6:00 a.m. I woke up in the tent, it’s cold out. I had strange dreams last night. Dreams of spirits and a dark world inhabited by ghosts. I wonder what the history is of the place where I’ve laid my tent. The Karen Read court dated is tomorrow. I look forward to it. I might try to take a day off of work and go to that.
Around 7:30 I started getting myself ready for work.
At 8:30 I arrived a little bit early for work. First I worked with a couple of the shelter guests to clean out the trailer and organize the new donations.
Once the trailer was organized I drove over to a local recovery center and talked to the director Aristotle about Lucas transportation, a service through the city that drives people to detox and I received the information for that service, and I plan on using it to get some of my clients into treatment and off of the street.
At 11:00 a.m. I walked from The Recovery Center to an addiction medicine center, which is a primary care and provides addiction medicine like Suboxone and methadone. I spoke with Khalil and I learned about their services. I’m really excited that they provide primary Care, Khalil even said if someone doesn’t have insurance they could come there and receive care.
12:30 p.m. I drove back to the shelter and ate lunch. After I ate lunch I drove to The church that has the faith-based homeless day shelter and I spoke with Matt, David, Jose, and Paul. I spoke with Matt about further treatment since he just finished a detox, I will revisit that tomorrow since The Latin American detox does not have CSS beds. Jose is fairly new to me. He has refused help in the past. I was able to get his name and number so that I can work with him. I spoke with Paul, who needs his identification. Paul has been chronically homeless for 35 years. Today he was intoxicated and very difficult to have a conversation with. I began to work on getting the birth certificate online, but Paul was unable to communicate important information to me so I will continue that in the future with him.
At 2:30 p.m. I spoke with Ashley, a probation officer with the city of Lawrence. We were able to set up a time to do a presentation for the probation office. I return to the shelter at
At 3:00 p.m. Mick one of the shelter workers and myself cleaned out the truck and I spent the rest of the afternoon updating the homeless database and working on building out a comprehensive map of homeless services and homeless encampments within the city of I work in on Google Earth, so that we can track the movements of the homeless throughout the city over time to figure out better ways to provide service to those in need.
I left work a little late. It was getting dark. I planned on stopping at the grocery store and getting some food but decided just to eat my mom’s leftovers. I ate and then I settled into the tent and fell asleep for the night.