Hey guys, and welcome to May !!!
I’m stepping away from my series about the folks behind the scenes at Street Life this month to talk about something different. You know the drill – top off your coffee, get settled and comfortable wherever you’re reading this, and strap in. Yup, Big Ol’ Kev’s gonna take you for another ride…

Our clothing closet is another one of the main attractions of the ministry. It has gone through multiple iterations to get to the point it has now. Heck, we even have a mobile closet that we send to our other sites. Our Folks know the rules, and they’re allowed to get clothing as they need it. Sleeping bags are a different deal – they can only get a sleeping bag once every six months. Getting a sleeping bag requires an ID. We’ll take just about anything as an ID, but if they refuse to produce one, they can’t have a sleeping bag. Here’s the reasoning – I found out a few years ago that people were selling their sleeping bags for drugs. Can you believe that? I mean, as ghetto as it is, there’s apparently a market for trading stuff for dope. Well, once we found out about that, we limited Folks to one sleeping bag every 6 months, and the ID requirement is so we can keep track of who’s getting them. Now of course, sometimes our Folks camps get burned, or whatever, and they need another bag before their six months is up. We’ll give them one usually, but if they try to make it a habit, of course they get shot down. Our folks are pretty resilient though, and like to search for loopholes in our system. It’s all part of being on the streets, really, so trying to game the system is kind of a national pastime…

Another big thing is shoes. We’ve had donations from some awesome people that included boxes of new shoes. Suddenly, our folks would want shoes – but only new ones, and they’d get pretty upset if they didn’t get what they wanted. Well, we aren’t a shoe store, nor are we a shopping center, so if they get out of pocket, I have to remove them from the lot. I mean, come on, we don’t have everyone’s size in new donated shoes, and even if we did, I’d be hard-pressed to give them to some dude that’s threatening me over them. I guess the long and short of it is that our workers have gone above and beyond with many of our Folks over the smallest things…

Except, to our Folks, these aren’t small things. The things they wear are one of the last things they can control. I mean, I get it – I know how I used to feel about new clothes and shoes, and I wasn’t gonna be wearing anything I didn’t like, so why should they? I’m afraid I don’t have a great answer to that, other than sometimes we have it, and sometimes we don’t. We do the best we can, and sometimes it falls short of our Folks’ expectations. If we were perfect, we wouldn’t be doing all this extra work – and believe me, it is a LOT of work – for free. I feel like our Folks forget that kind of often, but you can’t really blame them. Look at what it takes to live homeless on the streets in this day and age. I know for a fact that it isn’t easy, because there was a time when it was me…

Street Life is a beacon of Hope to a lot of people – Folks, workers, donators, volunteers, and friends. We all do what we do the very best we can, even if we fall short sometimes. The fact is, we’re here to help as best we can. You simply can’t fault that attitude because while other people are in their homes having dinner and watching TV, WE are at the Lot, or Menlo Park Bus Station, or at the Church in Palo Alto. We are the boots on the ground. We are on the front lines. We are out here doing our best for the Folks that many just look away from. And to me, that has to mean something…

Lord, please watch over Our Folks, and the countless thousands of others across the world. The needy, the displaced, the hungry, and the lonely. I know we are only one ministry, but we do this in Your Holy Name. You said,”Whatsoever you do for these, my brothers and sisters, you do for Me.” Hold Our Folks close to Your Heart. I ask this in Your Holy Son’s Name. Amen.

See you on the streets.