Putting A Face On Homelessness

                                      

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        I know why the face of homelessness is alcohol and drugs. They are the ones seen everyday. The addiction itself compels them into the open. Awareness is needed beyond that. We see the faces people have come to know, and we help them. We see also the faces people don't know. Families with children, living in the woods because they've lost their jobs. (The economy has shelters at maximum capacity.) A young man with a college degree and a part time job that doesn't pay enough to maintain him in self sufficiency. (One job opening today draws 100's if not 1000's of applicants at once.) Daily, people find their way to us. I don't even know how to describe what it feels like to find a person standing in our doorway, broken. In tears.

The spectrum is broad. We see them, the people who were once our neighbors, who are now hiding in the shadows of homelessness, too proud, too embarrassed, to humiliated or just too scared to come forward and ask for help. Just as we are, these people are part of the fabric of the community and the fabric is torn.
To think of those children without a bed to sleep in at night, without a good meal. The parents heartbreak to look in thier children's eyes and not be able to give them what they need, much less what they dream for them to have. To think of that young man, who dedicated himself to get an education only to find himself at a dead end. Can he even get a shower and a clean shirt for the job interview that will lift him out of homelessness? Those are just two of countless individual hardships that have led to homelessness.

                                                              Building Bridges

                                          Together, we can tuck those children in at night.
                                          Together, we can give that young man resources.
              Together we can build the bridge to span the gap between homelessness and home.

• Example: One of our clients is currently living one day at a time clean and sober.
• Example: A client who is homeless and has a four year degree is now working a part time job through one of our neighborhood businesses.
• Example: A 63 year old man who was sleeping behind a mall on the concrete now has an income and is living indoors.
• Example: Through using our resources and assistance, one client has moved to Alaska and is working and has his own office overlooking the bay.
  
  
  
   We call Brandi our first success story. She founded Hope Station USA in 2009, but Hope Station USA 'found' her many years prior, borne of her desire to help others in need, even as she herself was in need. From the age of 15 Brandi was homeless, a child living in the streets. She fell into the traps of that life early on and for most of her adult life it was the only way she knew, survival. Living homeless, she met many other homeless people, heard their stories, learned the ‘why’s’ and ‘how’s’ of it all. She was always ready to help them. But how? What little she could do was certainly never enough in her mind. Constantly faced with what she, and many in that life, perceived as ‘no way out’, she decided that she would find a way, a better, more solid way. Hope Station USA was conceived. How did Brandi get herself out of the streets to where she is today? She woke up one day and made a better choice, and then another, and then another. She got out of the streets. She went to college. She began researching what steps to take to start an outreach program for the homeless, and then she went into action. Hope Station USA was born.The most lasting lesson she had learned from being homeless was that nearly everyone she met out there did not want a hand out, they wanted a hand up. She applied that to her program. Hope Station USA would always provide the basic needs, but also would provide resources that would lead out of homelessness.
  Today, Brandi continues to research ways to improve and expand Hope Station USA. She has left homelessness and all of its traps far behind and stands at the doorway for many others to find a way to do the same, a doorway she built with her own two hands and a very big heart.