Name: Anne M. Nolan
Position: President of Travelers Aid in Rhode Island
Rhode Island's Market Has Changed. Developers, Builders, Investors and Sellers Must Change With It.
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Background: Before joining Travelers Aid in January, Nolan worked as an organizational development consultant. She previously worked as vice president of business administration at Fluor Daniel GTI near Boston and in Fleet’s human resources and organizational development department. Nolan was also a visiting professor with the University of Massachusetts system.
Education: Doctorate in educational administration from the University of Illinois, master’s in counseling/psychology from McGill University in Montreal and bachelor’s in psychology from Westfield (Mass.) State College
Age: 53 Family: Single Residence: Cumberland
Travelers Aid in Rhode Island was founded more than 100 years ago by the YWCA. The Y set up a desk at the train station in Providence to offer advice to women who came to the big city to start a new life, but found little opportunity for work. Over the last 15 years – under the direction of Marion Avarista – Travelers Aid became a comprehensive services program for the homeless. The organization moved to its downtown location on Union Street in 1994. In the next year, Travelers Aid plans to sell its building and move to the YMCA building. In January, Nolan replaced Avarista, who retired.
PBN: What is the mission of Travelers Aid?
NOLAN: It’s to provide essential life services to the homeless and the disconnected of Rhode Island. We provide everything but shelter. We do crisis intervention, case management, emergency assistance – whether it’s bus fare or food – we help find housing for people, we provide social work support and have a full health care clinic for the homeless. We have a full-time nursing staff and a part-time medical director, who is a physician. We have 60 volunteer physicians and dentists, which is wonderful. We also go from shelter to shelter at night with the medical team. We also have one of the only free dental programs for adults in the state. Travelers Aid has education and job training programs here, from adult basic education to English as a second language. We have several job training classes, including a certified nurses programs. We also have a program called “First Day of Spring,” which is a landscaping program. Travelers Aid runs five, 24-hour a day hotlines here. The hotlines range from offering information and referrals to a runaway youth hot line. We also have almost 70 units for our two-year transitional living program. We put homeless people in them for two years and surround them with education, job training, social work support and day care. We get them on their feet. All the units are booked.
How big is the homeless population in Rhode Island? What are some of the factors that left people without a home?
We know about 4,500 people stayed in shelters last year. We also know the homeless population is significantly higher than just people who stay in shelters. There are a lot of homeless people who stay with friends and family, floating from place to place. There are a lot of homeless people who live in cars and under bridges. We know the number of homeless people will be dramatically higher this year than last year. We are seeing signs of it all of the time. The preceding good economy actually raised the rents and housing prices to the extent that the people at the bottom got pushed out. So people who would normally afford low-income housing can’t afford it because landlords can get a lot more. We see that repeatedly here. We have seen the number of homeless families we have dealt with this year double since last year. We have had 78 different families sleeping on the floor here because all the shelters are filled.
How many people use the services of Travelers Aid?On our hot lines we handle 40,000 people a year. In terms of clients that we see, there are about 1,000 people who come through here on a daily basis.
What do you think the biggest misconception is concerning the homeless?
The biggest misconception is that it’s their fault. I think people have a tendency to blame homeless people for being homeless.
Is Travelers Aid national?Travelers Aid Society is a national organization, but we have a really loose relationship with the national group. When most people think of Travelers Aid they think of a desk at a bus terminal and you help people who are lost get to the next location. There are a few other Travelers Aids like ours in the United States that offer comprehensive services to the homeless.
Most people don’t know what Travelers Aid does and I don’t think the name helps. Do you think a name change is needed to clearly define the mission of Travelers Aid here?
Get in line. One of the first weeks I was here I got a call from somebody who wanted to make flight reservations for their staff. I said, ‘Excuse me?’ Then I told them that it’s not that kind of traveler’s aid. Changing the name is not a possibility. We provide so many services to the homeless, but most people have no clue what we do. The notion of the traveler is a beautiful notion talking about all of us traveling through life. Sometimes people hit rocky points on the road. We are here to help those people who hit the rocky points. We are all travelers. These are just travelers who are at a bad time.
How active is the business community in your career and education programs? We have started a program to train people to work as cleaning staff in hotels. The Marriott has been helpful with this. There is a lot more opportunity with us to partner with local businesses. We are in the middle of a capital campaign. Travelers Aid owns this building, which is at the heart of the area to be renovated downtown. The plan is in place for us to move to the YMCA, and the Y will move to a new facility. One of the things moving to the Y will allow us to do, along with dramatically expanding our health care facilities, is to bring in other training programs that we can’t offer here because of space. One of the programs we are interested in is a printing program, teaching clients to work at places like Kinko’s. I don’t think we have reached out to the business community as much as we could.
Are there people in the workforce who are homeless and, if so, do you think their employers know it? Absolutely. There is what we call the working poor. There are people who are in minimum wage or greater than minimum wage jobs that have families to support, who are homeless. One day I came in and there was a woman sitting alone in the family room with her three daughters. The woman was crying. Her story was moving. She is a single mom who had a job as a certified nurse’s assistant with good pay. Her landlord raised her rent so high that she couldn’t afford to have three kids and pay the rent. She moved in with her mom and dad, who had a two-bedroom house. She stayed there a month but it became overwhelming because it was so small. She ended up moving from family to family. She was homeless for five months before we met her. In the process, two of her girls dropped out of school, because they moved so much. She also lost her job because she had to take care of the girls. So we had a woman making a decent wage, who came from a good family, then, because she couldn’t afford the rent, her whole life went spiraling down. So, she ends up on the floor of Travelers Aid. She looked at me and said, ‘I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m not on drugs, I’m not an alcoholic, I’ve never been to jailIt’s not my fault.’
Do you think an employer could even guess what is going on with these families? We get so isolated in our own little lives that we don’t recognize the difficulty people are having at the lower end of the salary range. I think most people would be shocked to find out some of these stories.
How is the sale of your building going? We have a developer who is very interested in buying it. We haven’t finalized anything yet, but we are hopeful. This building is at the core of the whole block, so when Travelers Aid leaves they will be able to renovate the whole block. For the most part, the block is abandoned buildings.
What is the biggest reason for your decision to move? Is it because of pressures to develop this neighborhood? That is a misconception. We are not being forced out. The building is in disrepair and it needs a major renovation. It’s just a terrible environment for us. That’s the reason we want to move. Also, we need more room. We’re not being forced.
What are the benefits to moving to the YMCA building?The space. It allows us to quadruple our medical clinic. It allows us to put in a professional kitchen. Right now we operate out of a tiny kitchen, which last year we served about 40,000 small meals from. The tower residence at the YMCA of 178 single-occupancy rooms makes sense for Travelers Aid to run. We can provide social work support to those people. The Y building is also not that far away from our current location.
When do you think you will move to the new location?It can’t be soon enough. Construction will take us about a year, so it will depend on when we start and when the Y will be able to move.
Where do you get your funding? A variety of sources: federal, state and some city money. We also get donations. Like all social services agencies and non-profits we are hurting for donations right now. With the events of the world…money and energy has gone into that that would normally go into local agencies. We are always in need of contributions.
Do you have any regrets about leaving corporate life for a nonprofit? It’s the most wonderful thing I’ve ever done in my life. Of course, I miss fancy offices and a good salary, but I have cried so often in this job for such wonderful reasons. I never cried for wonderful reasons in corporate. I love it. It doesn’t feel like work. I realized that the reason they have to pay people so much to work at big corporations is because they wouldn’t stay otherwise. The reason we pay people so little in social service agencies is because so much of what they make is with their heart.
(Photo by Brian McDonald)
