Case managers Miss Judy and Miss Sarah spent an hour with us on Thursday giving us insights into the challenge of tackling homelessness. They have created a network of organizations to find and visit the camps of the homeless living throughout the area in order to develop relationships with the people and connect them with the appropriate support services. Judy described their work as giving people hope, and says these folks “just need a hug.”

People tend to look past the homeless, fear them or judge their situation to be a result of poor character or laziness. Sarah quoted one woman who said, “I belong nowhere.” These two women and their staffs work hard to acknowledge their humanity and dignity and advocate for them in a system that throws up barriers each and every day.

Sarah told the wrenching story of a man who was living in the woods behind the mission house. Despite their best efforts to keep him fed, he kept losing weight, and it became increasingly difficult for him to move around. Becoming more and more concerned, one day Sarah called for an ambulance to take him to the hospital, and waited four and a half hours for it to arrive. Once they finally showed up, they demanded that the man get himself into the ambulance in five minutes or they were leaving — but offered no stretcher or other assistance to get him onboard. Once at the hospital they dropped him on the sidewalk, once again not providing the basic service of wheeling him in on a stretcher or wheelchair. He was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer and was discharged with minimal treatment and no ongoing care after a few days, on the basis that he didn’t have insurance to pay for treatment. He died a few days later in his tent.

Back Bay Mission, in partnership with Catholic Charities, has acquired a 10-acre property to develop into overnight shelters and to house Loaves and Fishes, including building tiny bedrooms on wheels to fill the gap in community overnight shelters, which are only opened when the temperature (real, not feels-like) drops below 35°. The systemic barriers seem endless: the heartless way the medical system treats homeless people, often sending them home with no care; the lack of public transportation; and the onerous bureaucratic processes to get assistance.

Sarah told us they don’t see it as their role to tell drug addicts to stop their addictive behavior. Instead, they counsel them about the importance of paying their bills before they buy drugs, and try to connect them with addiction services. They started a free clean needle exchange program, but the city told them giving out free needles was against the law. So they now charge one penny for a clean needle.

Sarah is the embodiment of the concept that faith is a verb. Married to a police officer and a former officer herself, she employs a very hands-on approach to this job she loves, finding the homeless where they are, establishing trust and developing relationships. She might be personally delivering someone to an ER, or visiting them in their camp.

Kenney Washington, who manages all the non-construction programs, told us that in 2020 there were only 187 volunteers like us, most before Covid took hold. In a normal year more than 800 are showing up to help. They have had to adjust the way they approach their mission as a result of Covid, still trying to help as many people as before. He observed that people become homeless due to a lack of relationships, not a lack of resources; many of the Micah Center’s clients have jobs, but they don’t earn enough to house themselves. Add to that a regressive taxation system, in which there’s a 7% tax on food, and it becomes clear why there is so much poverty here.

There’s a special place in heaven for the people who do this work. And to quote Kenney, speaking of all the volunteers who give their time and effort to come to BBM, it takes a lot of maturity and compassion to work hard on something that doesn’t affect you.