‘We Go Out When The People Are Out’: House of Hope’s Outreach Team Adapts to the Pandemic
By Lucas Fried
In March, when storefronts had gone dark and few walked the streets, the homelessness outreach team from House of Hope could be found wheeling a beach cart down the Providence sidewalk. Their cart, officially known as “the Wonder Wheel,” was stuffed with toilet paper, hand sanitizer, masks, and other hygiene necessities, which they handed out to people along the way.
“Homelessness has always been a crisis,” said Sara Melucci, the outreach program manager at House of Hope. “It was a hard pill to swallow when the whole community…wrapped around COVID as a crisis, when so many of our folks had been in even more life-threatening situations for far longer.”
Many individuals Sara met on outreach at the beginning of the pandemic expressed this feeling to her, of being even more overlooked than usual during the pandemic. With restaurants closed, public sinks were scarce. Public health guidance, like stay at home and wash your hands for 20 seconds, was clearly not meant for them.
Instead, the House of Hope team had been thrust into the role of public health workers, and the Wonder Wheel was one way they were filling this gap.
“It has big wheels for Providence off-roading, aka the sidewalks of Providence,” laughed Shaina Garro, an outreach case manager at House of Hope. Shaina had first borrowed the Wonder Wheel from her mom to hand out blankets during the winter of 2019.
I spoke with Sara, Shaina, and Emily Mendes, who is also an outreach case manager at House of Hope, about their relentless work since March. Not only has the organization never paused outreach, they have expanded to cover parts of West Warwick and Pawtucket.
“We go out when the people are out” has long been a mantra of the House of Hope outreach team. Though COVID has not beaten this resolve, the pandemic has challenged their operation.
The RIPTA Office, where they would normally get RIPTIX for outreach or help people apply for disability bus passes, has been nearly impossible to contact. For House of Hope’s part, their outreach staff has held steady at around 12 members, but they have lost many volunteers who normally join the team on the streets.
An even bigger strain on their capacity, according to Sara, is that other outreach programs have had to cut back their in-person operations. In turn, House of Hope has had to expand to cover outreach in Pawtucket.
In addition, House of Hope’s mobile shower unit, Shower to Empower, had to shut down at the beginning of the pandemic because the team lacked protective gear to clean each shower. Instead, the team stuffed their car trunks with socks, boxers, underwear, hygiene kits, and other necessities and parked their cars in place of Shower to Empower.
While Shower to Empower has returned on Mondays and Fridays, it’s still not back to its full schedule of four days a week. This is due to their limited staff and the need for more time to clean between shifts. In the near future, House of Hope also hopes to bring Shower to Empower to other locations in addition to Providence.
The pandemic has intensified other challenges, foremost, shelter capacity. Sara said that in the summer and fall, they have interacted with over 400 people staying outside across the state every night. This is the largest unsheltered population ever in the organization’s memory.
“I’d never seen a spring, summer, fall where every shelter bed was full and we truly had no place to direct somebody to,” Sara said.
One sliver of hope has come in the revamp of the Coordinated Entry System (CES), which is now run by the Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless. The House of Hope team said reaching an actual person on the phone is much more likely under the new system, even at the early and late hours they do outreach.
CES has also been allocating vouchers for hotel rooms, and House of Hope has often been asked to inform people that they have received a voucher. While they’re bringing exciting news, awarding the scarce resource when so many other people aren’t getting into hotel rooms has been emotionally draining.
“It’s kind of hard to be out and spread some news, like “hey, I got you into a place,” but then they feel like they’re leaving people behind,” Shaina said. Sometimes, she said, people have chosen not to take the hotel room in order to stay with their friends or family.
In the early days of the pandemic, the House of Hope outreach team also felt like they were providing a critical dose of human connection. Out on the street, some people they spoke with felt abandoned or disconnected from the news. By listening and giving updates, the outreach team was able to help others make sense of the situation.
Throughout the pandemic, the team has also been struck by the support networks among the homeless community.
As the risk of congregate shelters has grown, many unsheltered individuals have more time living outdoors and some have formed small encampments. When House of Hope encountered someone looking for a safe place to stay, they contacted these camps. Sara recalled the new individuals being welcomed without question; space was cleared and local knowledge and resources shared.
“We’ve all been more inspired by the abundance of resourcefulness and mutual aid that our folks have embodied amongst each other,” Sara said. “If we want to make our communities more inclusive and loving and accessible, we can’t afford to stop listening to the voices of those on the margins.”
So, every weekday and night this winter, through rain and snow, Sara, Shaina, Emily, and their team will be out on the streets to check in and listen.
