Lawrence.com

This is part of a special project of stories, photos, and video gathered by graduate journalism students in KU’s J840 Communicating Social and Environmental Messages class — will be posted here leading up to this Tuesday’s City Commission meeting, where the potential expansion of Lawrence's only homeless shelter will be on the agenda.

Matt Hollar found himself on the street when he saw his mother’s boyfriend dragging his brother and sister by the arm.

He didn’t like it, and he tried to protect them. When the boyfriend charged at Hollar, he says, “I pop him with the palm of my hand to the nose and I break his nose. Then my mom calls the cops on me… on me. So I ran out of the house, and mom tells me to come back in a week. When I came back the whole house was just empty. She left.”

After spending some time with his aunt, Hollar eventually moved in with his brother. Then Hollar came home high one night and got in a fight, and his brother threw him out. With no other options, the police brought him to the Lawrence Community Shelter.

“It hurt. It felt like a dream,” remembers Hollar, who’s 19 years old. “I was sad, I was crying, I was depressed. I was really scared being in a homeless shelter with grown men, because I was a smart-ass kid and I didn’t want to say something to get my ass kicked. What I really wanted to know was where the closest liquor store was.”

Once Hollar became a guest at the shelter, the staff did some basic things like helping him get an ID and a social security card. They also worked to get him back on his medicine for a health condition. And they did more.

“I just connected with the staff. They call me their son. Steve (Elder) and his wife Diane are like my second parents. They’re cool, and they try really hard to help people.”

Even after he arrived, when things got so bad that Hollar became hospitalized for a severe health condition, he knew the people at LCS cared for him and would help him get his life on the right path. While he recovered, his aunt encouraged him not to return to the shelter.

“But I never considered it. Not for a minute.” Since then, with the help of the staff, Hollar is out of the shelter and is living on his own. But he’s back all the time, trying to return in kind some of what he received.

“They helped me, so now I’m giving it back, as best I can, helping these people,” says Hollar. “I’m working and studying for my GED. If LCS hadn’t been here, I would be in jail, for sure. Now I feel like I can have dreams, I can see a future.”

People working with the homeless every day get to watch lives transform from hopelessness to success. Some people need just a little help to get over the wall, while others will need to try to climb it over and over. But Hollar seemed to sum it up best. “I see a lot that when people get here, they think there’s no hope, no chance of them ever getting out of here. But it’s never too late. Never give up.”

The choice

For most of us, contact with the homeless begins and ends with the drive by on the street, a shoulder brush in the coffee shop, an averted eye when you walk by them stretched out on a park bench.

But for some in town, the contact doesn’t end there—it’s just the beginning. It’s the job they go to daily, their career, their calling.

These people know the homeless by name. They know their quirks and habits, their life stories and even sometimes their health histories. They are often trusted when a family member isn’t.

They don’t earn big salaries or lots of recognition. But they do get to see the look of hunger pass from someone eating a meal for the first time in days. They see families celebrating after finding new jobs and housing. They see the guy who’s been drinking for 40 years finally get sober. Or sometimes it’s just the little things.

Photo Gallery

The Lawrence Community Shelter

A walk through Lawrence's only shelter for the homeless. By Jenni Brown / KU journalism student

Steve: “Julie, I’m glad you came back to the shelter last night.”

Julie: “I am, too. I was behind a dumpster.”

This isn’t an unusual conversation for Steve Elder, night monitor at Lawrence Community Shelter. When you first see Steve, you might mistake him for one of the shelter guests—he’s got a long, straggly beard, eyes that are constantly roaming, a cigarette twirling in his fingers.

“Never underestimate the power of a cigarette,” says Elder. “I can draw almost anyone into a conversation with one.”

Elder, who is also a case manager and certified in mental health first aid, finds establishing relationships key to working with his homeless clients.

“We all work on having relationships with the guests. Some can’t work with certain people because of issues from their past. Like a woman who was abused by a male might not be the right person for me to work with. But we have staff meetings where we talk about the clients and who the right person is to establish that relationship.”

Elder can also relate to the shelter clients through personal experience. He was homeless two different times in his youth, and he knows the drill.

“It makes some of the people here mad. I will sometimes walk outside and see a group of them standing together down the block. Because I’ve been there, I can tell just by looking at them what they’re doing, and I know when they’re doing something they shouldn’t. They just look at me, throw up their hands and walk away.”

“I am 22 years clean and sober,” says Elder. It was a friend he met in recovery who introduced Elder to Lawrence Community Shelter. Elder was volunteering during a night that was crazy wild. Elder was hooked. After six months of volunteering, he was offered a half-time position, and within six weeks the shelter hired him full-time.

Elder says the hardest part of his job are times when people seem to have turned a corner in their lives and then have a relapse. But he notes, “Often people don’t have a monkey on their back like addiction or mental illness. They just can’t seem to catch a break.”

But many people do have a monkey on their back. In a report prepared for the Interagency Council on the Homeless, 39% of people who are homeless report having mental health problems in the past month. If Steve can convince them to get help, often his first call is to Brad Cook, a Lawrence social worker placed at the Lawrence Community Shelter. From working with individual clients to speaking in front of groups, to fundraising events, Brad brings a passion to his work that’s hard to ignore.

“There are lots of things I can do for homeless people. But remember, once they’re in housing, it doesn’t mean their problems are over,” says Cook.

“It’s hard to concentrate enough to go to work if you have a mood disorder and your emotions are out of control. It’s hard for someone dealing with a psychotic disorder to remember to pay their bills when they’re in and out of reality.”

Cook’s goal is not only to enroll them in the programs and services necessary to get them into housing, but to keep them in that housing.

Cook also observes that he sees a lot more men than women.

“Women’s families will often shelter and help them longer than a man’s family. Society thinks a man’s role is to be self-sufficient. But when mental health issues are involved, they can sometimes wind up homeless. If you can get them consistent help, they can be successful.”

Cook worries a bit about the attitude towards the homeless in Lawrence. “There’s an elitism, kind of class thing that concerns me. What you have to remember about the homeless and mentally ill is that they’re all human beings with real stories and feelings just like us. Their problems are just a lot more public than ours are, and they need extra help.”

L.I.N.K.

Sometimes the extra help just consists of a quiet meal out of the elements. During July, Greg Moore has provided that meal for anywhere from 130 to 200 people each day at the Lawrence Interdenominational Nutrition Kitchen.

“They actually eat pretty good in here. It’s all home cooked food,” says Moore, who coordinates the kitchen. “I’ve gained 40 pounds since I started working here,” he laughs.

Moore got involved with L.I.N.K. several years ago when he called right before Thanksgiving to volunteer to work on the holiday. But the program’s volunteer list fills weeks and even months in advance, so he left his phone number and ending up filling in on federal holidays. He did that for a couple of years, until the former L.I.N.K. coordinator left to work at Lawrence Community Shelter full time.

L.I.N.K.’s official mission is to serve the “hungry and the lonely.” They do this by opening up in the basement of First Christian Church to provide respite from the weather and give the homeless a good meal four days a week. Each day a civic or faith group provides, cooks and serves all the food.

“This is somewhere that anyone, including homeless people can come and it doesn’t have a lot of the drama they usually have in their lives. It’s air conditioned in the summer and heated in the winter. We have strict rules of conduct for the people who are in here so that it can be a place to relax.”

Moore also describes how many of the people who are regulars will also give back with both money and service to the program when they can. The need is high, but the dedication is deep. “Our groups and volunteers value the people who come here,” says Moore. “They’re going through awful times in their lives. We don’t want to feel sorry for them – we just want to help them.”

All stories on the Lawrence Community Shelter collected by KU's Communicating Social and Environmental Messages class:

• Gimme shelter: your call (Aug. 1)

• Gimme shelter: More than a chance encounter, a choice (Aug. 2)

• Gimme shelter: The Lawrence Community Shelter family (Aug. 3)

• Gimme shelter: Community leaders (Aug. 4)

• A walk through Lawrence's only shelter for the homeless (photogallery)

• Talking with supporters of the Lawrence Community Shelter (audio interviews)

• Homeless in Lawrence: More than you may know (video)