Feeding People Through Plants

You may have seen our orange tents pop up on your neighborhood, in your social media feed or on the local news here in Chicago the last couple of weeks. This mission to help better prepare people experiencing street homelessness for winter began about a year ago when I first laid eyes on how horrific the conditions were at every tent city I visited around the city. I thought to myself, hmmmm I’m donating money to nonprofits and we have tax dollars earmarked to address homelessness, so why do the conditions seem to get worse and the populations seem to be steadily increasing? The more I went by the camps, the more I saw that there is very little support out there, especially when it comes to helping people survive winter, so the natural problem solver in me wanted to help. I was a guy armed with his little following of 10k followers on Instagram, a venmo account, and his old blue truck and dogs to ride along. After camps were destroyed I build them back better with ice fishing tents last winter, and what we found was that they were better suited to withstand the harsh conditions people had to endure out here. We built about 35 last winter and got 6 people off the street into housing and sobriety programs. This tent building season began 2 weeks ago and we’ve already built 50 tents with the help of volunteers and donors. One tent at a time, one helper at a time, one dollar at a time and one life at a time. These life affirming and life saving tents are serving as a life line to people who have no where else to go and are going to find themselves fighting for their lives out here in a few weeks once winter really hits. Last year 67 people froze to death on these streets and this year my goal is to not find a tent out here that isn’t one of our orange or small black winterized tents. I keep getting calls about camps and calls about people who need help and I want to be able to say yes to these calls, but unfortunately we are at the end of the line. We are on our last $1000 and need your help and support to keep our organization running, help us hire our first key employees, relaunch our 5 day a week hot meal delivery program, build as many tents as we need to along with the support services people need like heat and propane delivery. This isn’t the ideal solution to homelessness. What we want is housing for everyone now. But while out local, state and federal governments fumble this issue so epically and ignore peoples needs, this is the best that we can do to improve the conditions out here and offers our friends and neighbors a better chance at survival this winter. The city and the locals who don’t want these tents in their front yards have come for us and we have stood up to these bullies as a community of supporters backed by thousands and the support of the media. We demand systemic change so that we don’t have to build another tent ever again, but until then we’re going to continue to take the lead on improving conditions out here and offering people a life line to survival this winter. Please help us so that we could continue to say yes to people that tell us they need a tent like this. People that tell us they need propane. People that tell us they’re hungry. Help us say yes to everyone that needs a helping hand this winter.