Fernwood sounds so pleasant, but ...

THE RESIDENTS OF Fernwood are different from you and me.

We live in a permanent home. They live in a city shelter.

Maybe it happened to them - losing a job in a stalled economy. Maybe it happened by them - getting strung out on drugs or booze.

Now straight and sober (it is hoped), 66 men are looking for a way out while living in the shelter named Fernwood - but the computer's broken, there's a gnat infestation in the bathroom and during the brutal heat wave there was no air-conditioning in one of the three dorms.

If you are a resident, you call the shelter hotline, reach out to politicians and city agencies, but the homeless are low priority. So David Donovan, 39, turned to me.

A native of Morton, Delaware County, for seven months he's lived in Fernwood, not far from Cottman Avenue. He landed there after a halfway house that followed drug rehab. Earlier he did six months in the slammer for forgery, cashing stolen checks and possession of heroin.

An ex-offender - he was a user for a decade - getting hooked after becoming addicted to Percoset following an injury. The heroin was a high - until it wrecked his marriage (his wife was also an addict), they lost custody of their two sons and then their house. Until he's on his feet, the court bars Donovan from his sons. He accepts that. He did it to himself.

Donovan tells me about this in addition to the problems at Fernwood.

I take the complaints to Marie Nahikian, director of the city Office of Supportive Housing, who says she'll check and get back to me - and does, the next day.

We speak for a while and I ask to take a tour of Fernwood.

She agrees without hesitation.

After the guard station, I see a series of one-story, red brick cottages, as they are called, surrounded by lawns and trees. Fernwood has an elementary school vibe to it.

Fernwood Director Julius Jackson says it was built in the 1950s as a nursing home, and while the cottages' tile walls and floors give it an institutional feel, everything's clean and smells fresh.

"Maybe it's a coincidence," Donovan says, but a lot of scrubbing and cleaning followed my appointment to visit. No surprise there.

One of 21 city shelters, Fernwood houses men from ages 18 to 84, mostly African-American and low-income.

"Residents have all kinds of challenges," says Nahikian. No surprise there.

The dorm area is divided into pods, usually sleeping four men. It's spartan, midway between a jail and a military academy, with each man having a single bed, a three-drawer wood dresser, a couple of lockers. Men aren't piled like firewood.

Donovan had complained his dorm was so hot he wasn't able to get more than four hours of sleep each night, which made it hard for him to function during the day when he was either in classes or looking for work.

This is my visit last Friday: A contractor is installing a new central air conditioner because the old one was beyond repair. The bathroom is gnat free and Jackson tells me exterminators make weekly visits.

The donated computer - vital for men seeking jobs - is knocked out, but Jackson has a few in reserve. They will be hooked up once the IT guys set up a firewall to keep outsiders from breaking into the Fernwood site and also (he doesn't say) to prevent residents from viewing inappropriate material.

There are rules, restrictions.

Drug use will get you bounced. One resident was discharged last week, Jackson says, for smoking pot outdoors.

If a resident is employed, 15 percent of his paycheck is taken for shelter costs and 60 percent is put in a savings account he can't access until he leaves the shelter.

"You have to force savings on this population or they won't do it," says Leticia Egea-Hinton, deputy director of the Office of Supportive Housing. Sometimes good habits have to be force fed.

"I'm a recovering addict," says Donovan. "They can't make the rules tough enough."

A cabinet-maker, he's looking for "anything that will pay and get me out," so he can rebuild his life and see his sons again.

Getting the air-conditioning fixed and the gnats removed was not hard.

Getting Donovan started on a new life will be. If you have a job for him, let me know.

Phone: 215-854-5977

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