Homeless Stairway Networking Cooperative (HSNCoop) was founded in early March 2013 in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, when I was living there and working as a Yellow Taxi driver. I had many down and out friends in Sioux Falls, and ate at the Banquet regularly (the soup kitchen for the needy). I drove a taxi there from 2004 to 2014. Losing my job in April 2014, I decided to get back to Washington D.C., one of my old stomping grounds (like Dupont Circle), and try and help with the Proposition 1 tent, among other things, as I was friends with Proposition 1 founder William Thomas. I thought to help others, too, trying to keep up my being true to true Christian Ethic, by working on HSNCoop, when I could.
I saw the newspaper Street Sense and saw how I might be able to expand my desire to make some little difference by working with and in them as well. In 2002, I discovered the East Coast’s homeless condition, learning things like how the whole country was healthy, except for St. Petersburg, Florida, where they were feeding their homeless only pasta, and they were actually dying of malnutrition.
December of that year, I hitchhiked out of D.C. with my kitten, Chrystal Betsy Ross Kitty, and was in Texas by Christmas, on my way back to L.A. Panhandling was easy when surfing faith in Christ. I used four ingredients (faith, honesty, respect, and specifics), like, “Excuse me sir, but I am $1.45 short on a hamburger, could you help me towards $1.45?” I had everything I could want but a roof over my head, as I tripped to Atlantic City twice, Florida twice.
But understanding the needs and thoughts of a homeless person is not actually helping them. Of course, the first and most important thing that any one of us can do for the homeless is to get up and out ourselves to show that it can be done, to give hope. No one, or not everyone, is stuck there. As a taxi driver in a small studio apartment for 10 years, I put a small single bed in my alcove for my homeless friends, to get them off the streets for little stints, and stowed their belongings for them, as I know how that feels to have a friend keep my stuff for me, as well. I am a Christian, but Allah said, “Thou shalt alms give,” and I thought to, when I could, kick a buck or two the way of those less fortunate.
A $20 bill is not much to most of us when we are working, but if it has not been in your hands for a few months because you are on the streets, and you get one, oh the joy! Understand? I, myself, would rather sit with my homeless friend and eat with or drink with him, to talk, learn about his or her adventures, and maybe add my two cents in at the end to help how I can. Love is the highest law, and homeless people know this truth as well as anybody does. We help each other, more than most of the cars that drive by will ever understand. And it is too bad that they won’t understand what unconditional God-like love some of us have known. So, I want to make a Co-op, and I want to have a network of people who dare to care about the needy, so I started Facebook and LinkedIn pages for the cooperative and – – – and am open to what else HSNCoop can be or become…
