Connecting to help homeless

Greta Steinberg has a mailing address, for now.

Last month, she said she was faced with a difficult choice — rent or medicine.

So she held on to her address because she knows how valuable it is, beyond the physical protection of shelter.

“You need an address for everything,” Steinberg said. “You need an address because, to get help, people have to have a way to get in touch with you.”

With no groceries at her apartment, Steinberg found her way to Mama Tina’s Mission House in Dothan, where warm meals are provided through the week.

Tuesday, she was sitting in on a meeting of local residents hoping to provide more focus to the issue of homelessness in Dothan.

The Homeless Outreach Committee, part of the Southeast Alabama Coalition for the Homeless, is composed of people who represent agencies or ministries that aid the homeless. While they acknowledge a variety of efforts exist in Dothan to help the homeless, they believe their impact is diluted. Part of the committee’s goal is to concentrate efforts for greater impact.

“We feel like there are a lot of homeless out there who are kind of being forgotten about,” said committee spokesperson Bill Block of the Alfred Saliba Family Services Center.

Block helped organize a “Homeless Connect” that pooled resources from agencies and volunteers to provide items of need for Dothan’s homeless and to refer them to agencies that provide needed services. Block said the event held at Dothan United Christian Fellowship on Lafayette Street was a success, but
believes many homeless may not have responded because they were unaware or skeptical.

“Part of the difficulty is that we are still strangers to a lot of people,” Block said.

The committee has planned events geared toward establishing relationships with the homeless community, including making visits to areas where homeless congregate and holding a cookout Feb. 28 at Dothan’s Kenney Park.