Tonya Coy had driven past homeless people living in an encampment under a highway underpass near her home in Austin, Texas, for more than six years when one day, in 107 degree heat, she came to visit them with a case of Gatorade and ice.
“In the 17 years I’ve lived here, I’ve passed the intersections many times each day, often seeing the same people camped there day after day, then year after year,” she said. That day when she came to visit, she met two people who called that bridge home and realized they were as much her neighbors as the people who lived on her block.
“I realized my neighbors were living in third world conditions within a mile of my home — and they needed help.”
Since she created Maximizing Hope in 2020, it has become an efficient team of volunteer “case workers,” well known since 2021 for the life-changing laundry program they run for unhoused people in partnership with HPF Hearts for the Homeless.
At the Clean Laundry laundromat on West Parmer Lane, Maximizing Hope provides quarters for washers and dryers and detergent pods for each load. “We do laundry,” she says, “but laundry is not what we do.”
She is referring to the network of volunteers waiting to help them with health care services, housing applications, and more. “What catches them by surprise is the sack lunch, hygiene kits, CapMetro bus passes, clothing and shoes from Kerby’s Clothing Ministry, notary services, DPS ID payments, and Ending Community Homelessness Coalition (ECHO) Coordinated Assessments to see if they are eligible for housing,” says Coy.
At the laundromat, Quentin Jackson from the American G.I. Forum provides job counseling services on a folding table by the front row of washers. Volunteers with Highpoint Fellowship’s Hearts for the Homeless hand out bus passes and bags of socks and toiletries. Justin Bell from Ruthie B’s Eatery offers foil-wrapped hot dogs and chicken and rice burritos from a table next to the wall of dryers. And just outside, William Kerby of Kerby’s Clothing Ministry stacks a table with free shirts and pants for the taking.
This village of helpers helps wrap people in warmth, cleanliness, and dignity, for two hours every Monday for nine months of the year. Then they take a three-month break so the three volunteer caseworkers can work on helping their existing clients move towards housing. That gives them space to help new clients. They’ve gone through this cycle a few times.
“Otherwise it’s overwhelming,” Coy said, noting that replacing one woman’s birth certificate from Michigan is taking weeks of effort. “We have to hyperfocus at some point.”
Paul Steele, one of the 114 people whom Maximizing Hope has connected to housing since 2021, first met Coy when she visited his encampment under the highway underpass with Gatorade and snacks. Maximizing Hope also helped him get food stamps, reading glasses and donated furniture for the apartment he moved into eight months ago.
“When you’re homeless, you don’t want to do laundry,” he said. “If you’ve got money, you want to get food. When and if you do laundry, the next day it rains, and everything gets moldy and it’s a waste.”
John Woodley makes good use of the free laundry days. The laundromat’s large machines can handle his sleeping bag, blankets and other bulky winter loads. “In the wintertime, my clothing doubles,” says Woodley. “I’m wearing twice as many pants, twice as many shirts, hats, gloves. Some people double up their socks.”
Sources:
This Austin nonprofit hosts free laundry days for unhoused locals, then changes their lives for the better Good, Good, Good, Feb. 5, 2024
How Maximizing Hope’s laundry events play key role in ending the homelessness cycle in Austin Austin American-Statesman, Feb. 5, 2024
Hopebuilding 