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Health & Fitness

This Week Unsheltered in Palo Alto

Neighbors Helping Neighbors 1 & 2  --  Heroes of the Houseless (Vol 1)


This is to differentiate an organization that participates in a number of programs that support people around the issues of poverty, hunger, and homelessness from people doing that on an informal basis.

And to ask you--which seems right for you?

Larry Klein's views notwithstanding, there IS a strong tradition that is part of Palo Alto of helping one's neighbors--not through any organization, but just directly, person to person--just because they are your neighbor.

And, as it turns out, that neighborliness is the answer to people  being without shelter for any number of reasons.  Sometimes the reasons are obvious, sometimes not so obvious--but the idea of neighbors helping their neighbors is a beautiful and satisfying event.

1) NeighborsHelpingNeighbors aids families to avoid becoming homeless, and all to often, after they have become homeless.  They have many wonderful and helpful services you can find out about by going to their Faceook page and/or reading the articles in Palo Alto Online listed below.

Neighbors Helping Neighbors Palo Alto | Facebookhttps://www.facebook.com/

Catching neighbors who fall through the gap - Palo
Alto Online
www.paloaltoonline.com/weekly/story.php?story_id=18345‎

Catching neighbors who fall through the gap - Palo
Alto Online ...
www.paloaltoonline.com/square/index.php?i=3&t=20026‎

'Neighbors Helping Neighbors' Food Collection Events - Palo Alto ...paloaltoonline.com/.../calendar.php?...'Neighbors%20Helping%20Neigh..

2) Informal Neighbor to Neighbor helping

I'm writing from my Writing HQ, aka Starbucks.  Wayne Douglass just walked in. He has lived here in Palo Alto for about forty years.  Before his wife died, she and Wayne took in a guy who was shelterless and down on his luck in other ways as well.  The Douglasses took him in, gave him a place to sleep, helped him get connected with resources, shepherded him back to self-sufficiency. It was uncertain and worrisome at times.  But it turned out to be good for everyone.

Today he told me of a similar man who was thrown out of the house he lived in by an heir who wanted to sell it.  The man was without a place to live and an active alcoholic.  Several neighbors helped.  One took him in for a while.  So did others.  A woman across the street made some room in a storage area for him and has seen him through the bureaucracy of services and after a lot of time and numerous processes--lo and behold!--he's got a Veteran's housing place he's going to be moving into and he's cut way back on his drinking.

There are other local heroes of the houseless.  Look for them in your own neighborhood and in these pages.

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