homeless parents will qualify for a similar program from the Department of Social Services called the fee system.

The shelter has also been affected by the loss of shelter expansion funds and cannot complete a planned expansion.

In its third year, the shelter is already running at capacity. Last year it turned away 18 percent of eligible applicants because of lack of beds.

"We saw a rising demand even when the economy was better," Jamison said. That’s because economic expansion was "broad but thin," and created large numbers of the "working poor," particularly in service-related jobs.

"Many adults work," he said, but "they’re not making enough to afford housing in this community."