Silvia Perez, ARCWP Candidate- Ministry to the Homeless in California

 "Yesterday morning I did breakfast with our 12 residents, some bagels and coffee and orange juice. Three of our residents were disabled in some manner, one in a wheelchair, two working with difficulty with old canes. Two of us helped one of the men to put his jackets on, because he is partly paralyzed; I asked him if he was a mechanic and he smiled and asked me how I knew... but with a permanently deformed and paralyzed hand, he will not be able to engage in much car mechanics... and so our society throws men and women like him away, and these days, as in the Heart of the Bay, also criminalizes their poverty and illness...

Last night we had a full house, 20 men and women eating soup and drinking coffee, warming up after the heavy rains that battered our city yesterday. Twenty is a small number, but in memory of Joe White, these 20 had a good night's sleep. Would that we could wake up the heart of our community and the larger heart of this nation, to end homelessness. It is within our reach and within our means. All we need is the spirit and the desire to say, no more, we are a caring society, we will not throw any more people away.