For more information about HART, email volunteer@everyonehomedc.org.

Quote: “It gives us volunteers a chance to break down barriers to communicate with community members we may not normally interact with, breaking down biases and understanding that everyone rightly deserves to enjoy all that our wonderful Capitol Hill community offers.”

Dr. Tobie Smith is one of our longest serving and most active volunteers with Everyone Home DC’s Homeless Assistance Response Team (HART). She brings an incredible amount of knowledge, experience, and passion to this work because, when she is not volunteering with HART, she serves as the Medical Director at Health Care for the Homeless, Baltimore County. We are so grateful that Tobie chooses to spend her time outside of work with Everyone Home DC and are excited to highlight her work with our team!

Everyone Home DC’s HART volunteers are an extension of our Street Outreach Team. We train members of the community to check in on our unhoused neighbors at night, offer them snacks and shelter on hypothermia alert nights, and in extreme circumstances, call for emergency services.

Tobie became a HART volunteer because she realized that, while she is very active in homeless services in Baltimore, she wasn’t engaged in issues related to homelessness in her own community here in DC. Tobie’s professional background makes her an extra special HART volunteer. While out on shift, she is able to flag common health conditions for our outreach staff who are then able to follow-up and ensure our homeless neighbors receive the care they need.

For Tobie, one of the highlights of volunteering with Everyone Home DC is the “opportunity to work with other volunteers who are learning about homelessness.” Volunteering with HART also helps her to “better address the concerns of the rest of our community and to know how to encourage others to advocate and alleviate the issues facing the homeless population.”

This week, Mayor Muriel Bowser announced that the city will be closing the DC General Family Shelter by the end of 2018. This is earlier than expected as the previous iteration of the plan would have kept the shelter open until 2020 when all of the new Short-term Transitional Housing facilities would be operational. (Three of the new shelters – in Wards 4, 7 & 8 – are slated to open by the end of this year.) According to the Washington Post, the District will stop placing families in DC General in May and will start deconstructing one of the vacant buildings on the DC General campus this coming April. The rest of the DC General buildings will be taken down by the end of the year.

DC General is frequently referred to as a dilapidated shelter with a plethora of problems ranging from a rodent infestation to a lack of hot water. City officials have said that any family still living in DC General when it is ready to be razed will be moved to another shelter placement, though details about how this will happen without the completion of all the new facilities have not yet been shared. Read here for more information on the closure of DC General in the Washington Post and WAMU.

Daniel is an Everyone Home DC client whose life was transformed this year through his engagement with our Street and Medical Outreach Program. We helped him go from never visiting a doctor or hospital, no matter how much he was suffering, to welcoming weekly medical outreach visits and even attending appointments with specialists.

We were thankful that Daniel was finally getting the regular medical care he needed to enjoy a better quality of life in his senior years. His positive experience with our Street and Medical Outreach Program made him more receptive to other services, and we became hopeful that he might one day accept an offer of permanent supportive housing. A few weeks ago, he did just that — Daniel moved into an apartment of his very own just before Thanksgiving! He loves his new home and we are all overjoyed!

This is why we do this work. We do it because we believe everyone deserves the safety and dignity of a home. We do it because we believe we can end homelessness. And we do it because we believe no one is beyond help, that if we design our services to meet people’s needs rather than expecting them to conform themselves to fit our services, we can change lives.

Just before he moved into his new place, Daniel was hospitalized for several days due to an open wound that had become infected and was worsening rapidly. Had we not helped him secure housing, Daniel likely would have continued to suffer increasingly serious health problems as he aged, and those problems would have been significantly exacerbated by his homelessness.

Instead, Daniel looks forward to a brighter and healthier future. We will not worry about Daniel dying from hypothermia this winter. For the first time in many years, Daniel will have a safe, warm home with a real bed and covers to snuggle under when it snows. He will have plenty to eat and can even cook his favorite meals in his very own kitchen. He can shower whenever he wants and binge watch every episode of CSI Las Vegas, Miami, and New York! He will be home. Because of your support for our work, Daniel will be home for the holidays this year.

CHGM‘s May Community Night focused on how youth in our area are impacted by homelessness. The first part of the evening showcased projects created by the Capitol Hill Day School’s middle school class, who spent this past semester learning about the impact of homelessness in DC through work with CHGM. They used what they learned to emphasize how important it is to acknowledge our homeless neighbors, instead of perpetuating their invisibility.
Sasha Bruce Youthwork presented for the second half of the evening. Sasha Bruce is a DC-based non-profit that works directly with students and youth who are experiencing homelessness, or come from unsafe homes. Their programs help youth create safe communities for themselves.

The evening’s discussion elucidated the particular challenges of homeless youth and demonstrated the importance of ensuring that strategies to end homelessness account for needs of people of all ages, and their diverse backgrounds and experiences.