Hospitality House is the only emergency homeless shelter in Nevada County, with 69 beds for homeless men, women and children.
I’m Rob Barker, Outreach Case Manager for Hospitality House. I want to share a story with you today, about a 40-year old woman that I will call Ann. I was over by Save Mart last week doing my usual outreach visits around the Brunswick area, when I was suddenly approached by Bob, one of our outreach clients. He came to me and said, “Can I talk to you for a second? I want to introduce you to someone.” I followed him and he introduced me to Ann, and said to her, “This is the guy that you need to talk to; he will help you.” Ann was sitting by the parking lot crying and upset while her phone was blowing up with mean text messages and calls from her ex-boyfriend who was stalking her at the moment. She was scared and was truthfully afraid for her life and feared that her ex-boyfriend would beat her up.
Ann lived in the woods and was scared to return there. I couldn’t take her to Hospitality House’s shelter as she owns two dogs, and we don’t have the means to shelter pets yet. I then asked her if she wanted to seek immediate help and she agreed. I took her in our outreach van to Community Beyond Violence, a non for profit that serves domestic violence, sexual assault and human trafficking victims. They offer 24-hour crisis line, legal services, crisis counseling and safe housing. Once I dropped her off at Community Beyond Violence, a case worker immediately started working with her to provide her with wraparound services, most likely crisis counseling and a safehouse to keep her protected from her ex-boyfriend. Due to clients’ privacy, I’m not able to follow-up with the details of her recovery but I talked to her over the phone a few day ago, and she said she was doing well. And this is the job that I do—to be out there and see where the needs of the homeless population can be meet. Meeting people where there at in their journey.
In honor of Bread & Roses Thrift and More’s three-year anniversary, Bread & Roses hosted a big party this past Saturday! We want to thank all the patrons that came by to our store, and of course, a big thank you to our hard-working volunteers who made our store look great for this event. We greeted everyone to refreshments, games, storewide discounts, and live music by two local artists, Tajlyn and Kellie Garmire. For future store events, please visit us at brthrift.com and follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
This past week, we were blessed by many caring individuals. I’d like to give a big thank you to Calvary Church, Emergency Team, Sierra Pines United Methodist Church, Jazzercise, the Home Team, Crossroads Church, and Wolf Creek Co-housing for coming out to cook. We are grateful to all of you, and of course, everyone who donated needed items.
Now down to the nitty gritty needs of the shelter for this week…
- Men’s jeans, sizes 30 – 38
- Men’s shorts, sizes 30 – 38
- Men’s t-shirts, sizes L and XL
- Men’s light flannel shirts, sizes L – XL
- Men’s sneakers, sizes 10 – 13
- Women’s t-shirts, sizes L & XL
- Women’s shorts, sizes 7 – 12
- Women’s sneakers, sizes 7 – 10
- Shaving razors
- Blankets
- Sunscreen
Please drop off urgent items to Utah’s Place, located in Brunswick Basin, past the DMV, at 1262 Sutton Way. For all other donations that may benefit a homeless guest or the shelter in general, please take them to the backdoor of Bread & Roses, our thrift shop, located at 840 E Main Street, directly next door to Sierra Cinemas. Guests at our shelter are given shopping vouchers for the store to buy what they need, so your donation directly helps them. All other items are sold with 100% of the sales supporting the shelter’s operations. Thank you for sticking together so that we all get what we need.