It was the hot breath that woke her up, the hot and rotten breath on her neck that enveloped her senses and felt so foreign and wrong.

She couldn't move.

She was stuck in that cheap motel bed with blood all over the sheets, locked in place by fear that she would wake him up, and by the physical pain of the torn tissue in her groin.

She had gone to bed a virgin. Drunk. Fifteen years old and scared. She was still 15 and scared.

That breath.

She had to go. She had to, she had to, she had to. She slid to the floor and crawled to the bathroom. She locked the door.

"I just sat against the door and bled and bled," Arvella Pomani said. "I could hardly move. There was blood all over the place, and I was just crying. I had bruises on my neck from him squeezing so hard. My nails were broken, so I must have tried to fight him. I was really drunk. When I woke up I couldn't move. I can still feel his breath to this day, and it makes me shudder."

Pomani is still in a motel room, but it's a different one.

She lives with her three children in one small room at the Budget Inn in downtown Bismarck. She is a living, breathing, struggling, real-life example of a unique and extraordinarily expensive homelessness problem. It's here. It's happening, even if you don't see it.

Stuck in the system

Thursday was a beautiful morning, and on beautiful mornings Pomani likes to keep the door to her motel room open so the breeze can flow in and chase out the stuffy, stale air.

Her three children, ages 4, 5 and 6, were asleep on one of the two beds in the room. Pomani sat on the edge of the other bed, near the door, looking out at the concrete courtyard. In about an hour or so, 50 people would gather in a gymnasium a few blocks away to discuss her situation. Not hers specifically, but the hurdles facing Pomani and others like her.

Last month, some of those same people announced a plan to end long-term homelessness in Bismarck and Mandan. The long-term homeless, by definition, have been without a home for a year, or have been homeless more than four times in the last three years. They tend to have substance-abuse issues, and are more likely to have a disability. They make up a relatively small part of the general homeless population, but command a tremendous amount of resources.

And Bismarck-Mandan has the highest percentage of long-term homelessness in the state.

Because you don't see them doesn't mean they aren't there. They're in places like the Budget Inn, their worldly possessions pouring out of the cheap furniture, dishes stacked up on the end table, kids asleep because there's nothing else to do.

A point-in-time survey conducted by the North Dakota Coalition for Homeless People in January found 247 homeless people in Region 7, the 10-county zone that includes Burleigh and Morton. Of those, 50 were long-term homeless people. All of them were from Bismarck-Mandan. The coalition estimated that there would be 330 long-term homeless people taking advantage of the programs here this year.

"A lot of them you don't see at all," said Brenda Kriedeman, director of social services for the local chapter of the Salvation Army. "They're in shelters, or they're with family, or they're doubling up in (county-subsidized) housing. They're out there, and it's a big problem. They get all of this assistance, and it's not unusual for it to amount to $5,000 or so in just a couple of months."

The stakeholders in the issue - people like Kriedeman and others from human-services agencies - said the problem could be eradicated in 10 years, if the right people came up with the right ideas right now.

Pomani would love to see something happen soon. She wants to be part of the solution, she said, and no longer a burden on Uncle Sam. That burden is a substantial one. The long-term homeless in Bismarck comprise just 20 percent of the total homeless population in the region, but eat up 40 percent of the resources. Nationally, the numbers are 10 and 50.

Mike Anderson, director of the North Dakota Housing Finance Agency, said at that June kickoff announcement that the long-term homeless are people who get stuck in the system. You'll never end homelessness, he said, but the effects of long-term homelessness can be minimized. It just takes a commitment to change how people attack the issue.

Housing first

It's a novel approach: End homelessness by finding homes for people.

That's just crazy enough to work.

It runs contrary to the traditional approach, however, which has been to straighten up the person first and tackle the homelessness later.

"People look at a case and say, 'This person needs to be sober and then we can help them,'" Mark Heinert, program director for Youthworks, said at Thursday's meeting. "But that's not looking at the right place."

Heinert's agency helps homeless children, and he trotted out a theory many kids first see in high school psychology class. If you look at the base of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, you'll see the foundation of success is entirely basic: Food and shelter.

That is the new tack - called Housing First - being taken by several service agencies across the country. The idea began to gain momentum in 2004, when President Bush appointed an interagency council on homelessness. The council put the word out to the states, and the states began to develop plans.

In North Dakota, Gov. John Hoeven created the state homelessness council in 2005. The state council - the one that conducted the point-in-time survey mentioned above - encouraged cities to create and adopt plans to end long-term homelessness. In addition to Bismarck-Mandan, efforts are under way in Grand Forks, Minot, Devils Lake, Jamestown, Williston, Dickinson and the state's four Indian reservations.

But Fargo got a jump on everyone. That city adopted its plan almost a year ago, and has completed 10 of 37 steps it identified as being necessary to curbing the long-term problem.

Dan Mahli, a member of the Fargo planning department who has been integral in that city's efforts, came to Bismarck a few months ago to help get the steering committee here started. In his back pocket was a copy of Fargo's plan. A key point of the plan was Housing First, working with lenders and landlords to get low-income individuals or families into a dwelling as quickly as possible.

They found that people were more receptive to change or rehabilitation if they were living in their own home.

"It's unacceptable to look away from long-term homelessness," Mahli said. "It costs too much. Shelters aren't a real solution. We spend so much money on these people, but the system we've got in place lets people fall all the way through the cracks to the street, and then we let them stay there. This 10-year plan is a real solution."

A stacked deck

Bismarck doesn't know yet what its plan will be.

It has a plan to have a plan.

Thursday's meeting was the first of four to be held on the topic. It was largely informational, set up to give everyone the same numbers and get them up to speed. At the next meeting, on Aug. 16, the stakeholders will continue to identify the issues facing the long-term homeless here. Then, they will begin to come up with solutions.

"We'll focus on which are the ones we can address," said Sue Redman, Mahli's counterpart in Bismarck. "It'll be a little more difficult meeting next time."

One of the difficulties, in addition to shaping what needs to be done, will be finding ways to pay for it. Mahli said the bottom line on Fargo's program is about $550,000 a year, and the vast majority of that came from funding the city or Fargo-area nonprofit agencies already had. Redman said there likely will be a similar scenario here.

"One of the things everyone talked about a little bit was there aren't a lot of federal dollars out there to do anything," she said. "We'll have to look at creative ways to use the money we already have."

Social service providers aren't the only ones facing a stacked deck.

People like Arvella Pomani have plenty of reasons to give up.

"Saying I've had a terrible life is putting it mildly," she said.

Here are the knocks against her: She's 25 years old, single, with three small children. She was abused in the foster care system, and raped after she ran from it. She said she was continually beat up by the father of her children. Meanwhile, her rapist stalked her. She abuses alcohol. She was busted for marijuana possession a few years ago. She grew up on the Crow Creek Reservation in South Dakota, and her family is still there. She doesn't want contact with them. Her oldest son, Carlos, has major trouble with asthma.

He was in the hospital last winter. She was a student at United Tribes Technical College then, and was living in student housing. The late nights with Carlos - making sure he was still breathing - took her way off course scholastically. She flunked out. No more student, no more student housing.

Pomani has been homeless four times in the last three years. Kriedeman stepped in to help about a month ago, finding funding for the room at the Budget Inn. Pomani got a job at Pizza Hut, and is able to get a discount there to bring food home. A Pizza Hut box was on the floor of her room last week, along with some games the Abused Adult Resource Center donated for the kids. Carlos had medicine everywhere: prednisolone on the table between the beds; Singulair on top of the TV; cefprozil in the fridge; and Pulmicort in a drawer.

He slept on the bed, wheezing. His brother and sister woke up and played a donated video game.

"Have you seen that 'Pursuit of Happyness' movie?" Pomani asked. "That's a good movie. It shows a lot of things that really happen. The only part of that movie I haven't been through is the happiness part. But I'm aiming for it. I don't want to rely on government programs. I want to be on my own."

But it's hard. There are all those knocks.

She hasn't had a drink since June, and is doing well at work. She found a daycare provider for the kids. She thinks she's ready for the world again. But she doesn't know what she'll do without a safety net like the one Kriedeman and others can provide.

"I am scared about what will happen after we get our own place and Brenda is gone," Pomani said. "It's really hard to go through life like this, but it's true. I'm scared about what will happen when no one is around anymore. Brenda has been my angel. Without her kindness, I wouldn't have anything. I wouldn't be here, ready to do this."

She's not alone.

Kriedeman said most long-term homeless people have backgrounds just like Pomani's.

"Those same problems are facing basically 99.9 percent of them," Kriedeman said. "It's just the way it is. All of them are like that, and some of them are worse. These people have had tough lives."

There are three meetings left before the plan is submitted to the city commissions for approval. Each is open to the public. The next one is Aug. 16 at Spirit of Life Church in Mandan. Then it's Sept. 13 at Bis-Man Transit and Oct. 4 at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church. The meetings run from 1 to 5 p.m.

"I'm so excited right now because I see so much help is out there," Kriedeman said. "There's a buzz in the community now, so I hope this will be a positive experience, with a good outcome."

(Reach reporter Tony Spilde at 250-8260 or tony.spilde@bismarcktribune.com.)