One Day in Phoenix: What I Saw on a Fresh Start Outreach Trip

No wasted time

One of our team members landed before the rest of us. He picked up the rental, grabbed Victor and me, and had already scouted where people living on the street were gathering. We drove straight there.

It was 99 degrees in Laveen that afternoon. The first round of outreach was simple: we talked with people, bought some food, and listened. Nobody gets pushed into anything. You show up, you are kind, and you let people know help is real if they want it. We planted a seed and told them we would be back.

What stuck with me most

Groups of people were hanging out at the corner of a local gas station. That is where it hit me. I counted at least six pregnant women that day, and all of them looked homeless. I have never seen six pregnant women in one day in my life, let alone six with no home to go back to.

You can read about homelessness and addiction all day. Standing on that corner is different. Every one of those women is carrying two lives, in 99 degree heat, with nowhere safe to sleep. I think about them a lot.

Moving someone up a level of care

In between outreach rounds, we picked up a young man who had finished one stage of treatment and drove him to his next level of care at Into Action Recovery, a men's residential program in Laveen. Recovery is not one program and done. It is a series of steps, and sometimes the most important thing you can do is make sure someone gets from one step to the next without falling through the gap.

We grabbed a quick bite with a meeting in the middle of it, then went straight back out.

A yes, and then a setback

On the second round of outreach, a woman we met in the same area we had scouted that morning said she was ready. She wanted off the street.

That's where the moving pieces come in. We worked with her for several hours. We called facility after facility. A couple of options fell through. Finally we found her a bed.

Then the plan broke. She had to travel by Uber, and the driver dropped her at the wrong location. She left that night.

That is what this work looks like. Saying yes is only the beginning. Between yes and a bed there is transportation, paperwork, timing, and a hundred things that can go wrong. For someone who has been on the street, one wrong turn can undo a whole day.

She made it

The team didn't let it go. The next day she was safely brought into treatment with the help of another local provider. She is in treatment now.

We made our flight home with barely a break. I was exhausted, and I have never been prouder to be part of a team.

What I took home

• Persistence is the whole job. The first attempt usually doesn't work. The team keeps going anyway.
• The gaps are where people get lost. Moving someone from the street to treatment, or from one level of care to the next, takes real coordination. Fresh Start and our partners are built for those handoffs.
• The people back at the office matter just as much. Every call, every bed search, and every ride gets set up by people who never set foot on that corner.

If someone you love is struggling in the Phoenix area, or anywhere else, you don't have to figure it out alone. Reach out to us and we will call you back.