“The Waiting Game”
While we all have examples of waiting in our lives, I believe that unhoused neighbors know it most acutely. In my time interning at Open Table Ministry (OTM), one of the main ways that I have gotten involved is through Office Hours. These happen every weekday except for Tuesdays and go from 9 am until 1 pm. Our unhoused clients ring the OTM buzzer in the outdoor breezeway at Trinity United Methodist Church and wait for someone to greet them from our office and ask what they need. “Good morning, how can I help you,” is often said, and the response that comes next is never predictable. We are a site where people can regularly receive their mail, so many individuals ask if anything has come in for them. Others are looking for resources, from clothes to a snack. While still others come to order identification documents. The complexity of specific client situations becomes quickly evident, and we assess if and how OTM can support them. We have a swath of unhoused clients, all with unique stories, who come up to our door and allow us into their lives. We work with mothers who have young children, to young adults, to elderly individuals, to people coming out of incarceration and everyone in between.
If individuals are looking for a longer conversation about housing resources or need help obtaining identification documents, we invite them up individually to work with a case manager or volunteer to address their needs. We help clients apply for social security cards, birth certificates, and state IDs. Since housing and jobs require identification documentation to move forward, it is vital to assist our students in this process. Yet there is so much waiting. While a state ID might arrive in two weeks, social security cards are currently taking over a month to arrive. And that’s not even birth certificates! Depending on what county we are ordering a birth certificate from, they can take months or on the rare occasion over a year to arrive. Sometimes it might take so long that individuals miss opportunities. A couple weeks ago, a man came in saying that he had had a couple job interviews lined up but that his wallet was stolen from him and he had to cancel the job interviews as a result. It is not unusual for our clients to get their wallets stolen from them while living outside.
Many of our clients are on waitlists to enter the shelter, Urban Ministries of Durham (UMD), or the shelter for families called, Families Moving Forward (FMF). People are often on the waitlist for temporary shelter for weeks or even months now, especially with the freezing weather and high demand. It currently takes months for families to get into FMF and days or weeks for individuals to get into UMD. And for some people, due to their mental health, previous trauma, substance use, or if they own an animal, they might be unable to stay in a congregate shelter altogether. A congregant shelter is one where individuals or families are housed together in a large room. During the process of being in a shelter, clients are assigned a case manager who will help them find housing. Due to the current shortage of affordable housing in Durham, there are extremely long waitlists for housing as well, depending on the client’s situation. Here at Open Table, we get to be present with people while they wait. We can’t fix all of their problems, but we try to help make the waiting more bearable.
By Suzanne Pape