A group of homeless outreach workers approaches a man in the Road Home van Jan. 21, 2015 in Downtown Detroit. The group facilitates permanent housing or temporary shelter for those suffering from homelessness. Certified peer support specialists from the Neighborhood Service Organization's Tumaini Center, each having experienced homelessness and drug addiction in the past, drive around the city looking for homeless people, offering them help and a path to housing. (Tanya Moutzalias | MLive Detroit)

'This is my life now... and it hurts' - Inside the shelters of Michigan's huge homeless population

Homeless outreach workers believe there are between 16,000 and 22,000 people in Detroit, Highland Park and Hamtramck who don't have a place of their own to lay their head down at night.

The statewide estimate is 86,000, according to the Homeless Action Network of Detroit. That's nearly 15 percent of the latest nationwide homeless count of 578,424, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

For those who spend their days caring for that population, and trying to reduce the number, the job can be both gratifying and demoralizing.

Funding often revolves around major events, sporting or entertainment attractions that bring tourists and shine a light on street dwellers for fleeting moments at a time. Detroit's 2006 Super Bowl sparked funding for a mobile team of outreach workers that's still fighting for resources today.

In the slides ahead:

-A look inside the psyche of a hurting Detroit homeless man, the efforts of three people who have been there and believe they can help him and their struggle to stay funded and effective.

-A reporter's first-person account of a night on the streets of Lansing with volunteers in search of homeless people for a critical, bi-annual count that takes place across the state.

-A look at one Detroit shelter's desperate efforts to keep people warm in record breaking winter temperatures.

-An uplifting moment for a homeless family given an extraordinary gift.

-And a look at the Super Bowl's lasting effect on Detroit, nine years after the Motor City hosted the event, including the founding of a passionate homeless outreach group that's still trying to stay afloat.

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(Video: Tanya Moutzalias | MLive)

On the streets and inside the shelters in the fight against homelessness

Clutching his swollen ankle in a dim Downtown Detroit shelter, Gregg Douglas' eyes welled up as he called depression the root of his chronic homelessness, and said he's desperately in need of a change.

Slumped on a bench in the back room of a church filled with fellow transients and blaring voices from a television, he said it's the loneliness that hurts most, even as he rubbed his softball-sized ankle.

"My feet are rotting," he said. "This is my life now. And it hurts. Every day, I walk all day and I walk all night and it hurts."

Douglas can't pinpoint the last time he held keys to a home of his own.

He mentioned a trailer in Georgia, years ago.

The 45-year-old does remember the last time he slept inside a house.

It was a drug house, just a few weeks ago.

Loneliness led him there, Douglass said.

"I don't like being by myself," he said. "A man should have a companion."

After weeks of wandering Detroit following the end of a relationship with a woman who stayed at the drug house, Douglas, breaking into tears, said he was finally fed up with living on the streets.

That's where James Carey came in.

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Gregg Douglas is overwhelmed with emotion when asked about his life in a discussion with homeless outreach workers at Christ Church, one of many warming shelters in Downtown Detroit. Douglas said he's homeless and suffering from depression and intense pain from two swollen ankles. The Road Home, a group of outreach workers from the Neighborhood Service Organization, searches the streets of Detroit for homeless people, offering help and a path to housing Jan. 21, 2015. (Tanya Moutzalias | MLive Detroit)

The paradox

"I've been there. Don't give up," said Carey, who, once homeless and addicted himself, is now a member of a fiercely dedicated, three-member team of savvy outreach workers known as The Road Home.

They spend their days driving a van through Detroit's central neighborhoods, looking for homeless people, delicately offering them help, hoping to gently convince them to start the paperwork and the document gathering necessary to get them into permanent housing.

"There's a paradox," Carey said, describing the mental state of many of the people he tries to help: "'I want to end my homelessness, but I'm so attached to street life.' I can sit with someone and talk about my experience and my journeys. That dynamic offers a great opportunity."

The team started as a much larger group with a different name around the time when Detroit hosted the Super Bowl in 2006, when officials wanted panhandlers and street dwellers out of sight.

That's how it works when it comes to gathering resources to battle homelessness, the outreach workers said.



Major events shine a light on the homeless, and a combination of concern for their well-being and for the experiences of tourists drives funding for programming to tackle the issue.

It happened in January, just before the auto show.

A group of homeless people responded to frigid temperatures and scarce shelter space by setting up an encampment in a field just east of Downtown Detroit. With the North American International Auto Show approaching, and weather conditions worsening, the city took notice.

Officials turned to The Road Home, based at the Neighborhood Service Organization's Tumaini Center, for help.

The team delivered.

In one day, 12 of 14 people in the close-knit group that was staying at the tent city agreed to move to temporary housing funded by the city.

The Road Home has since been working to move the group to permanent housing, which the team expects to happen this week.

There's a very straightforward and effective method to address homelessness, but it takes time, said to Justin Petrusak, clinical supervisor at the Tumaini Center.

"If people are experiencing homelessness, they don't need a sandwich or a blanket... They need a house," Petrusak said.

It takes building relationships, gathering paperwork, using databases and pulling together the income and subsidies that put keys to homes into the hands of the homeless. Overcoming trauma, addiction and mental illness are obstacles, but not insurmountable ones, Petrusak said.

"It's just a matter of building trust over time with outreach done by the right people," Petrusak said.

James Carey, Lydia Adkins and Philip Ramsey appear to be the right people.

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The Road Home facilitates permanent housing or temporary shelter for those suffering from homelessness. Certified peer support specialists from the Neighborhood Service Organization's Tumaini Center, each having experienced homelessness and drug addiction in the past, drive around Downtown Detroit looking for homeless people, offering help and a path to housing Jan. 21, 2015. (Tanya Moutzalias | MLive Detroit)

A sixth sense

Ramsey is the driver, and the elder of the group.

Addiction occupied 30 years of his life before sobriety took hold 17 years ago.

The 67-year-old knows the streets, the substances, the urges, the epiphanies, the hopes and the letdowns that homeless people experience every day.

"Living on the streets will increase your drug use," Ramsey said. "You're out there. It's cold. It's all you have to live for... When you have housing, you have other options."

He said recovery is just a matter of being fed up and ready.

"As far as drug use, you know when you're ready," he said. "The pain just out-weighed the pleasure and I was tired of being tired. I learned a lot of skills on how to live without drugs. I've been drug-free for 17 years. I still attend support groups."

Now he spends his days trying to nudge others in that direction. His coworkers say he has a sixth sense for finding people in need.

The group visits warming centers and soup kitchens.

They search under viaducts and in parking garages.

They offer rides from one shelter to another, sometimes delivering driver's licenses and other documents that get mailed to the Tumaini Center for people with no home address.

In between the good deeds, they tell their stories.

"What we provide is just a little bit of hope," Ramsey said. "It's sort of like we're planting a seed to let them know that we've been there. We've done that. I never thought that, when I was homeless, that I'd be working in the field helping somebody else."

Some come running when they see the tan-colored Ford van with the Road Home logo, having heard of others finding help through the group.

Josh Emmons did.

The 27-year-old rushed over to Ramsey's window one recent, snowy morning.

He blames a house fire for his homelessness.

He lives under a bridge.

After waving Ramsey down, he filled out paperwork to start the process for housing.

"Sometimes I don't feel like being here," he said. "... I can start getting my life back together."

Others ignore the van and brush off the team's overtures.

The three outreach workers don't press. They offer the help and keep moving.

"You've got to be careful the way you approach them," Ramsey said. "We try to help, but it doesn't always work if they're not ready at that time."

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Lydia Adkins talks about her personal experiences with homelessness before becoming a peer support specialist at the Neighborhood Service Organization's Tumaini Center, Jan. 21, 2015. (Tanya Moutzalias | MLive Detroit)

'You can do it, too'

Adkins, before she worked at the Tumaini Center, stayed there as a homeless addict in need of shelter.

"I sat in the chairs here from 2004 to 2008," she said. "I was addicted to drugs, primarily crack cocaine... When I was out here, I was taking abundant risks, jumping in and out of cars, going with strange people I didn't know... I can really relate to what goes on because I lived it."

It was time and consistent encouragement from other recovering addicts that finally brought her out of it, she said.

"Mr. Ramsey was one of my counselors," she said. "He used to always encourage me and tell me 'You don't need to be down here.' ... It took some time for me to finally decide that I wanted to do something different. I got to hear from other people who were in recovery themselves. I just decided I didn't want to be here anymore."

After two and a half years of out-patient treatment, she got clean on Jan. 7, 2008.

As she travels the city alongside Ramsey, clipboard in hand, looking to take names and slowly change lives, she keeps her own story tucked away, waiting for the right moment.

"I only tell my story at the appropriate time -- when I see a person in need of hope," she said. "I let them know: 'If I did this process, then you can do it, too.' A lot of people -- they find it unbelievable."

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James Carey, right, a certified peer support specialist at the Neighborhood Service Organization's Tumaini Center and The Road Home, consoles Gregg Douglas, a homeless man taking shelter at Christ Church in Downtown Detroit on Jan. 21, 2015. (Tanya Moutzalias | MLive Detroit)

'Try again. Try again. Try again.'

Carey is the newest member of the team.

He was homeless in 2011 before recovering and joining the Tumaini Center staff in August 2014.

He said he's seen about 70 people placed in permanent housing since then.

"Just taking that stress away... You see a person's life totally change," Carey said. "That's the great part of being a part of this... I go home floating."

His memories of the worst of the times remain fresh, and he's the quickest to put them to work.

"I was homeless, penniless, spiritually bankrupt," Carey said. "But through the process of recovery, I was able to go back to school, get my education, come to NSO, and now I'm in a position to help the people who are where I once was... I haven't looked back since. I'm a prime example that it can happen."

One homeless woman who asked the group for a ride was reluctant to accept more help. She said she'd had bad experiences with shelters.

"Try again. Try again. Try again. Try again," Carey told her, saying he'd picked up a tendency to repeat himself from Ramsey.

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James Carey, left, a certified peer support specialist at the Neighborhood Service Organization's Tumaini Center and The Road Home, consoles Gregg Douglas, a homeless man taking shelter at Christ Church in Downtown Detroit on Jan. 21, 2015. (Tanya Moutzalias | MLive Detroit)

'Dying is not an option'

Gregg Douglas also said it wasn't the first time he's sought help from shelters, and tried to get on a path to housing.

Past efforts failed, and he was skeptical it would work this time around.

"I don't know how I'm going to make it out of this," he said. "I'm physically tired. I'm sick of falling asleep sitting up (in the chairs of homeless shelters). I can't get the swelling down on my ankles.

"I don't know if know if it's going to work out this time, because my depression is running overdrive."

Carey tried responding, but Douglas cut him off.

"Every night I want to die so bad," he said, in tears.

He then descended into some bizarre assertions about being capable of fortune telling before circling back around to a very clear revelation.

"My depression is worse than drugs and alcohol ever has caused," Douglas said.

"How are you going to fix a drug problem when you can't fix the depression first?"

"Stick with us, now," Carey told him. "It's a process... Look what God's got me doing now."

Raising his voice, he added: "Dying is not an option."

"If it's meant to get some help, I'm going to do whatever it takes," Douglas said.

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Gregg Douglas took off his boots and rubbed his swollen ankles while describing his circumstances to homeless outreach workers at Christ Church, one of many warming shelters in Downtown Detroit, Jan. 21, 2015. Douglas said he's homeless and suffering from depression and intense pain in his ankles as a result of walking city streets day and night. The Road Home, a group of outreach workers from the Neighborhood Service Organization, searches the streets of Detroit for homeless people every weekday, offering help and a path to housing. (Tanya Moutzalias | MLive Detroit)

Triage

It's a slow process, but it works, Petrusak said.

"It needs to be on your own terms, your own timeline," Petrusak said. "We're providing that timeline. It's not about challenging someone. You have to start out with a relationship... We use triage tools that basically diagnose homelessness."

The Road Home strategy is one geared not toward managing homelessness, but ending it, he said.

The group once had a 24-7 staff working the streets at all times. Funding cuts have brought that down to three people on a single daytime shift.

But the team goes about their work with a rare confidence in their effectiveness, evidenced by their own recoveries.

"The people we serve know that we know them and they know that we give a (care)."

But weeks after Carey's encounter with Douglas, the group hadn't been able to end the man's homelessness.

The pre-auto show attention left them preoccupied with the effort to get permanent housing for the people who were cleared from the encampment, Petrusak said.

"It's breaking our freaking hearts," Petrusak said. "When somebody walks into a restaurant and says they're hungry, that's when you feed them."

But the Road Home team couldn't revisit Douglas' case because the encampment group took priority, as a result of budget concerns.

Funding for The Road Home is set to run dry at the end of March, and the group hopes succeeding in fully addressing the plight of the homeless people cleared from the encampment will help ensure funds are set aside for the team once again.

And it hasn't been easy, Petrusak said.

"The auto show said that it was time for them to get housed, but they were not ready," he said.

"A lot of them were totally not ready for housing... We've had to do some intensive work."

Overcoming years of trauma from living on the streets, and events that preceded homelessness, has made adjusting difficult for some those who were rushed to temporary housing, Petrusak said.

"Homelessness is a traumatic experience," he said. "Your brain has been traumatized and all sorts of things start to happen to you. Just laying down in a bed for the first time in a long time, that can bring back memories of every bed you've ever laid in."

That's led to some breakdowns and the need for non-stop efforts from outreach workers to keep the group housed and on track.

Members of the encampment group were being moved into a pair of Midtown apartment buildings at the end of February.

Douglas, not as lucky, remained homeless.

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A makeshift structure in the woods near a northern portion of the Lansing River Trail, discovered during a volunteer-driven point-in-time count seeking statistics on the state's homeless population, Jan. 28, 2015. (Emily Lawler | MLive)

Emily Lawler | elawler@mlive.com

Homeless and human: Annual count draws on volunteers to reach Michigan's most vulnerable

I'm not sure what I expected searching for homeless people to sound like, but there's a serenity to it.

There's a crust of ice over the weeks-old snow we're treading late into the night, and it crunches with each footfall. Our steps mingled with the sounds of branches rustling and the stillness of the scene. Just south of us is the Lansing River Trail, but we're in the woods up behind it seeking fresh footprints or other signs of inhabitants.

Continue here.

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Detroit Rescue Missions runs a faith-based shelter and warming center on Third Street in Detroit's Midtown neighborhood. The shelter has 69 bunks beds for those seeking a warm place to sleep. When the beds are full, the shelter uses chairs to give more people a place to stay. The (Tanya Moutzalias | MLive Detroit)

Detroit homeless seek warmth amid record-low temperatures

When fingertips feel ready to shatter, faces sting, cheeks redden and nostrils stick together due to bitter cold, it's time to head inside.

That's easier said than done for an estimated 20,000-plus Detroit-area homeless who rely on shelters as the only means to shield them from the elements.

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Lynnetta Bradley hugs Sonya Bailey, an intake specialist who first welcomed her to Detroit Rescue Mission, after the organization gave a Bradley and her three children, who were once homeless, a house.

Gus Burns | MLive

Shelter surprises former homeless women with life-changing gifts

Lynnetta Bradley's smile spread as she approached the front of the room at Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries in the Cass Corridor during a Martin Luther King Jr. celebration Friday. Cheers surrounded her.

Bradley had just received a surprise, a life-changing one, a home in west Detroit for herself and her three children, ages 3, 4 and 6.

Continue here.

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A 2009 photo of homeless outreach workers from Project Helping Hands, a group that formed when Detroit hosted the Super Bowl in 2006. The team continues to operate, but with a shrunken staff of three former addicts dedicated to finding permanent housing and help for Detroit's homeless. (Photo: Neighborhood Service Organization)

Mobile homeless outreach program among lasting effects of Super Bowl XL

Super Bowl XL drew 100,000 people and millions of dollars in outside spending to Detroit as the world's attention briefly focused on the Motor City and Ford Field for the NFL's massive event.

The city spent years preparing for the 2006 game and many of those preparations live on in Detroit nearly a decade after the Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Seattle Seahawks.

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