H.O.M.E. Word – A blog from Project H.O.M.E.

Kim Covello is a volunteer for Project H.O.M.E. who previously blogged about her experience doing street outreach with Sam Santiago of our Outreach Coordination Center. 

It was Sunday, May 15,and I was driving from my Main Line home into Center City Philadelphia, excited and a little nervous.  I am a 52-year-old retired attorney and suburban mom. I model for QVC and local commercials part-time and am really into health and fitness.  I had pulled my hair back into a ponytail, put on my jeans and sneaks, and picked up four Villanova University students, and was now heading to Broad Street Ministry for three hours of training that would equip us to head out to the streets with over 200 other volunteers in the wee hours of the morning.

I was volunteering with an initiative called the 100,000 Homes Campaign, a national grassroots effort to place America’s most vulnerable, long-term homeless individuals into 100,000 homes by July 2013.  Philadelphia’s participation in the campaign was beginning with a week-long effort of surveying persons who are homeless on the streets.

I was happy to have the company of the students from Villanova.  They had just finished their final exams and had that drawn-out, exhausted look of too many all-nighters in the library. I was touched by their volunteerism.

We arrived at the Ministry that Sunday afternoon, found our teams amongst the crowd of volunteers and settled in for the three-hour training session. Each team was assigned to a specific area of the city and once there, our goal was to survey as many homeless people as we could in two hours, to find out who were the most “vulnerable.” The most “vulnerable,” we found out, were those people “most likely to die on the streets within a year, if they didn’t receive help.”

Once identified, then the City Support Services would have the necessary information to follow up with the individuals surveyed and offer help.  So we looked over the Survey. It contained bullet-type direct questions about the living situation, physical and mental health, and incarceration and military history of the individuals. We received sheets of instructions, including the “Do’s and Don’ts of Surveying” and “Outline of Surveying Shift” which included the requirement that we “Report to the Ministry on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings no later than 4:00 a.m.!” (No emphasis added)

So a few minutes before 4:00 a.m. on Monday morning, I greeted Carol Thomas, our team leader. She and I acknowledged that we knew each other from somewhere…but we come from different worlds, so from where…? It didn’t matter really, I had an instant affinity for Carol.

Carol and Kim prepare to head out to the streets for the survey.

I’m sure she felt like swatting me away at times, but she was so “hip” and gently respectful at the same time. I felt lucky to be part of her team, so I stuck by her side and followed her everywhere. I learned so much from her about engaging people on the street.

That first morning, our team climbed into the van and headed to University City, the area around Penn and Drexel. The streets were dark, chilly, wet with rain, and eerily quiet. Then we saw him, a dark blur seated under cover of a bus stop. Carol, sitting in the front passenger seat, hopped out. I followed her with my clipboard, holding the survey. His name was Markus; he was sleeping in his wheelchair. Carol gently woke him, and he spoke to us in slurred tones at first. I squatted in front of his chair, looking up at him, and began asking the questions on the survey. Markus was a daily heroin user and had been on the streets for ten years. This past winter, he lost the toes on his right foot to frostbite. He told us he spent five days in the hospital when that happened, and then was released to the streets. At first, his parka hood covered most of his face but as we conversed, he started to pull the hood back a little, a small welcome sign into his world. I could see that Markus was a handsome man. Even Carol agreed that he was “nice looking.” After that meeting, Carol and I knew that Markus was most “vulnerable” and needed help to get off the street ASAP.

As part of the survey, we would request a picture so that we could better identify our people and go back out and find them. Markus answered all of our questions honestly but bristled when I asked to take his picture. In the end, he refused. We pushed it as far as we could, but gave him his $5 Wawa card and slowly left him. As I turned my back on this man, in a wheelchair in the dark, rainy bus stop, I felt hollowness in my heart…but Carol said it was a good interview, where we got important information. I felt motivated to find more people and do more surveys. We continued on, in the darkness.

The rain didn’t help our efforts. We circled the corner where the Green Grocer and the McDonalds are located. Members of our team noticed a man with a hoody pulled over his head, slumped in a small booth in McDonalds. The van parked and we all jumped out, pairing up and heading out in different directions. Team members Jasmin and Keesha left to interview the man in McDonalds and I followed Carol over to the Green Grocer. After talking with an African American man in front of the store, Carol grabbed me and we headed over to his red truck to interview his girlfriend.

It was really raining now and my survey papers were getting soaked. So Carol graciously asked if I could sit in the truck with Doris, the girlfriend. I looked at Carol bug-eyed, but she just smiled at me, so I climbed in confidently next to Doris. Doris and her man were obviously living out of this truck for quite some time. There was no available space to place my feet, so I just rested them on the trash heaps on the floor. I ignored my surroundings and began “So Doris, how long have you been homeless?”

We learned that Doris and her man were kicked out of their rooming house not too long ago and that they had no money left because the landlord kept the rent after kicking them out. Doris spoke so fast and eloquently that I was only a little surprised to learn that she had a post-graduate degree. But after the interview, I asked Carol, “What went wrong there? Doris was not a substance abuser and was an educated woman…?” Carol surmised that Doris had some mental health issues that she did not admit to us.

Driving rain greeted us the next morning, which meant it would be even harder to find people who needed help. We drove around for an hour squinting our eyes against the foggy wet view out the van window. We parked near a Wawa, and Carol and I plopped ourselves down on the pavement next to an African American woman who was groaning and prostrate on the ground. She said she was cold and started to get up and walk away from us. Her clothes were filthy and she was in dire need of immediate care, so Carol called for outreach services. Chris from Outreach arrived within minutes and began talking to her, trying to see what services were needed immediately. She told us over and over about her boyfriend who had died. She said she had been on the streets for 23 years and she looked like that was the truth. We pulled away in the van as we saw Chris escort her to the car. We all breathed a sigh of relief, in the belief that she would get some respite at least for one night…

As the dark night yielded to some light of the day, we saw a woman standing alone in the center of a vacant lot, in the rain. Again, I followed Carol out of the van with my clipboard. Stephanie’s only protection against the rain was a little blue sweatshirt, so I pulled an umbrella from my bag and held it over her as Carol spoke. Stephanie was suffering from alcohol withdrawal, shaking from head to toe. She was a 45-year-old white woman who had graduated from a Catholic high school. Stephanie was in the throes of a psychotic episode and in between her ramblings about “the rats eating the dogs and then the cats,” she returned to reality and answered our questions clearly. When she spoke to us, she looked through us with the most amazingly beautiful blue eyes…

Carol and I were relieved when Stephanie agreed to go to the emergency room of the closest hospital. When Carol tried to direct us to a shortcut to Presbyterian Hospital’s ER, Stephanie refused and stayed the course on the sidewalk – she knew where she was going, despite her condition. We no sooner checked her into admissions than they were calling her name to take her away.

But Stephanie has remained with me; she has been my companion in my thoughts and in my soul, since that night…she drives me with the desire to do more…more stories, more outreach, just more…

Jordan Iman-Washington and Tynisha Reid

Jordan Iman-Washington and Tynisha Reid are two high school students active in the teen program at Project H.O.M.E.’s Honickman Learning Center and Comcast Technology Labs. Jordan has been attending the HLC-CTL since 2009. Tynisha is a 9th-grade student involved in the Culinary Arts Program.

On Thursday, May 5, 2011, Project H.O.M.E’s Honickman Learning Center and Comcast Technology Labs (HLC-CTL) held their annual Teen Program Showcase. This Showcase gives the teens a chance to reveal their talents and show them off to staff, peers, and parents. There are a variety of classes offered at the HLC-CTL, including acting, film, Junior Music Executive, mock trial, culinary arts, and digital connectors. Students from these various classes worked on personal or group projects and revealed them for the first time at the Showcase.

“The importance of the Showcase is to exhibit to the parents the students’ progress,” says Jeffery Bond, manage of the Teen Program at the HLC-CTL. “If we are to be successful in our mission in having the kids receive post-secondary education, we need to partner with the parents, and the Showcase is a great way to do so.”

While many students performed at last week’s Showcase, the one presentation that seemed to have sparked everyone’s interest was the acting class’s rendition of “The Dating Game.” Honickman Learning Center students KhaVaughn Love, Nicholas Molten, Tyreek Elum, Daquan Richardson, and Aisha Sisco performed the hilarious skit, along with class instructor Mr. Larry McKenna. The acting class, which is held every Tuesday from 4:00-6:00 p.m., wrote the original skit.

An additional highlight for the night was Chef Chiwishi’s culinary arts class. During the ten-week cooking course, the culinary arts class studied the history of Caribbean food. Students learned the recipes and spices used to make some of the Caribbean’s most famous dishes such as jerk chicken and limeade, which they served to all of the guests during the Showcase.

We invite everyone who came to our last Showcase to join us at our next one on June 8 from 6:00-8:00 p.m. at the Center. You are free to bring new guests to the Showcase. The theme of at our next Showcase is “SEED OF SUCCESS,” and each class will make a presentation that incorporates the theme of growing. The Honickman Learning Center and Comcast Technology Labs are located at 1935 N. Judson Street in Philadelphia.

Rosie Dillon is a Haverford House Fellow who works with Project H.O.M.E.’s Employment Services program. 

My mom was my home. She was my roots, my role model, my protector, my friend. She was the bearer of truly unconditional love in my life. When I lost my mom seven months ago, I was set adrift in the world with nothing to anchor me. I came back to work at Project H.O.M.E. because I didn’t know what else to do, and because I knew that my mom had been proud of the life I was embarking on.

At first, I just muddled through. Sometimes I cried in stairwells or bathrooms. Often I was numb. Then someone pointed out to me that if you cry at Project H.O.M.E., if you are having a rough day, if your gratitude at the Thanksgiving Day service is tempered by sorrow—people will understand, and you won’t be alone. Over time, I came to need my work, and not just for income or to fill my time.

We all know the rhetoric of recovery, but what I found was more than that.

Wendy Dillon, Rosie's mother, was captured in this newspaper photograph showing her fighting spirit.

A woman known to our community as “the maestro” played me Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”, a song my mom had chosen for her memorial service. One woman told me: “I stopped drinking so that I would never have to go back to A.A. and hear all those people talk about how blessed they are.” Her irreverent sense of humor in hard times reminded me of my mom’s attitude toward her breast cancer support group, and really, toward life in general. My first trip to a hospital after my mom’s passing was to visit a Project H.O.M.E. resident. It was awful to be inside hospital walls and to see someone once full of life so diminished. But I remembered that she had found me crying in my office one day and comforted me. A woman about my age told me that the piece of myself that I lost will not be replaced, that the hole will never be filled. What a relief to know that I did not have to try to be healed.

Their resilience taught me, not that there would be an end to my sadness, but that there would be more to my life than sadness. The strength of others, starting with my mom, was the only proof I had that humans could survive and surpass terrible things. James Baldwin wrote: “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.” The people that I met at Project H.O.M.E.—not just those who live there, but everyone—became my connection with all the people who had ever been alive and, by extension, had ever experienced heartbreak.

Of course, not all are equally put upon by pain. The inequalities of circumstance are obvious. It is easy to say that we cannot understand or share each others’ struggles, that our lives are just too different. This is why it is truly visionary to understand that, in Sister Mary’s words, “We can no longer pass by and piously say, ‘There but for the grace of God go I’ – but rather ‘There go I.’ ”

I found in this understanding a home that encompasses but transcends both my mother and the Project H.O.M.E. community. Because we are interconnected, the refuge that I have given and received and the human connections that I have made remain, no matter what tomorrow brings.

Will O'Brien

Will O’Brien

has been part of the Project H.O.M.E. community for over twenty years.  He is editor and coordinator of “H.O.M.E. Word.”

Awhile back, I was asked to speak to a group of college students about the work of Project H.O.M.E. and the crisis of homelessness.  Joining with me in the talk, to share his personal testimony, was one of our alumni, who after years living at one of our residences, is now on his own, working and contributing.  After the talk I drove him back to his home.  In the flow of our conversation he talked about how now that he was working a legitimate job, he was making more money than he ever had, and certainly more than he needed.  In the spirit of “giving back,” he shared that he recently helped one of our current residents by paying his monthly rent for him, because that resident was going through tough times but didn’t want to lose his housing.

A couple of weeks earlier, one of our former residents stopped by my office, as he does on occasion.  We have known him since our earliest days, and he had been through the ringer many times.  Even now his housing was tenuous, and he was living with a fatal disease.  On this visit, he was laden with several large shopping bags.  He had come into some money, and went on a shopping splurge at our thrift store, Our Daily Threads.  He took his various purchases out of the bags to show me, with evident pride at his fabulous bargains.  “Guess what this pair of pants would cost you in the store?  Forty bucks.  I got it for two bucks.  And look – it’s as good as new.”  But none of it – the pairs of pants, sweaters, jackets, all, as he insisted, in great shape – was for him.  He had bought it all for the guys who lived in the residence with him.  All like him on severely limited incomes, possibly on the brink of returning to the streets.  “I don’t need much myself, and I got plenty.  But the guys will appreciate these.”

I also think of another long-time member of our community, who came into our first shelters twenty years ago.  He too is living on his own now, but poor health and years on the streets have taken their toll.  Not even fifty, he walks haltingly with a cane.  Practically as long as I have known him, he has taken a portion of his meager disability check to sponsor a poor child in a developing country.  At one point, he had relapsed and was back on the streets, but when he restabilized, he immediately restarted the sponsorship.  He usually carries a photo of his child with him and is glad to talk about him.

At Project H.O.M.E. our work, like that of many nonprofit organizations, is enabled in large part by what is traditionally called “charity.”  We use the word to describe the act of voluntarily making a gift of a portion of our assets to support a cause or to help persons in need.  And we are exceedingly grateful for and amazed by the generosity of the thousands of charitable donors, whose gifts, small and large, come to us each day.

My experience of being part of Project H.O.M.E. for many years has given me cause to reflect on this business of charity and generosity.  One paradigm of charity presumes it is those persons with means who share with “the less fortunate.”  But I have been challenged as I have witnessed remarkable generosity by our residents, those who have known utter destitution or who live on extremely modest means.  I see them sharing their resources, however slim, with an astonishing ease, without counting or calculation, without ego or need for accolade.  They have “been there.”  And they know others are still there.

For some persons, certainly, the struggle for survival can create a hardness, a close-to-the-bone instinct of grasping and hoarding.  But for others, that same struggle seems to have birthed a very different response, a radical freedom that includes an amazing spirit of generosity.

Perhaps we need a larger vision of charity and generosity.  I am coming to believe they mean more than the discrete acts of gifts or donations.  What I have learned from our residents is a kind of generosity that is a fundamental orientation of our lives toward empathy and solidarity.  It embraces the truth of our own struggles and connects it to the struggles of sisters and brothers.  The sharing of resources is a free and natural instinct, one expression of this deep empathy.  And this empathy, I am convinced, makes us more truly human.