Chris Bohjalian's Blog - Posts Tagged "homeless"

There is absolutely nothing in the world I like more than calling strangers at their homes over dinner and asking for money. There is just no faster way to make friends and influence people.

And so I might be calling you on Tuesday night – especially if you live in Vermont. I will be dialing for dollars for Burlington’s Committee on Temporary Shelter – a.k.a., COTS – volunteering to pick up the phone because the group does more important work in a day than I will do in my lifetime. Also, they have really good snacks. And they’re going to give me a bell. I get to ring the bell whenever some stranger on the other end of the line agrees to make a tax-deductible contribution to the homeless shelter. I’ve volunteered to make calls for the organization three or four times in the past, so I have a pretty good sense of what will happen.

A few people will ask me to spell my name, either because telemarketers have been driving them crazy or because they have read one of my books and want to see if it really is me.

A few people will honestly – and in great detail – tell me how they are when I ask, either because telemarketers have been driving them crazy or they are really (and I mean really) lonely.

And a few people will start crying on the phone, because they have given to COTS in the past, but simply cannot afford to make a contribution this year. Maybe they have been laid off at work. Maybe someone in their family has grown ill and the cost of care has decimated their savings. Maybe they are one paycheck away from being homeless themselves. Make no mistake: It’s rough out there.

How rough? One hundred and forty schoolchildren in Chittenden County were homeless in October. Nearly a thousand people descended upon the COTS daytime shelter last year. One hundred and seventeen families stayed in one emergency shelter or another – and almost always there were more on the waiting list.

I’m not as good as some of the volunteers who will be working with me on Tuesday night, but I’ve been a big fan of COTS for many years and so I am capable of getting pretty passionate. I’ve stayed focused when people have reminded me how much I must hate it when telemarketers call me at my home, and when they’ve asked me for my phone number.

But the thing is, I’m not a robocall. You can talk to me. Likewise, I’m not going to yell at you. I’m not going to scream about socialists or the Tea Party. I’m not even going to try and sell you a calling plan for your cell phone or a crate of Omaha steaks. I am simply going to ask you to do what I do: Be thankful that I have a roof over my head tonight by helping someone who might not.

So, if you hear from me on Tuesday, be gentle. Be kind. And feel free to tell me how you really are when I ask.

* * *

The annual COTS phone-a-thon begins tomorrow night and concludes on December 11. The goal is $175 thousand to help the shelter weather the winter – a nightmare season for the homeless or those flirting with homelessness. In addition, COTS is one of the “Free Press” Giving Season charities this month, along with the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf, the Warmth Program, and Jump (the Joint Urban Ministry Project). Trust me: Helping a family have food, shelter, and heat on Christmas morning will give you a much deeper glow than unwrapping a boxed set of “The Real Housewives of New Jersey” on Blu-ray and DVD.

Finally, if you want to call COTS before we call you, here is the number: (802) 864-7402.

(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on December 1, 2013. Chris’s most recent novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” was published in July.)

Six months ago, there was a three-year-old girl in the Committee on Temporary Shelter’s Main Street Family Shelter in Burlington, Vermont who wasn’t talking. She wasn’t speaking. “She was so shy. She wasn’t using words. We were really worried about her language acquisition,” recalled Cassie Paulsen, 28, the Children’s Education Advocate at COTS. The girl’s mother was worried, too: This was one more trauma to add to the ongoing ordeal of being homeless.

But Paulsen had funds at her disposal from the annual COTS fundraising walk through downtown Burlington, and so she was able to enroll the child at a local preschool. A few months later, when COTS had helped the small family find a home, “the girl couldn’t stop talking,” Paulsen said. “She couldn’t stop singing. It was wonderful.”

This is a testimony to the power of having a roof over your head and a little stability in your life. It’s one more indication of the way COTS changes lives daily.

A week from today, Sunday, May 4th, is the annual COTS Walk. It will be the 25th time that volunteers have made the three-mile trek through the city, stopping to see the shelters and services that COTS offers. Last year, 1,500 people participated. This year, Becky Holt, the group’s Development Director, expects even more. After all, Holt said, this is a big anniversary, and for some of the walkers and volunteers it will be like a reunion. The shelter hopes the walkers this year will raise $175,000 in pledges.

Among the ways that COTS uses those funds is to provide services that are not necessarily covered by existing grants. Often that means creating programs for the kids in the shelters – and right now there are 24 children in the two COTS family shelters. The youngest is two months old. The oldest is 18.

And many of those services are managed by Paulsen. In addition to supervising the Book Buddies and the Playroom Volunteers – programs in which volunteers read with the children in the shelter or play with them – Paulsen has to focus on the basics, such as wellness and nutrition. Sometimes the basics entail making sure the kids have transportation to their school. Sometimes it means getting the kids into a summer camp. And some days it means finding the children tutors. She has built relationships with 21 different daycare providers and preschools in the Burlington area.

Paulsen’s position, Children’s Education Advocate, is a new one for COTS. It was designed last November. Prior to that, many of Paulsen’s current responsibilities were handled by AmeriCorps staffers. But Paulsen is perfect for the job. She had worked at the family shelters for nearly three years before taking over the position. “I love the energy at the family shelters,” she told me. “I love the kids and the babies. Those shelters are so helpful for the young single moms.”

Paulsen is also a veteran of the COTS Walk. The Newport, Vermont native started volunteering when she was a freshman at the University of Vermont, helping out as a crossing guard. She’s walked six times herself.

I know firsthand what a delight the COTS Walk is. I don’t make the walk every year, but I do when I can. After all, the shelters always are full; invariably there’s a waiting list.

And there is still time to sign up and raise a little money. (Or a lot of money, but feel no pressure.) This year the walk starts at two p.m. at Battery Park, and registration begins at one. Once again, there will be face painting for the kids and plenty of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream for everyone. In addition, “American Idol” finalist James Durbin will be performing.

So, if you’re not already booked next Sunday, walk a few miles for the homeless. It’s three miles that will make a difference in a child’s life.



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For more information – to register or donate – visit www.cotsonline.org .

(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on April 27. Chris’s most recent novel, “The Light in the Ruins,” was published this week in paperback.)

This coming Thursday evening around 5:30, you’ll see a small crowd assembled on the exterior steps of Burlington, Vermont’s City Hall, looking out upon Church Street. Sometimes there are 30 people and sometimes there are 50. It might be snowing, but they’ll still be there.

They’ll be holding candles and doing something poignant and powerful and very, very simple. One by one they’ll be reading the first names of some of the homeless in this area and sharing a piece of their history. Sometimes it’s about how a person wound up without a roof and sometimes it’s about how they were helped by COTS — the Committee on Temporary Shelter. I can still recall some of the names I’ve read aloud from those steps over the years.

And before we read the names, there is music: Betsy Nolan, choir director of the Edmunds Middle School, leads her 18 seventh- and eighth-graders in song. This year they will be singing “One Candle” and the canon, “Dona Nobis Pacem.” Nolan has been bringing the choir to the vigil for eight years now.

“I think it’s a really great event,” Nolan told me. “With the diversity in our school, we have students who come from economic privilege and students who come from economic challenges. It’s a nice way for them to see there are all different kinds of people who need our support.”

It was COTS Executive Director Rita Markley who first approached Nolan about singing in the vigil. Before agreeing, Nolan asked her students if they wanted to participate. She wanted to be sure that they understand the significance of the moment. She has done it this way every year since. After the vigil, they all go out for pizza and discuss the evening — and what they just learned as young adults. “The kids always say it’s awesome that we have an organization like COTS. That’s so important to them,” she said.

But then there was the year when Nolan and the choir members were surprised by the sort of revelation that drives home the fragility of our lives. “I had a choir student whose family had been in one of the COTS shelters. She shared that her family had experienced homelessness and felt so privileged to be able to help,” Nolan recalled. “I didn’t know this about her until we went to the vigil. It was pretty powerful.”

Becky Holt, director of development and communications at COTS, has witnessed the effect of the vigil on people for years now. “I tell COTS stories — that’s what I do. I don’t look at my job as fundraising, but as sharing why the gifts to COTS matter. The vigil is the once a year moment where we literally tell the stories of people helped by COTS. And, for me, it’s the most solemn and important event of the year, because it’s where we reflect and honor our neighbors facing homelessness — the meaning behind the mission,” she said.

In the last year, COTS helped more than 2,000 people. Seventy-eight families — including 127 children — and another 301 individuals stayed at the shelters. An average of 40 people a day visited the Daystation. And that homeless student in the Edmunds Middle School Choir? She was far from alone. There were 172 homeless children in Chittenden County in October.

Who knows what the weather will be on Thursday night. This is Vermont and it can change in a heartbeat. It may be oddly balmy. The air might be still. And Church Street might be a snow globe, the flakes swirling and the gusts off Lake Champlain making it nearly impossible to keep our candles lit.

“It’s beautiful when it snows, but it has a huge impact: The kids are outside and they are reminded that there will be people in the city that night who are homeless,” Nolan said.

Indeed. There will be homeless in Burlington tonight. And tomorrow. And the night of the vigil. But thanks to COTS, some will have shelter. And some will even have homes.

That is the meaning of this season – and why this vigil is always worth watching.

(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press. Chris’s most recent novel is “Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands.”)

Mark Redmond had been trying – and failing – to get some sleep since ten-thirty at night. He was on the front lawn of the Unitarian Church at the north end of Burlington, Vermont’s Church Street, curled up in his sleeping bag against the March cold, a flattened cardboard carton between him and the snow. It was nearing three in the morning and he was just drifting off, when he was jolted awake by a long, loud crash. A half minute later there was another. Soon after that, there was a third. The noise was nearing.

“I looked up,” Redmond recalled, “and it was some poor guy pushing his shopping cart down Pearl Street and going from pail to pail to find empties. I was hearing the sound of the cans and bottles as they rattled into the cart.”

Redmond’s point? “It’s not just the cold that makes it hard to get a decent night’s sleep if you’re outside. It’s the noise. It’s the lights. And you are just so vulnerable.”

Redmond himself is not homeless. He is the Executive Director of Spectrum Youth and Family Services. But later this month, on the night of March 26, once again he will be hunkered down in his sleeping bag, outside on the north end of Church Street. And he won’t be alone. There will be somewhere around 100 Vermont business and community leaders sleeping outside – or, to use the parlance of the street, “sleeping rough” – all of them getting a small taste of what it is like to be homeless. Among them? Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger. They will also be raising money for Spectrum, taking pledges in much the same way that others raise money for Special Olympics in the Penguin Plunge.

This March marks the fourth time that Spectrum has held its Sleep Out in Burlington. In addition, between March 26 and March 29, there will be groups of students sleeping rough across Vermont, also raising money for Spectrum and getting an inkling of how hard it is to be homeless. Last year, the Sleep Out raised $200,000.

Spectrum’s mission is to help teens in trouble. Last year it helped 1,200 kids in a variety of programs: counseling, mentoring, health care and drug treatment, among them. The organization is known for its overnight shelter and drop-in center on Pearl Street, but homelessness is only one problem it tries to combat. “I view most of our programs as prevention,” Redmond said. So why the Sleep Out? “Because,” Redmond explained, “It really is awful to be homeless. To endure it for even one night is an experience.”

Indeed. Mary Lee, an associate vice president in Human Resources at Champlain College, was among the participants of the Sleep Out the very first year. Afterward she wrote Redmond an email and observed, “I kept imagining what it might be like for a 15 year old to be all alone with those sounds and cold night after night. At any point, I knew that I had an option and that in just a few hours I would have hot coffee, food, my car, a shower, the day off, the weekend playing with my family, etc. Easy for me. Not easy for that 15 year old. Life twists in ways that we often cannot understand. Homelessness could touch anyone.”

I’ve often written about kids who Spectrum has helped over the years. I always find myself moved and impressed, which is why I keep coming back to their stories. The Sleep Out is a chance to glimpse their world – and to see why as grownups we have to care.

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Want to be a part? Visit www.spectrumvt.org for details on how to join the Sleep Out or sponsor someone who is sleeping rough. Are you a student or teacher around the state and want information on how to hold a Sleep Out in your school or community? Email Mark Redmond directly at MRedmond@SpectrumVT.org .

(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on March 8, 2015. “Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands,” Chris’s most recent novel, is about a homeless teen. It arrives in paperback in May.)

When Hannah Woodruff was in seventh grade, she and her classmates at the Crossett Brook Middle School in Duxbury, Vermont were given a rather ambitious assignment: they were each supposed to change the world. Or, at the very least, they were supposed to try. Hannah decided that her individual project would involve the homeless.

This was back in the autumn of 2006 when she was 12 years old. Now she is a 20-year-old neuroscience major at the University of Vermont, and one result of her efforts is a nine-year relationship with the Committee on Temporary Shelter that includes both her younger sister, Alice (a freshman at UVM), and her mother, Kate Finley Woodruff, a lecturer there. Over the years, the three of them have volunteered for COTS in a variety of ways, and participated in the annual COTS Walk – which is coming up on May 3.

This spring, Kate is teaching a course in community development and applied economics that she is hoping will ripple well beyond the 16 students in her class. The goal? Use a $5,000 grant from Cabot Creamery Cooperative to raise awareness of the homeless across the UVM campus. The course is called the Cabot Community Marketing Challenge. The tactics include guerrilla marketing such as “static clings” that stick to mirrors to show that anyone can be the face of homelessness, as well as more traditional efforts such as posters, bus ads, and social media.

“It costs about $800 to prevent a family from becoming homeless,” Kate said, “but as much as $10,000 to get that family back into housing. So we are focusing on prevention.”

In addition, some of her students will be walking the talk at the COTS Walk three weeks from today.

I’m a big fan of the COTS Walk. It’s not simply that it’s a very pleasant couple of miles through Burlington, Vermont and raises somewhere around $180 thousand annually for the shelter. It’s not even the great company of 1,500 other people walking with you for the same cause. It’s not even the Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream you get to savor when you finish.

It’s that you actually walk through the different COTS shelters on the journey. You see the insides of the men’s and women’s shelters, the day station, and the different family shelters. (Yes, homelessness is so extensive in the Burlington area that we have multiple family shelters.) The face of homelessness? It’s often a child. Last month, COTS launched its #172VT campaign, because it counted 172 homeless children in our community.

And for Hannah Woodruff, the walk brings her back to the family shelters where she initially volunteered with her mother when she was in middle school. “I was shy at first,” she recalls. “I listened a lot. What got to me was seeing the kids there my age. A couple of times there was a girl only slightly younger than I was, and together we decorated flowerpots. They were going to take them to their apartment because they were about to move out of the shelter. That felt really good to me, especially because it was someone I could relate to.”

You can get a small taste of the power and the poignancy of moments like that on the COTS Walk. “Homelessness is not an abstract concept,” Hannah added. “It’s a real thing and involves real people. It’s important to remember that there are people behind the word.”

So how do you change the world? You decorate flowerpots in the spring with homeless kids at the local shelter. Or you bring gingerbread houses there – as well as the Skittles, the chocolates, and the peppermints so they can transform them into fairy tale mansions. Or you volunteer at the annual phone-a-thon. Or you teach a college course in how to raise the visibility of the homeless.

Or on May 3, a spring Sunday afternoon, you join your neighbors and walk the streets of Burlington on their behalf.

* * *

To register for the COTS Walk or obtain your pledge sheets, visit www.cotsonline.org and click on “COTS Walk.” Questions? Call Gillian at (802) 864-7402.

(This column appeared originally in the Burlington Free Press on April 12, 2015. Chris's most recent novel, "Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands," arrives in paperback next month.)