I woke up in the tent. I still have a sore throat from allergies. I got ready for work early mostly because I don’t want to drive out when the telephone truck is parked at the entrance of my camp.
I arrived at the shelter early around 8am. Since Ezekiel was driving with a shelter worker to get some exercise equipment, I walked to the faith-based homeless day shelter to do outreach. There were very few homeless people at The faith-based homeless day shelter. I spoke with staff there and walked to the harm reduction Center down the street to see if any clients there wanted to do intakes onto the housing list. I spoke with two of the harm reduction workers for about a half hour. I saw one client, a quiet kid that panhandles in front of McDonald’s I wanted to engage with, but he had an appointment and wouldn’t be available for a while.
I walked over to the methadone clinic and talked to their outreach worker. I walked with the methadone clinic’s Outreach worker to The faith-based homeless day shelter which is right down the street from the methadone clinic as well. When the faith-based homeless day shelter closed, the Outreach worker for the methadone clinic and I walked towards McDonald’s. McDonald’s is a hotspot for drug activity and homeless people, the majority are addicts and go to McDonald’s to get drugs. In the alley of one of the back streets we walked through we engaged with a group of five homeless people. They were all engaged in intravenous fentanyl use. I got everyone’s names to enter engagements in Vesta, The homeless database for Massachusetts, but no one wanted to do a coordinated entry intake onto the housing list. Everyone seemed to be too high to care.
The Outreach worker for the methadone clinic and I continued walking to McDonald’s, where we engaged with a homeless man who suffers with severe drug addiction and is a veteran, Lindsey The intake specialist from the methadone clinic showed up.
The Outreach worker for the methadone clinic left, and Lindsey and I drove together to the shelter I work at, and I grabbed the truck, drinks, socks, sandwiches, and resource lists. Lindsey and I went to the encampment next to the hospital since The two homeless people camped there were interested in MAT services, they were not there, so we stopped at the encampment under the bridge nearby and gave the gay couple camped under the bridge drinks and sandwiches, the gay couple didn’t want any other services at this time.
Next Lindsey and I picked up The methadone clinic’s Outreach worker at the methadone clinic and drove to the encampment behind the park at West St. There we engaged with five homeless people that are camped there. We gave out sandwiches, drinks, socks, resource lists and I was able to do coordinated entries onto the housing list for 3 people.
At 3pm the methadone clinic workers left me alone while I was doing a housing referral. I’m not supposed to be alone in the streets, especially encampments. I worked quickly to finish up my referral, and then I walked back to the truck and I drove back to the shelter. While I was walking back to the truck I met up with some of the harm reduction workers who were picking up needles near the encampments.
When I got back to the shelter I cleaned out the outreach truck, and I finished doing data entry stuff.
After work I went to the TMF (The Movement Family) Monday night event, with the high school kids and they made pastelitos. TMF combines at-risk high school students and homeless people, by having the kids help with the Wednesday night dinners for the homeless, and they have a special event on Mondays just for the kids.
While I was at the event I talked with my good friend, the old assistant director at my work. He needed help finding a dual diagnosis program, which is a program for people that have both addiction and mental illness, for a veteran client that’s coming out of jail. We discussed the situation with him being fired from the company I still work for. And he told me to check to make sure that I was getting paid properly. When I checked my pay statement I found that I was only getting paid 23 bucks an hour and I had signed for 25. This was very concerning to me.
After the TMF event, I drove to my campsite and I tucked in for the night.
