Home(less) for the Holidays
by Times Free Press writer Pam Sohn
In a field behind the Community Kitchen, CC Veazey stared at several makeshift blanket tents.
There was movement inside each of them and within one, someone was coughing — hard. None of the tent occupants volunteered to peep out to see why a group of strangers stood around.
“Standing there looking at those tents in my own backyard brought it homes with an exclamaiton point that there is homelessness here - not just in the world but in my backyard [Chattanooga]," Veazey said, recalling the scene later.
" I turned away to regroup and there were more people sleeping on a [warehouse] side dock."
Members of a local anti-poverty and human rights group called Changers hoped their "Home(less) Tour of Homes" would bring about just that reaction. Changers on Thursday took about 40 buisness people, students, and ordinary families through the world of homelessness in Chattanooga.
“Where do we go from here?” Changers member Landon Howard asked the group after they had visited the St. Matthew’s Shelter for Men, talked with a young homeless woman who sleeps under a parking lot structure on Broad Street, and met a formerly homeless mom and her two young sons.
"You can't say you don't know anymore," Howard told them.
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