BOTS, Hartford’s first and only street newspaper

“written by the homeless, the formerly homeless and those close to them, aims to expose the challenges they face and, eventually, help to raise money to support them” [quoted from the Hartford Courant].

Courant staff writer Jenna Carlesso and staff photographer Cloe Poisson teamed up to document the entire production cycle of BOTS - from article writing to newspaper layout to distribution – and produced a picture perfect snapshot of the BOTS team and process.

The article, “From Homeless, News Hot Off City Streets: Homeless Hawkers Selling Beat of the Street,” featured interviews with BOTS staff/writers Joan Artis and Harry Mitchell as well as Donna Berman, Executive Director of the Charter Oak Cultural Center and Nathan Fox, BOTS editor and contributor.

Artis explained that she’s “trying to break the stereotypes of homeless people. There’s a lot of good out there that people don’t understand.” Mitchell added “Homeless people don’t have enough of a voice in this city. I think it’s a problem that’s grossly ignored.” The article also explained some of the efforts BOTS is hoping to undertake to increase distribution of the paper, including selling subscriptions, selling the paper at public events and raising money through grants.

Over the 2-month period that the article came to fruition, Poisson (Courant photographer) became a defacto member of the team, joining BOTS for countless meetings to capture every BOTS-related-moment possible through her lens. When questions arose regarding journalism ethics, such as photographing individuals on the street, Poisson was quick to jump in and offer her expert insight. Along the way she took thousands of photographs and hours of video, which will hopefully be available to share online in the near future.

The BOTS team is thrilled to have worked with Cloe and Jenna in composing this very important article, and is forever grateful for the increased exposure resulting it. Hopefully through this increased awareness BOTS will further connect the residents of the Greater Hartford community to the homelessness that exists in their backyard.

To Learn More:

Hartford Courant Article
Beat of the Street Facebook Page

Let me tell you what the Beat of the Street newspaper is about. We are a volunteer-based group of people - some of us are homeless and some of us work for organizations that help homeless people. But we are all passionate about helping people who are homeless.

Hey - come check us out. We are here at 21 Charter Oak Ave, Hartford every Tuesday and Thursday at 2:30PM.

Or email us at hartbeatofthestreet@gmail.com.

HUD/VASH is a joint program between the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) that provides stable and independent housing to veterans who experience homelessness. The program requirements are listed below:

• You need to be “chronically homeless” for 1 year or have had 4 episodes of homelessness in the past 3 years.
• Veterans must be eligible for VA healthcare and have the willingness to accept case management services.
• A HUD/VASH referral form must be submitted.
• Referrals can be submitted by a VA primary coordinator.
• Referrals are then prioritized based on level of chronic homelessness.
• Once you receive an eligible referral you are then reviewed by a HUD/VASH screening team.
• The HUD/VASH case manager will help develop a Section 8 application with a public housing authority, and then a Section 8 voucher will be awarded to you.
• The veteran must adhere to services and treatments outlined in the veteran service and housing agreement.

For more information, call one of these numbers:

HCHV / Homeless Clinic Hotline – (203) 710-6529
Doris Adams , Newington – (860) 666-6951 x 6916
VASH Program Coordinator – (203) 479-8092
Donna Vibes, Newington – (860) 666-6951 x 6562

A recent visit to the Immaculate Conception Homeless Shelter made me come to the realization that on the sur-face, reality is a perspective. Just a couple of weeks ago reality was returning to Miami to a world of parties, family and friends, and music festivals. At Trinity, reality is what we conceive within our bubble and the glimpses I see while tutoring at a local middle school every week.

Yet at Immaculate, reality meant a body and bag search at entrance, seeing as men waited outside in the cold to enter the closest thing to a home they had. Reality was speaking to a young man, also from Colombia, who could not have possibly been older than me and being too afraid to ask what his age was.

Person & Pigeons.

Reality, after serving food and conducting casual interviews of several other volunteers and homeless people, was what you felt and saw when you walked through the real streets of Hartford.

Immaculate Conception, one of the many homeless shelters in Hartford, is known as a “wet” shelter, which means it allows any homeless person to enter regardless of their state as long as they pass the search at entrance before 7 pm. Although my experience with the staff members, who were several times larger than me, at entrance was very rough, after speaking to them their genuine care and com-passion for each of the men in the shelter was felt.

In fact, most of them had been homeless and were helped by Immmaculate to provide consistency and order in their lives. After asking what made them come back, one of the staff members replied

“Man, just imagine. It’s 20 degrees out, middle of the night, and you somehow managed to sneak into an empty building or park undetected…and then it rains on you, with no bathroom no nothing. Living that and the feeling it is to have a roof to come to every night and a job to look forward to is what makes me come. People not like you guys, my group don’t come and just don’t care, and criticize instead.”

After entering the main room, I saw what was formerly a church converted into a massive common room-like structure where every possible inch was covered with bunk beds and mattresses thrown on the floor. I was told this was done to allow as many people to stay as possible and that even yet on many nights this was not enough.

Although I came at a particularly busy time as the leftovers of the pre-vious night’s dinner were being served as lunch, there was a clear reaction to our arrival. While some shelter residents were shy, the overwhelming majority were more than eager to speak.

“I need a voice, I just have so much to say and don’t nobody want to hear it” one of the men explained to me. The same man was ecstatic after I told him about Beat of the Street and how it could serve as an exposition of his struggle with homelessness.

After speaking to several men I also learned that the biggest problem now is a large increase in youth homelessness, even with the minimum age at 18. This is obviously a product of our society’s effort to ignore the issue of homelessness. As the issue is ignored its causes and effects are also not considered, producing both a greater amount of youth susceptible to the horrors of homelessness.

“And with the economy the way it is, who do you think was the first to go? The college grad or me? Bad thing is they probably fired him later too,” one of the young men remarked.

Just widening your scope, your focus, produces a deeper and more conscious reality. It produces a reality that expands to consider the lives of others struggling to even keep their lives in a world that chooses to ignore them.

I will never forget what one of the men told me – “All I need is a little help, just an extra effort from these people, you people, and maybe I’ll be on the other side of that table.”

Homelessness has come a long way since the days of the vagrant hobo walking down the railways of past Americana. With his few meager belongings wrapped up in a bandana tied to the end of a stick, looking and hoping to find a place to sleep for the night, he would look in an empty railroad boxcar or maybe a secluded spot somewhere in the semi-wilderness on the outskirts of a small town to take a load off, then build a small inconspicuous camp fire, roasting a frankfurter accompanied by a can of beans. Compared to the present times, the image is considered nostalgic and the hobo himself is an almost mythical lovable down on his luck character of American history. 

Well these days, the homeless don’t appear to be so lovable to the general public anymore. As a matter of fact, we are now viewed as walking and talking eyesores of the community, due to the negative prejudices of some of society in regards to who we are and what we care about. Through my own personal experiences, I found that an abundance of society now looks upon us as a bunch of lazy, not ambitious, alcoholic, drug addicted, career criminal offenders who are just a waste of skin taking up space. In a few cases, this might be considered true, though even the few bad apples are not a waste of skin, as I believe everyone is put here to serve a positive purpose, whether they know it or not.

Also some of the women that live in the homeless realm aren’t always viewed favorably in the judgmental eye of the public as well. Sometimes they are seen as nothing more than crack and dope addicted mothers who don’t take care of their little ones and will perform sexual favors for very little or nothing to some selfish SOB taking advantage of the fact that she’s got a habit. Again, in a few cases some of these things may ring true, but to say that these are the primary reasons that people become homeless is total BS.

The reasons people become homeless are multiple and varied like the different shades and skin tones of the complexions in African Americans. The reasons range from being out of work, mental health issues, lack of affordable housing, family issues and unfortunate set of circumstances that present themselves at inopportune times in our lives.

Being without a permanent residence doesn’t make us people of an unsavory nefarious character. All it means is that at some place and time in our lives, something went wrong. So in Society’s opinion, it becomes our personal responsibility to try to fix what is broken, with practically little or no help from the current powers at be.

You see, I think about these things quite often. Mostly while I’m in my bed or bunk or mattress on the floor of whichever shelter I happen to be in at that time. I think while the sometimes overly pungent smell of feet, flatulence and B.O permeates the air as I’m gradually being lulled to sleep by the cacophonic high volume sounds of snoring by the great Hartford nasal shelter symphony. (It’s amazing what one can become accustomed to after prolonged exposure).

Nevertheless, I think. And do you know what my thoughts tell me? Well in my opinion, although I know my opinion might not mean a hill of beans to some, simply being homeless isn’t the sole problem.

I believe that a large portion of the problem lies in the fact that there simply aren’t enough special programs and services in our city and state social service structures to accommodate the needs of Hartford’s residents as well as the rest of the Connecticut homeless.

Furthermore, our city and state’s governing bodies and policy makers don’t appear to harbor any lamenting concern in regards to this unfortunate and longstanding situation of some of it’s citizens. I also find it inexcusable that no one is even making an honest effort, whether they feel it would be futile or not, to at the very least try to partially expunge this deplorable state of affairs that our state’s men, women, and children are subjected to.

One of the arguments I’m always confronted with is, “well they have shelters, what more do they want?” Well, that question itself is as asinine as the ass that would ask that question, and I’ll tell you why. Because a shelter is a shelter, it’s a place to go during inclement weather or even when the weather is tolerable and pleasant. It is a place to lay your head and get a good night’s sleep, off the street, to eat and bathe, even though shelters are meant to be temporary.

At times coming in and being shielded from either the cold or rain and receiving a hot meal and a place to sleep can be as satisfying as basking in the realm of post-coital bliss with a significant other by your side. However, it’s only temporary and it doesn’t fix the problem; it only helps ease the pain.

Shelters have some services, such as case management, to try and help you attain housing or to help you figure out what it is you want to do in regards to your situation and what can be done to change and improve it. However, housing lists are long and playing the hurry up and wait game can become tedious rather quickly, and employment specialists can only do so much when there aren’t jobs available.

Not to mention the fact that we have people out here with college degrees who cant find employment, so you know it’s going to be a bit more difficult for someone who may have just a high school diploma, G.E.D. or neither.

In a sense, there really isn’t enough of anything in this state anymore. Not enough shelters, not enough affordable and subsidized housing, not enough programs and services that actually help, not enough money in the state budget (so they say). But I believe that like I believe in the blue fairy.

Even harder to believe is the fact that there really aren’t enough shelters to accommodate the amount of homeless in Hartford. And rumor has it (don’t give me any backlash about this because I heard it from a source) that one of our men’s shelters will be shut down and moved sometime in the future. Also from what I understand, they want to build it way out in the North Meadows somewhere or around Jennings Road. Could you imagine an actual exodus of homeless men traveling back and forth everyday like an assemblage of religious zealots in search of a promise land? That would be insane!

Trying to attain bus passes and tokens from the programs that currently exist is like trying to pull teeth. So what are people supposed to do? Walk, run, ride a bike everyday? And seriously, there isn’t even anything out there except the police station and jail. I don’t know about you, but I find this whole scenario very disturbing.

There also aren’t enough public restrooms available for Hartford’s patrons, which can mean getting arrested for urinating behind a tree or bush in the park when you need to go. While I’m not trying to say anything disparaging about the police, I’m sure some of you would agree that given all the murders and other serious crimes that occur, it would seem to me that Hartford’s so-called finest could and should find better things to do than harass homeless citizens for relieving themselves. What do they want? People to wet themselves or have the shelter hand out depend under-garments when we leave for the day? It’s ridiculous.

It’s also ridiculous the way our cities and state are run with no regards to the plight of the homeless. Even the residential citizens of our city don’t want shelters open or built in our own neighborhoods. They take on the same attitudes of our politicians saying, “You can build or have one, just not in my back yard.” Come on folks, we are people too. As a matter of fact, we’re your friends, relatives, coworkers and neighbors. Don’t shun us because of our present dilemma. Whether it was self-inflicted due to some bad choices or just simply fell on hard times, we shouldn’t be harshly judged because we happen to be the recipients of a stupendous life problem that is currently afflicting our quality of life.

Meanwhile, the bureaucrats sit in their political ivory towers with their thumbs in their rears, feigning oblivious as to what is really going on as article 25 or our universal declaration of human rights are being trampled on like the broken heart of jilted lover.

Okay, enough angry man talk. If I have offended anyone, you have sincerest humble apologies, but all I’m saying is I would like to see and experience some change. I also fully comprehend that my amateur rants and raves on paper isn’t going to do that.

However, what will produce change is if we (the homeless and those who work with the homeless) can come together in a collaborative effort. I truly believe we can make that change happen. For example, a few weeks ago the women and children of Marshall House, along with Sandy Barry their fearless leader, City Councilman Larry Deutsch and I, were at a city budget meeting at Hartford City Hall. Number 31 on the agenda was the proposed closing of the women’s no freeze shelter at Marshall House.

Well, they presented their arguments and fought it. And from what I understand they have gotten some of what they wanted and were able to keep the no freeze shelter open longer than the anticipated closing date. It was a small victory but a victory just the same. They made a change.

So my feeling is, if all of you (my homeless and disenfranchised brothers and sisters) can come together and amalgamate our thoughts, ideas, and concerns and make a truly arduous and assiduous effort to form a united front and combat the anal retentive politicians who turn a blind eye to our disparity, and cause minor disruption in the hierarchical social structure presently in effect.

How you ask? By remaining vigilant in our pursuit of social justice and by using good old fashioned grass roots activism. And with this I do believe our goals can be achieved. Because let’s face it, at some level we’re all in the same boat, and it’s sinking faster than the Titanic. We can’t expect the shelters and the limited services available to start grabbing buckets and lifeboats to bail us out.

We have to at least try and do it for ourselves. I realize that this task may appear to be insurmountable, but I assure you – it is not.

Again, I would like to extend my apologies to anyone who I may have unintentionally offended by what I have written, because I don’t want to come off as some self-righteous, self-appointed, maniacal champion of justice. Until next time, take care of yourselves and again, have a happy spring and a delightfully eventful and productive summer.

Until next time, this is from my heart to yours.

Dear New Britain Housing Authority,

For several months, close friends of mine have gone to you to try to get housing. They have told me how hard it is to deal with you. They complain you do not return phone calls and don’t process paper work in a timely manner. Client case managers seem to also have difficulty getting results from you. Return calls are few and far between. I have also heard that clients have received eviction notices after living in their apartments for 2-3 months because of slow information.

I only hear one side of the story and I don’t know your side. I don’t expect you to respond but I will ask you to please understand these peoples’ situations. In order to eliminate homelessness we need everyone involved to make an effort to make sure paperwork is processed and calls are returned.

This letter is meant to make you aware of how you are viewed by the people who need your help and who you are supposed to be helping. I have a suggestion that might help. What if you use the first 30 minutes of each morning listening to your phone messages, and the next 30 minutes returning phone calls? It seems like a reasonable solution. I feel there may be several such changes that could be used to avoid evictions and frustration.

Thank you for listening.

My name is Linda and I have lived through the agony of watching a loved one experience homelessness in Hartford. Actually, it has been much more than watching… it has been hurting, fearing, praying, loving, crying, wondering and worrying, worrying, and more worrying.

That is what I felt as the mother. I can only imagine what it felt like to be the one on the street. I guess that is why I now find myself wanting to do what I can to address the homeless situation.

The role I see for myself is to get out there and meet people, see places and learn about programs. I intend to meet with service providers to better understand their function in assisting the homeless. What do they perceive as the biggest obstacles to achieving their mission? Then, from a different perspective, what problems do the service receivers experience with the system as it exists? What suggestions might they have on how their needs can better be met? Can these problems be addressed so the “system” works better? How?

This morning I took my first step on this journey. I met with Maria Dynia, manager at Connecticut’s United Way 2-1-1 system. Their mission is to help meet the needs of Connecticut residents by providing information, education and connection to services.

Started in 1976, it was originally an “800” phone number, known as Info-Line. In 1999 a 3-digit, easy-to-remember phone number was introduced, with support of the Governor and Legislature, and 2-1-1 took effect.

Connecticut was actually the first state in the country to have such a system and is now helping other states launch their 2-1-1 systems. 2-1-1 is a 3-digit, toll-free phone number that is available 24/7. At the other end of that phone call, here in Connecticut, is one of 35 call specialists, who will help you solve your problem or deal with a crisis, whether it is finding a place to sleep, food, clothing, disability services, legal assistance, counseling, drug and alcohol programs… They keep up to date on 4,600 agencies offering 48,000 services! That’s a lot of resources available to assist people.

The specialists who answer the calls are educated and special-ly trained in helping skills. Many are multilingual and all are prepared to help people sort through their challenges to provide the best assistance and referral for them and their situation.

I could tell immediately upon entering the office that it was manned by caring people, who look you in the eye and smile or nod, even while handling a problem or crisis on the phone. I met with Lead Specialist, Nicole Vaughn, who was able to explain how she handles various situations. Nicole speaks with 80-100 people every day. And if the caller is open to it, she will check back with them a few days later, to see how they made out.

So, I asked, “With respect to the homeless, what is the biggest obstacle you face in carrying out your mission?” I asked this of both Maria and Nicole. The answer was the same… agencies and front-line people who work with the homeless need to know about 2-1-1.

I walked away from this visit with a box of 2-1-1 information cards under my arm. I will be dropping them off with all the agencies I visit from this point on.

Help is just a phone call away. Any phone, any time. Someone is there to help.

That’s right. My cousin Craig, 45, is currently homeless. But who am I, and why am I telling you this?

My name is Nathan Fox, and I’m passionate about fighting the social phenomena we call homelessness, both locally, and as a larger-scale societal issue. Currently I work at the Partnership for Strong Communities, a Hartford-based advocacy group that promotes solutions to homelessness and the development of affordable housing. Simply put, my life revolves around contemplating homelessness and its multiple, often misunderstood causes.

For our purposes today, what I do isn’t all that important - I tell you for context - but my cousin Craig is important, seeing that he doesn’t have a place to call home each night. There are a lot of people out there similar to Craig, who often can’t meet the demands and rigors of the “everyday struggle.”

Unfortunately it’s easy to condemn Craig’s struggles with the usual “well he must be irresponsible. How does a 45 year old man become homeless?” But it’s far more complicated than “Craig can’t get his stuff together.”

For you see, Craig has a serious mental health issue. He has been diagnosed with bi-polar disorder for many years, a condition that he has struggled and coped with for all those years, but it recently caught up with him. His mother, my Aunt Susan, passed away 3 years ago, and my father passed away 6 months after, and since then he has lost the ability to keep his life pieced together.

Since Susan passed, Craig has not only lost his job, something that has happened in the past, but he has also lost his circle of friends, who for a number of years were his first line of defense. Without their support he has been unable to maintain.

I share this story because Craig’s homelessness crept up on me. Growing up, I remember Craig as the big cousin, who despite his bullying was one of my favorite family members. Craig kept me on my toes when only child syndrome kicked in.

Craig leant me his Acura Integra when I was 17, allowing me to drive it to school every day - which is a big deal, for those of us who have forgotten the thrill of driving to school.

Everyone who becomes homeless does so due to a different set of circumstances: recently a number of families in Connecticut and across the country have lost their home due to factors related to the Great Recession, while individuals with mental health issues can’t HELP themselves when their issue flares up.

Craig is family, but I’ve ignored his plight the past few months. I’m only 26, so my mentality has been “how can I help him when I’m trying to find my own footing.” I know now that this was a mistake, even if there’s nothing I can tangibly do to improve his life. Even considering his plight is a huge step from where I was before, when I was denying the truth and avoiding the fact that my favorite cousin is homeless.

Maybe you have a cousin with a mental health issue? Or may-be your best friend has a relative with a mental health issue. Given the concept of “6 degrees of separation” you are probably connected, even if only in a small way, to someone who either is struggling with homelessness or a mental health issue.

Hopefully after reading this you will stop to consider these connections, and be more likely to remember the inter-related nature of mental health and homelessness the next time you happen across someone without a home.

Craig can’t help himself right now, so let’s leave that old argument at the door. He’s tried time and time again to hold his life together, but his extreme periods of depression have led him to lose his home, and everything he cares for.

It’s up to you and me to help the Craigs of the world get back up when they fall down.

Because our economy is so bad, it is causing more and more people to become homeless. This is America and we should be helping our own people, not all the other countries. There are many types of people who are homeless. You have people with drug problems, criminal records, disabled people, de-pressed people, and people losing their jobs. And then you have people who lost their desire to move forward. These people have lost faith in the system and in their fellow man, and in themselves. So how would you go about helping them? That is a question that has plagued me for a long time.

These people are the hardest people to reach. They are the people who live under bridges, in the woods, on the streets and in shelters. I want to help them get back their self respect and help them move forward in some ways. Maybe of they saw that the American people were helping more people in America they might think about moving forward. Maybe with more positive thinking, they can help themselves turn around. Well I believe in them and I know they can get their self respect back. But all I can offer right now is a saying I read in a book which has helped me every day.

Happiness will elude you
Until you convince yourself
You deserve it.

Everyone deserves happiness; please believe in yourself, so life will be a little better.

Try to come and see what we trying to do for the homeless population. We are not the system, we are like you. We have lived or are living in shelters, so we know what you might be feeling. Just take a walk down to 21 Charter Oak Ave, Hartford, CT 06106 and join the Beat of the Street advocates every Tuesday and Thursday at 2:30PM.

Maybe you can collect some of our newsletters to then sell on the street – the $1 you earn for selling Beat of the Street is yours to keep.

McCook became interested in homelessness when he attended a town meeting in October 1890 and found that too much was being spent on “outdoor alms.” They lowered the amount spent on “outdoor alms” and then called a committee to examine the system of alms. McCook and his committee members exam-ined programs of distributing money to the homeless in 38 cities around the world and 300 industrial cases in the US. McCook was charged with membership of the committee to change state laws that would solve issues with vagrants, chronic criminals, and other de-pendents.

He created forms to fill out for each homeless person he came by. His records are extensive. Also included in his records are documents indicating that alcoholism was almost universal among homeless men. He also kept correspondence between him and a vaga-bond named William Aspinwall. He also found that votes were sometimes purchased from homeless men in exchange for beer or money.

He created forms to fill out for each homeless per-son he came by. His records are extensive. Also in-cluded in his records are documents indicating that alcoholism was almost universal among homeless men. He also kept correspondence between him and a vagabond named William Aspinwall. He also found that votes were sometimes purchased from home-less men in exchange for beer or money. Many of the same struggles found in the homeless community at the beginning of the last century are still problems today. The McCook collection is worth checking out. It is housed at 396 Main Street in Hartford. The museum hours are:

April: Saturday & Sunday 11 am – 4 pm

May – September: Thursday, Friday, Saturday & Sunday 11 am – 4 pm