Moving into Summer

Back in December 2020, we made a post called “What’s the Temperature?” that highlighted the correlation between the temperature outside and the number of people living on the streets in Racine. Sure enough, the temperature is up and the number of contacts made by street outreach teams at night has started increasing over the last week or two. In the winter, most people with whom we had contact were sleeping in their cars or trucks. Now the teams are starting to have more contact with people who are sleeping outside on the ground.

As we move into summer, our thermal socks and cold weather sleeping bags are going into storage until the first chills of autumn. We have already started using lighter blankets and crew socks. Hand warmers are no longer a standard items in out kit and we’ll start carrying insect repellant soon. Some things are the same though: water, burritos and noodles, coffee, hygiene supplies, and especially conversation and linkages to housing opportunities for people experiencing homelessness.

Last summer we were at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. HOPES continued doing street outreach with a reduced number of people on our street outreach teams. We hope that as we go through the summer of 2021 we are also moving into a post-pandemic period. We are not sure what that will look like on the streets, but this summer we will continue conducting outreach with a small team. We don’t plan on having our usual summer expansion with new teams and new street outreach volunteers. If we see the need for additional teams based on the numbers on the streets, we will likely “activate” some of our experienced volunteers to come back out and fill the gap. Whatever the summer brings in terms of street outreach, we will be ready.