The Beginning of the Bus
We are Ann-Marie Fitzsimmons and Niki Keck, friends and educators in the public education system in Chattanooga, Tennessee, who saw inadequacies in the services for our homeless and resolved to find a solution. We are the founders of Help Right Here, a proposed mobile bus service that will deliver survival support and career assistance to the underprivileged.
For its size, Chattanooga has a significant number of homeless citizens. Currently, we are the 139th largest city in the country with a population of around 177,000. We have seen a steady growth in population as new industries and ventures have settled in our city. New construction and gentrification have happened simultaneously. This has led to a lack of affordable housing in the downtown area, becoming a major factor in the homeless crisis in Chattanooga.
Three low-income establishments - Chatt City Suites, Economy Inn and Lookout Mountain Suites - have all recently, or will very shortly, close their doors. These places allow for a rent more affordable than most. Rooms can be rented for around $650 a month without a credit or background check.
What this comes down to is that services and transportation are often not in close proximity to where these disadvantaged citizens are now forced to live - and it doesn't seem likely to get any better, or even stabilize any time soon. It is disturbing that between 2016 and 2018, the HUD Point in Time survey showed an increase of 117 people living on the streets of our city.
This disconnect makes it much more difficult to take advantage of agencies that provide necessities crucial to surviving the elements like clothing, sleeping bags, tents, tarps and food, as well the career assistance essential for long term success in becoming employed and housed.
Meeting them where they are, with our bus, will alleviate some of this stress. Help Right Here’smission is to deliver these services straight to where our most vulnerable citizens reside. We will be a traveling storage unit and office that will provide clothing, tents, tarps, food and fuel, as well as offer GED services, teach resume writing and interview skills on-site. We will also have a shower available, and tools and parts to help with bike maintenance. We aren’t asking people to come to us; we are intent and content to go to them; to forge relationships and instill in them that we see them as members of our community, not as unimportant problems to be merely be dealt with.
Not as afterthoughts.
Our second hope is that by offering these services to our most at-risk citizens, empathy for and engagement with them will emerge from other sectors of the population in the form of volunteers and donors.
It’s a big endeavor, this project of ours, but it’s come too far. It’s too real. It’s too important.
Through a friend, we found a bus - one with solar panels, covered in prayer flags. We then worked with Causeway througout the winter with and incredible group of humans. They helped us focus our goals and our plan and NOW, we have the bus! She is on 10th Street, and she is about to get renovated! We are hoping to have her insured and ready to go by the end of June. We also hope to have established Help Right Here as a legitimate non-profit by early July.
We are starting another GoFundMe to help with costs, but we also have some other ideas on how to generate funds to keep the bus going!
To everyone who donated toward the purchase of the bus, thanks a million times over!! You should see the reactions of those who live in the camps and now have the possibility of showers where they live. Goose bump happiness.
Email with questions: helprightherechattanooga@gmail.com. Link to Volunteer Form . Link to Facebook
If you’re interested in what homelessness looks like here in Chattanooga, our students created a documentary showing just that! The link to our Facebook is A Drop in the Bucket.
It was shown at The Chattanooga Film Festival in April! We are super proud of their work.
For its size, Chattanooga has a significant number of homeless citizens. Currently, we are the 139th largest city in the country with a population of around 177,000. We have seen a steady growth in population as new industries and ventures have settled in our city. New construction and gentrification have happened simultaneously. This has led to a lack of affordable housing in the downtown area, becoming a major factor in the homeless crisis in Chattanooga.
Three low-income establishments - Chatt City Suites, Economy Inn and Lookout Mountain Suites - have all recently, or will very shortly, close their doors. These places allow for a rent more affordable than most. Rooms can be rented for around $650 a month without a credit or background check.
What this comes down to is that services and transportation are often not in close proximity to where these disadvantaged citizens are now forced to live - and it doesn't seem likely to get any better, or even stabilize any time soon. It is disturbing that between 2016 and 2018, the HUD Point in Time survey showed an increase of 117 people living on the streets of our city.
This disconnect makes it much more difficult to take advantage of agencies that provide necessities crucial to surviving the elements like clothing, sleeping bags, tents, tarps and food, as well the career assistance essential for long term success in becoming employed and housed.
Meeting them where they are, with our bus, will alleviate some of this stress. Help Right Here’smission is to deliver these services straight to where our most vulnerable citizens reside. We will be a traveling storage unit and office that will provide clothing, tents, tarps, food and fuel, as well as offer GED services, teach resume writing and interview skills on-site. We will also have a shower available, and tools and parts to help with bike maintenance. We aren’t asking people to come to us; we are intent and content to go to them; to forge relationships and instill in them that we see them as members of our community, not as unimportant problems to be merely be dealt with.
Not as afterthoughts.
Our second hope is that by offering these services to our most at-risk citizens, empathy for and engagement with them will emerge from other sectors of the population in the form of volunteers and donors.
It’s a big endeavor, this project of ours, but it’s come too far. It’s too real. It’s too important.
Through a friend, we found a bus - one with solar panels, covered in prayer flags. We then worked with Causeway througout the winter with and incredible group of humans. They helped us focus our goals and our plan and NOW, we have the bus! She is on 10th Street, and she is about to get renovated! We are hoping to have her insured and ready to go by the end of June. We also hope to have established Help Right Here as a legitimate non-profit by early July.
We are starting another GoFundMe to help with costs, but we also have some other ideas on how to generate funds to keep the bus going!
To everyone who donated toward the purchase of the bus, thanks a million times over!! You should see the reactions of those who live in the camps and now have the possibility of showers where they live. Goose bump happiness.
Email with questions: helprightherechattanooga@gmail.com. Link to Volunteer Form . Link to Facebook
If you’re interested in what homelessness looks like here in Chattanooga, our students created a documentary showing just that! The link to our Facebook is A Drop in the Bucket.
It was shown at The Chattanooga Film Festival in April! We are super proud of their work.
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