He was huddled on the outside the closed gas stationed in the pouring rain with no coat and only a thin blanket to cover him. The temperature was in the low 30's but with the wind, it felt much colder. When I approached him he appeared scared and turned away. I have been here before, but his is a face I don't recognize. I never did get his name. He would not tell me. I offered to get him to an emergency shelter and he shook his head "no". Finally, when I asked him if I could get him something to eat he responded in the affirmative. I took him to the Waffle House where he gorged himself on pancakes and coffee. With the blanket off of him, I could see how thin he was. Very thin and soaked to the core. He left a trail of water from the door of the diner to his seat. They don't usually let him in, because he usually has no money to buy food. After he ate, he left the Waffle House and I followed him out. I asked where he would sleep tonight and he shrugged and started to walk away. I gave him my business card and asked him to call me. He did not respond. He walked away in the pouring rain heading toward downtown OKC.
This is one of the people I met last night in the cold rain at a busy intersection off of I-40. I cheated last night. Part of the challenge of the week on the streets was not to purchase anything, but I brought a credit card in case of an emergency. This boy was hungry. It was an emergency. This story is not unique. It happens on a daily basis in our city. We see this all of the time when we are doing street outreach. People alone, cold and hungry and not connected with services. Emon Chavers, our Outreach Program Coordinator will tell you that successful outreach requires that we build trusting relationships with the people we serve. Many of them have been abandoned and forgotton. They have had their trust violated in the past by people that were charged with caring for them. Regaining that trust is vital to success and difficult to establish.
There are some people that we have worked with for years and we are just now at a point where they are open to us helping. Street outreach is about developing trusting relationships for the long haul. There is another individual living out at the same intersection that we have been working with for almost 4 years. We will call him Frank. Frank has been sleeping under a bridge for the past 2 years. Prior to that he was sleeping in a tent behind a truck stop. Frank is in a relationship with a woman who is a commercial sex worker; a prostitute. The money she receives in exchange for sex and the money he gets from panhandling is what they live on. Never enough to get off the streets. Again, we have been working with him for 4 years, and it was not until this past year that he has even considered allowing us to help him. This morning when he woke up, we talked about getting him into housing. It has taken a long time to get to this point and it came from Emon and the rest of the great outreach team doing what they said they were going to do, when they said they were going to do it. They have earned his trust and now, hopefully we can move to the next phase and help him get off the streets.
Last night was one of the most humbling experiences I have ever had. I didn't sleep much. It was so noisy under the bridge and so incredibly cold. It is something that I will never forget. I hope I don't forget how it felt. How miserable I was. The look in that young man's face. Heartbreaking.
We can fix this.
Much Love
Jonathan
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