Are Shelters the Newest Yelp Category?

Homeless need Information about Where to go for Help
Currant.com, 10/21/2007

Brenda sits on a street corner while her partner, Noel, is off convincing South Green shopkeepers to let him wash windows for money. If he's successful, they'll live large tonight, maybe get some beer (for him) or soda (for her).

Recently, some members of the American Bar Association in Washington listened to University of Connecticut law professor Robert Whitman talk about people like Brenda. Whitman has never met Brenda, but as an advocate for therapeutic homes for mental health and addiction recovery, Whitman wants to start a national database of services for people who are homeless. Someone like Brenda could go to her local library, type in her zip code, and get up-to-date information on services, including phone numbers and hours.

People who are experiencing homelessness know how to use the internts just like you and I. Some have laptops that they charge and use in public spaces while others use the library computers to check email and surf the web. This innovative idea of creating a national database could help some of these individuals find the services that they need but my question is how much of an impact will the website have on service delivery? I haven't read any research and don't have hard numbers but I imagine that many people know where the services are, and if they don't know their friendly local outreach worker would be happy to tell them. My guess is that many people who are not accessing services have had bad experiences and may be hesitant to trust them again. So, while I think that this is an awesome effort, I think that it will end up being more of a tool for outreach workers and shelter staff than for those actually living on the streets. I'm curious to see how things develop.

Keeping it Real

Chronilcing the Invisible: A Photo Essay about Ottawa's Homeless
The Charlatan, 10/25/2007What it's Like to be Homeless in Wrexham
Evening Leader, 10/25/2007

WHEN James Graves collected his degree in electrical engineering, he didn't imagine that 10 years later he would be homeless, living rough on Wrexham's streets and having to get himself arrested to get a bed for the night.

The place he calls his bed is fraught with danger. If it isn't the fear of who might be lurking, it is the needles that litter the ground around where he lays his blanket. At night it is pitch black and damp, cold and noisy.

Even as someone who thinks about homelessness on a daily basis, I have never once thought about where I would sleep if I found myself homeless. I once had a conversation with a couple outreach workers about what time of day is best to sleep. While I said that I'd be more likely to sleep during the day, because there are more people around. They said that there more people means you're more likely to get robbed or harassed. While my heart goes out to those who face this decision every night, I'm certainly glad that it's one that I may never need to face.

Kids Can Help

Winslow Students Working to Help Homeless
Morning Sentential, 10/23/2007

Last year Kendra Littlefield's community-based learning students at Winslow High School were one of 10 national winners of a USA Weekend magazine Make a Difference Day award.

This week they are up to another good deed.

"Raising the Roof Over the Homeless" is the theme for the chem-free dance students have been organizing for the last two months, Winslow High senior Melanie Gagnon said.

St Brenden School Students Prepare Packages for the Homeless
The Providence Journal 10/23/2007

Middle school students from the St. Brendan School, a pre-kindergarten to grade eight private school in Riverside, could say that after preparing 150 sandwiches and other snacks for the state’s homeless Friday afternoon. The bag lunch was paired with personal hygiene items and socks — which were collected by the school’s lower grade students — to make it an all-school project.

Principal Joseph Renzulli said the school got the idea from a St. Brendan parishioner, Anne Pari, of East Providence. She delivers food to the homeless every Friday and Renzulli agreed the school would take over her duties one Friday.

They titled the project “Bread Lines.”

Highschool Helps Homeless
Lakeshore Advance, 10/24/2007

South Huron District High School student, Taryn Anstett handed Trevor Johnson of the Youth Action Centre (YAC) in London $365 for the centre during a presentation on homeless youth at the high school last week.
The students were told to act as lobby groups for a law project and made their primary focus of the campaign, awareness of homelessness. They went above and beyond and started by collecting pocket change from students and teachers over two days, raising the money for homeless youth. “The response was incredible,” says Anstett.

Nine Year Old to Walk to Tally For Homeless
Tampa Bay's 10, 10/22/2007

In the past three years, Zach Bonner has collected supplies for Hurricane Charley victims, raised money for the “Teaching Tools Hillsborough Schools” program, organized a holiday party for kids displaced by Katrina and given away more than 750 backpacks for needy kids.

For his efforts, President Bush last year presented Zach with a volunteer service award. But the 9-year old is not slowing down, he’s just moving on to his next big project.

There is another article that I have saved and want to write about but the sudden flurry of youth and schools working to help people experiencing homelessness deserves some attention. Service learning is a valuable tool for all kinds of social issues and is a fantastic way to bring classroom subjects to real life. I wish that I had an opportunity to participate in projects like these when I was in school but alas, in the 90s it was all about HIV and DARE, subjects that would be a little more risque to develop service learning projects around.

Edit: A couple more...
Virginia Run Students walk for Homelessness
Students Collect Pennies for the Homeless

Hunters Helping the Hungry

Hunters Helping the Hungry

Hunters Helping the Hungry is a program that enables hunters to donate venison, providing high quality protein to needy individuals throughout New Jersey. In its fifth year, will continue to operate with limited funding. Therefore hunters wishing to donate deer must also donate a minimum of $25 towards the $65 fee charged by participating butchers. Hunters Helping the Hungry is now a 501-C3 Corporation, and all donations are tax deductible.

Nighttime Rounds with Health Care for the Homeless: The Outreach Van

After we met with several patients the Pine Street Inn outreach van arrived. Jim wrapped things up inside and grabbed our coats. It's currently a mild fall in Massachusetts and although it wasn't very cold the skies threatened to storm so I yanked my two sizes two big pullover on, just in case.

I've been out in an outreach van before but the van I'm used to is nothing like this. Inside there were several boxes, one full of blankets and one full of socks. When you opened the back doors there was a cooler filled with sandwiches, fruit, dry soup, hot chocolate, and two water dispensers, one hot and one cold. The van I'm used to plays more of a shuttle service role, is lucky to have socks to distribute, and giving out food is against program policy (because of health concerns, not because it's a cheap program).

We drove down Commonwealth Avenue, on the mall. I have walked the mall dozens of times, during the day and in the early evening hours, but I had never seen someone who presented as a homeless person there. That night I saw how many people really do call the Commonwealth Mall home. There was a variety of people, from an older men who needed to have an injured jaw taken care of to a young guy in a suit.

Outreach runs continue to be engaging, dare I use the word "fun", experiences for me. Everyone was appreciative of what we had to offer, even though it was only a light meal and some human contact. The staff that I talk with are interesting and passionate about their work and those who aren't are often burnt out and need a vacation that this field doesn't allow them to afford. The only thing that worries me is that the shock of seeing how people on the streets are forced to live is starting to wear off.

Nightime Rounds with Health Care for the Homeless: The Night Center

This past Wednesday I had the opportunity to go out for rounds with Jim O'Connell, the founder and president of Boston Health Care for the Homeless. While Dr O'Connell is one of the most humble and down to earth people you could ever meet he's a big wig in the health care for the homeless world and an opportunity to shadow him for the evening was a big deal.

The evening began at The Boston Night Center, one of the many Pine Street Inn programs. The Night Center was a new concept for me, it's an overnight drop in center. The center serves meals, has a tv, and space hang out. An overnight drop in center is the lowest of low threshold services; residents are able to go in and out as they please, they're allowed to be inebriated, and they do not need to accept any services. Because it is not a shelter there are no beds but clients can sleep on the floor and, two nights a week, receive medical services.

Jim brought a backpack full of medical gadgets with him, which included a thermometer, a bracelet-type gadget that takes blood pressure, something that goes on your finger that does something too technical for me, and the classic stethoscope and prescription pad. We saw four different patients, wrote one prescription, scheduled two follow-up visits at the clinic, and gave one person a phone number to call for test results. This was in the span of about an hour in a bustling room full of people.

Somehow Dr O'Connell made the space his own as he listened about the fractured ankle that wouldn't heal because the client couldn't walk with a cast, "How am I supposed to get around? I'm homeless." Clients who are homeless aren't always the easiest people to get along with, often life has gotten the best of them and sometimes that leaves them bitter and snarky. But the snark didn't matter, Jim still listened carefully and examined his patients with the same care one would expect in a hospital room, not in a homeless shelter.

Health Care for the Homeless is not unique to Massachusetts, there is actually a National Health Care for the Homeless Council that stemmed out of a 19 site demonstration project that is now 95 organizations strong. Not all Health Care for the Homeless Services are delivered like what I witnessed tonight, or what I experienced with Jill earlier this fall. The shelter I volunteer in actually also has a health care for the homeless component; there is a clinic on site where health care services are delivered. This isn't quite as exciting as health care on the streets but it still is an important concept; clients are able to meet their health care providers where they already are. Wouldn't it be nice if our doctors held clinics in our workplaces? Homeless services are onto something!

Highlighted Blog

I recently ran across Sans Houses on blogger. She's a photographer who photographs homeless individuals and posts the photos with audio clips. The photos are often haunting and the audio clips bring them to life. She's not a frequent poster but when she does post it is worth the wait!

Empathy vs Sympathy-- Do "Box Cities" Really Work?

Overnight 'box city' will help homeless
Post Bulletin 10/06/07

Cardboard Box City -- the annual overnight event that raises money to help organizations serving Rochester's homeless families and individuals -- will be Oct. 19.

Participants will spend the night in cardboard boxes and tents in a temporary city that will be created at Soldier's Field.

Event helps kids empathize with homeless
Strauss News 10/04/07

Box City ’07 is an event for high schoolers that gives them a chance to experience an aspect of homelessness. The children who participate will sleep in a box on the Sussex County fairgrounds for a night to get a sense of what it’s like for people who sleep that way every night.

Interfaith Hospitality Network (IHN), a nonprofit program providing emergency shelter to homeless families, hosts the “experiential event” for high school youth to promote homelessness awareness. Participants are given a light supper, engage in learning activities and replicate the actual experience of being homeless by sleeping outside in a cardboard box.

Is there anyone else out there that thinks that this fundraising strategy makes a mockery of what individuals experiencing homelessness face every day? For starters, a lot of the homeless people I know or see don't have cardboard boxes, they have tents or nothing. They don't get cozy sleeping bags and footie pajamas.

I understand what these groups are tying to do, they are trying to be able to take the kids from "Wow, that sounds like it really stinks" to "I tried that for one night and it totally sucked. I feel your pain brother." But neither of the events above mention that there will be any "real live" homeless people there to answer questions and interact with the kids. To the participants, it is a giant sleepover. If you want to raise awareness take them to a soup kitchen just a couple at a time, not in a big pack, so they blend in with the regulars and feel what that first trip to the soup kitchen must feel like. Or, better yet, have them help work the soup kitchen for a few weeks. If you want people to even begin to comprehend what homeless individuals experience you need them to interact with homeless individuals. You can camp out in boxes all you want but you aren't going to change someone's view of homelessness until they meet that homeless individual who looks just like their grandfather or who has a heart wrenching story to tell.