Chuck Williams: Change in homeless approach uncomfortable

It was not a comfortable feeling. In fact, it was extremely uncomfortable and laced with tension.

The two homeless men on the loading dock were on edge because they felt left behind as some of those around them were making life-altering decisions to leave the streets and move into housing.

“Why is everybody getting a place to stay but me?” one of them asked. “I have been out here longer than anyone.”

His rant was laced with profanity.

Those who have been helping the homeless survive on the streets were uncomfortable. One woman, believing this was an effort to push the less fortunate deeper into the woods and off the downtown streets, went to the Third Avenue homeless camp and shot video of James Powers, one of those making the decision to accept housing. Powers, known as Pops, had been featured in a Ledger-Enquirer article that same day.

“The Ledger Enquirer article , which falsely portrays that the mayor and city are helping the homeless is FALSE!!!,” the woman posted on Facebook along with a link to the video of Powers. “James made the front of the paper, only because he is the most pitiful, but you clearly hear him say he has nowhere to go!!”

The woman didn’t believe that Powers would be housed before the end of week. Powers, 68 and in poor health, wasn’t even sure it was real.

There were trust issues as change was in the air.

By the end of the week, Powers was in a house in North Highland and the same woman who was so skeptical five days earlier, posted “Yes! Praise God!” in response to a story detailing how Powers was housed.

Some at Home for Good: The Alliance to End Homelessness, a Columbus United Way agency spearheading the effort to house the chronic homeless, were uncomfortable. They were nervous that a reporter was getting to document the process of closing a large homeless camp in real time.

All the way around, people were uncomfortable. Perhaps that is the best atmosphere for real change.

“Change is not comfortable,” said Neal Richardson, director of the Chattahoochee Valley Jail Ministries, which operates SafeHouse, Trinity House and Grace House.

That loading dock, known in the homeless community as “The Ledge” was the most uncomfortable of places. But people like Pat Frey, director of Home for Good, are comfortable there because she believes in what she is doing and the process the local agencies are using.

It is all about shaking up the status quo — making it so uncomfortable that people will think about living life differently. That is what they did at “The Ledge.” For several weeks, they told the dozen or so folks living there they had to go. They brought in support help to give them their options.

“We can’t make them leave the streets, they have got to be ready to go,” Frey said. “Sometimes we are going to have to go back time and again until they are ready to go.”

To push them in the right direction, Home for Good brought in the largest dumpster they could find and placed it at one end of the loading dock. They were given a Friday deadline, and Home for Good stuck to it.

Nobody was bluffing. And, for those willing to trust the system, housing was an option.

As Home for Good tries to change the mindset about homelessness in this community, there are going to be more uncomfortable days ahead. But there are going to be good days, like last Thursday when they moved Powers and two other homeless men into a three-bedrooom house with all the comforts of home.

This story was originally published March 7, 2016 at 6:49 PM with the headline "Chuck Williams: Change in homeless approach uncomfortable."