The Homeless Need Our Help

I have a history with being homeless and let me tell you it is no walk in the park. Things are not easy as everyone may think. Most of the homeless are not out there because of drugs or alcohol, that happened after they became homeless and it is called a coping mechanism because being homeless knocks a person’s self-esteem into the ground and then society beats them down too, keeping them out there in the streets with no hand to help them up.

I founded a nonprofit named Hope Station USA, Inc to go back out there and help them any way that I could, even if it is just being an ear to listen. They want to feel like they are human and somebody, not just a statistic. Most of them are not bad people, just bad things that happened to them. Some are homeless because of arguments or disagreements with relatives, some lost their job and couldn’t pay their bills. Some did have an addiction that took everything from them.

I am not going to sit here and make excuses or sugarcoat anything. There are a lot of them out there with an addiction because I used to be one of them. I had a six hundred a day crack habit that prostitution paid for. It took all my emotions away so that I could not feel what was happening to me. Suicidal thoughts came next because I knew I didn’t deserve to be out there.

People around me who knew me told me that I didn’t deserve to be out there on the streets living like an animal and sleeping behind dumpsters on cold concrete, but it happened. I finally one day decided that I was better than that and began making changes.

I kicked, screamed, and crawled my way out of that hole, but I had the strength to do it. Most of them have been out there for so long that it is all they knew anymore. I go back out under my nonprofit and talk to a lot of them and most don’t want to be out there, but don’t know where to turn for help.

Other organizations just throw a bag of food at them and push them out the door because they really don’t want to hear their excuses or stories. They don’t even care to get to know them as individuals. I cannot see how our society can ignore the issue of homelessness because any one of us can be stricken with it and where will you be then?

More of them suffer from mental illness nowadays because of their situation and do not know where to seek help. I remember those bridges I slept under and those cold hard concrete floors, and it sickens me that we cannot find a way to help them.

Hope Station USA has come up with another project that would help end the homeless situation or decrease it greatly if given the chance. We have come up with Pathway to Self-Sufficiency which would be a fenced-in community of tiny houses that would give them a solid place to live with programs in place to assist in their sobriety as well as getting them back to work, but we need help in getting this project off the ground.

We just need one community built by volunteers and myself to be our pilot program to show America that our fellow Americans and HUMAN BEINGS can become part of society again and the working class. They just need that hand up, which is what we want to offer them. I go out everywhere I can and talk with them and offer them something to eat or a blanket, but it isn’t enough.

If you want to show your support and help us make a difference, please contribute right here on this post and it will definitely be used to help them. Any amount will help, and I post several times a week on the website to show everyone what has been going on. I have slacked a little on the postings because of the internet issue, but I will be posting weekly any posts that I write during the week. Show that you have compassion and a heart for your fellow neighbor, or even your relative that might be out there. We can all make a difference if we just stand together. They don’t want just a handout; they want a hand up. Thank you.