Fresh Start Durham serves the homeless with wheels shows – Indy Week

This story originally published online at the 9th Street magazine.

In the first light of the dawn, the truck fits into the gravel batch behind the Trinity United Methodist Church and volunteers in puffy jackets rushed to unload the deliveries, and their breath rose in plums in the crunchy morning air. The truck is kept on a mobile unit offering something that many homeless otherwise lacks: free access to shower.

Ibrahim Tabeth, a middle -aged man with a beard of salt and pepper and a gray hat that has long used shower service, approaches Mary Wilson, founder of Fresh Start Durham, and hugs her.

“I’m so glad to see my second family, but I’m really ready to shave,” he says with a giggles, starting in a story about the last events of his life.

Fresh Start Durham, founded in 2018, offers shower services to the homeless on Tuesday morning from 7:30 to 11am Main Street.

Its mobile shower trailer, equipped with five shower stalls and a 600-liter detention tank, can provide up to 32 showers per day. Non -profit partners with local organizations such as Trinity Methodist for access to water and electricity.

The idea behind it is simple: to provide basic services that many take for granted, but which are often inaccessible to those without a stable home. Non -profit purpose provides free showers in a private stall, along with clean socks, linen, shirts and clean towels.

Mary Wilson, 54 -year -old, the founder of the group, cleans the shower stalls between customers by cleaning the floor with a disinfectant.

For Wilson, providing showers is a “basic form of love and respect.”

“If you live on the street and are dirty and have no hairstyle or shaving, you are marginalized in society,” she says. “The very state of pure is expected if you want to integrate into society at all.”

For most Fresh Start customers, this will be their chance to bathe this week. Homeless shelters provide only resident showers – and local waiting lists are weeks, if not months, long.

Durham had about 415 people who experienced homelessness in January 2024, which is 10% compared to the previous year. (The numbers of this issue have not yet been released in January.) Most of Tuesday, the Fresh Start registration leaf for showers is filled before 8:30 in the morning, and volunteers have to divert people.

As a crowd of 50 people gather – some carrier backpacks, others walk dogs or pushing carts – virtues congratulate every person.

Inside the shower, the smell of soap and lotion, and the sound of water spraying for plastic fill the small space. Landed on the door handles of the stalls are the labels of the names of the people who occupy them.

The steam rises slightly from the showers, while it is right opposite them, the barber hired by a fresh start has put combs, scissors and a table trimming in preparation for the morning.

The calm rhythm of the morning is broken by a sharp cry near the registration tent. Two men are locked in a collapse from folding chairs. One, sinewy man in a torn coat stumbles into the ground, squeezing his country.

“I think a man was just cut with a box cutter,” Joe Wilson shouted, Mary’s husband

Mary Wilson sprints in action, running to the injured man while shouting for her husband to throw her first aid kit. The two quickly help the injured man in a folding chair to examine the wound while another man cringed nearby, calling for peace.

The partner of the injured man, apparently shaken, tells Wilson what happened: the box cutter used in the attack was the man’s own, stolen from him moments earlier and used against him in the dispute.

For everyone’s relief, the cut is shallow, hardly breaks the skin. Still, a member of Heart, Durham’s Non -Well – which sometimes stops on Tuesday – calls EMS as a precautionary measure and the man is loaded into an ambulance.

“He was in the position of the fetus, so I’m like” We’ll see some intestines right now, “says Wilson. “But it was nothing. These things happen. We are learning to deal with them right now. ”

Wilson’s dedication to support vulnerable people began long before he founded Fresh Start Durham. She has worked as a nurse for nearly two decades, beginning in 1993, including eight years at the Samaryan Health Center, a free clinic serving uninsured by Durham.

During this time he worked in critical care, Wilson often took care of homeless people. She quickly recognized two urgent needs for people who experience homelessness: access to showers and laundry.

After repaying student loans, Wilson focused his focus on dealing with these dissatisfied needs. She and her husband bought a building in the center of Durham in 2017, hoping to create a center for a daytime community with showers, laundry and kitchen facilities, along with literacy programs and an emergency shelter.

However, the project faced unforeseen obstacles when urban regulations classify the building as a laundry facility, activating the requirements for expensive superstructures.

Wilson Joe’s husband knew about a San Francisco program, Lava Mae, which provided mobile shower services to the homeless before stopping his operations. Inspired by this example, the couple bought a mobile unit in December 2020, intending to use it to provide free showers. Then the pandemic struck.

They finally managed to get into the Durham Community in October 2021. Since then, they have only missed one week and have provided showers throughout the seasons, including winter vacations. However, work does not stop with a shower or hairstyle. Volunteers also offer space for people to be seen, heard and supported.

“There are people here whom no one will give eye contact because they are scared,” says Mary Wilson. “So, I think the human connection is important to all.”

The 20 -year -old dalia Robinson, junior at Duke University, who voluntarily agrees with a new start.

“It’s just important to take up a place and take the time to listen to what they are going through …” Robinson says. “Everyone comes from somewhere, they all have some reason why they are there.”

While she speaks, five members of the Open Table Ministry, another local non -profit purpose, serving the homeless, weave through the crowd, assigning the numbers of people who can use to access the Open Table Weekly Shop. Volunteers also distribute water, coffee and home soup.

Sean Hardy, an associate director of Open Table, says Fresh Start’s popularity has spread largely through mouth.

“I learned this early, but the community has such a vine that is incredibly strong,” Hardy said.

Fresh Start Durham relies on donations and volunteer support to continue his work.

Keith Ward has been using Fresh Start services for two years. Wearing a dark green knit sweater, Ward sips his hot chocolate (courtesy of the open table) and waits for its turn for a shower.

“You know, if you have nothing, you can come and start,” he says. “Come and take your child and come. This is a good program. Thanks to the Lord for that. ”

Wilson says there are many rewards, especially when people come back and report good development in their lives.

“Many times people will come before they go to work interview and then return and tell us that they have found a job, so we have to celebrate with them,” she says.

She dreams of the day when her services will not be needed.

“I would enjoy this thing to go to a landfill and never need it,” she says. “So far, hygiene is really important. Very, very, very important. “

Returning to the trailer, the soft sound of flowing with water fills the small space. Charlie Lemon stepped out of the bathroom, his face is already cleaning clean, ready to start his day.

“[Fresh Start has] Make a positive impact and a real difference, “he says.

“This is such a blessing in my life.”

This story is published through a partnership between Indy and Magazine on 9th Streetwhich is made by journalism students at the Center for Media and Democracy of Duke University University. Comment on this story to [email protected]S

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