I want to show you this video I just took. It's a video of Ashley, a woman who lives with her girlfriend (also Ashley (I call them Ashley Squared) in a tent at the @[112716880296603:274:Houseless Movement] Garden.
She is cleaning up our day center in the basement of our house. I didn't ask her to do this. No one asked her to do this. She just does it.
I have always believed in homeless run facilities. The volunteers that run our facilities are always the people who live in them. We welcome non-houseless people to visit. But it is never their job to run the facility.
This does two things:
1. It instantly builds self-esteem and self worth.
2. It allows for scaling programs like these very easy.
We have our own security team. They carry no weapons. But you also definitely don't want to mess with them.
Homeless people are not what we have been taught to believe they are. They just need a path that works for them.
A basement in an old rundown house can be that path.
I also love that we have 2 sharps containers and apparently an entire truckload of Pringles. I don't know where either came from.