de paul society at the conference at st anthony's in renton i've been a member for about eight years and that's where my experience of working with the homeless has come from everything i share today will be my own experience it's not a representation of the society and particular or my conference this is just my understanding and my experience the same event the news conference began in one nine hundred fifty four and has been running ever since i got involved through my father in law he was very active in the same going to nepal conference at st pat's in tacoma he was very enthusiastic about what he did and very dedicated even on his deathbed when tuesdays came around his day for working with st vincent de paul he was doing his work with his partner over the phone if he didn't have the energy to go out and help that was an inspiration to me the same anthony's conference now has about a hundred volunteers our youngest fonterra is five years old he works in the food bank and her oldest volunteer is ninety two she's a disabled woman who does all our mailing for us we are very fortunate to have a parish who provides us with the space to do our work the telephone the fax machine the copy machine paper telephone everything is sponsored by them even our food bank space is given to us through the parish the person is of our parish also support the work that we do they provide all the money and the food that comes to us for work with the poor we have the school children involved as well they do food drives through it for us throughout the school year and bring all the food over to the food bank so that we can process it and get it into food bags to get out to the poor ninety nine point five percent of everything that's donated to us is given to the poor we have a very low budget for administrative costs until two years ago nothing came from anybody but our parish but two years ago we started getting some money from the written community foundation who gave us some funds to help support our food bank and then the renton human services department gave us a grant to do the work that we do with the poor the quantised club has helped us as well and we are also getting some funds from to government programs that will help us with rent and utilities for the poor in our area some of the businesses in the rent an area have also gotten involved in the last year with our food bank we have gotten food drives through the providence health services and banner bank this year had a giving tree that they kept up after christmas and they sponsored our lunch sack program for the food bank for the whole month of april all the food we collected went into the food the food sex for the homeless and working poor and now we've got packed lab who just moved their headquarters down here who are going to be doing a food drive for us as well but what do we do at st vincent de paul the most important thing we do is listen to our clients when people call agencies they find that they get an automated message which puts them into a category one two three or four which is another automated message leave us your number and we'll call you back most of the time they don't even get a call back we do call back we call back every time and it's important because so many of these people where than anything else just want to be heard and i know that because all these three times a week we get you know you didn't help me at all but you listen to me you're the only human being i've talked to all week and that's so important the other things we help with our rent utilities food and clothing we do this regardless of race religion nationality color we help people in the renton in skyway areas if they come to us for help we do what we can know work is foreign to the society the city of renton called us not long ago with a homeless man who had been beat up and everything he owned was stolen from him including his glasses and he really wanted his glasses because he wanted to be able to see they could get glasses but they couldn't find somebody who would do the eye exam well we will we were able to work with an agency who took our valves are and did the eye exam no questions asked and actually gave us a discount on the cost so the gentleman got his glasses within two days our office is in the parish ministry center at st anthony's church at the three fourteen south fourth street right behind mclendon is an r catholic school very easy to find and central to downtown well i had a funny experience not long ago one of our members actually our vice president had died and for her funeral she requested that people bring food rather than flowers so after the funeral was over and before i went to the reception i loaded all the food in my car and then pulled my car around to the parking lot when i got out a homeless couple came up to me and asked me if i had any food i kind of chuckled as that pat probably sent them and i said of course i do come with me and i took them to the car and opened the door and said you know what can you use take what's helpful to you and they did and then they asked if i had a blanket and i didn't really have a blanket per se but i did have a packing blanket the kind that has teflon on one side and cotton on the other and i got to thinking that actually that wouldn't be a bad thing for a homeless couple to have because the teflon on the ground would protect them from the damp cold ground so they took the blanket and i hope they've enjoyed it one of the new things we've been working with is the written community separ which serves a hot meal on mondays wednesdays and fridays it's held at the salvation army office in downtown written we help support that with financial aid to buy the supplies and people to help set up clean up and serve the meals we also bring food up to the friendly kitchen which provides a hot meal on thursdays during the school year another thing we're able to help the homeless with is clothing now you need to understand that we do everything by belcher we never use cash we don't have it on hand and we don't give it out but we can give vouchers for clothing and i think this is important for the poor and especially the homeless and particularly in the winter we like to give them the opportunity to get a new set of clothes about once a month so the have warm dry clothes for the winter we use either the written clothing or the salvation army store which is in downtown renton or one of the st vincent de paul stores which are in canton renton for the south king county area and just as an aside when i tell people i work for the st vincent de paul society they always ask me well what do you do at the store well i don't work at the store i work with the homeless in the working poor the stores are actually an enterprise that brings in money to help all of us work with the poor in the areas we live in we had a homeless man that we were giving sack lunches to on a regular basis and clothing every month or so and then we didn't see him for quite a while when he came back not long ago to say hello to us when we didn't recognize him the voice was the same but he looked very different he told us he had gotten thrown in jail well but ali was in jail he got cleaned up got a haircut learned a skill sobered up and he was now out and he was working but he wanted to come by and thank us for helping us when he was down and out when nobody else would even talk to him of course housing is the big issue with the homeless that's why they're homeless they don't have a place to live unfortunately in south king county there are no shelters no permanent shelters we have a few floating shelters one in camp called home and one in renton called arise their program sponsored by catholic community services that have a moving shelter system set up for men only that goes from church to church in either can't or renton st vincent de paul society in renton supports the right program i know in our parish we have the arise men staying at our church gymnasium twice a year as a conference we support them with funds with food and with volunteers transitional housing is very limited in south king county we refer people to multi service center in kent or way back in which is a small organization in south king county that covers renton kent and tukwila but they only have eleven homes low income housing is not very big either down here and the waiting list is at last i checked two to three years sometimes we're able to work with the system and have great successes a couple of years ago we  had a family of three living in their car a mom a dad and a toddler and when they came to us but paddler was very very sick first thing we needed to do was get him medical care and it was a good thing we did because he was close to dying from malnutrition and high fevers once we got that taken care of we worked with a social worker who we know we split the cost of a hotel for a week while he tried to find a shelter or a family shelter which are really hard to find he finally found one in seattle after a week and the family got into that housing temporary housing he then was able to get them into a home where they could live for up to eighteen months in the meantime the father was able to find a job now the dad is working they've been able to move into a home of their own they're out of the transitional housing the baby is doing well and they're back up on their feet don't always get those dramatic results unfortunately but in this case we did i wish i could say we had a solution to the problem but we don't we do do what we can locally by providing food clothing and referrals but sometimes i feel we're putting band aids on gaping wounds actually i know we are the more i hear about what's going on in king county the better i feel about the possibility of getting on top of the problem of homelessness i told you i belong to the same anthony's conference of c prince and to paul and that was only one of the fifty four conferences in king county once a quarter the president from each conference get together and have a meeting to talk about what we're doing what we're not doing what our issues are and recently we've spent more time with other agencies bringing them in to talk to us about what they do and how we can work together more effectively last year when the state government was going to stop the funding for gal which is the government assistance for the unemployed a bull we as a society decided that that can't happen that's the only money that these homeless people have it's three hundred dollars a month not enough to live on but to them it's critical so we went back to each of our conferences and had everyone we could write a letter to their particular representative or senator asking them not to cut that guy out down meant and they didn't because they heard enough from us that was a great success  to talk a little bit about usually the giving tree program that we have in our office annually we participate with the salvation army member vide a giving tree which entailed gift bags for people to take and bring back gift social service service agent the every month on our giving to plea that they provide a list of our of the four of their client and so every month we items for example and they're using family services we provided art supplies and games and nutritional sense for the children that may be entering that agency we profiled the pediatric interim care center in kent they care for babies that are born to drug addicted mothers so we collected receiving blankets clothing diapers and baby shampoo so it's been very exciting for us to see the outpouring of care and support that we've gotten over the last few months it shows us that everyone in our community has the desire to give on some level and we have provided them not only the outlet in order to give but also the delivery system and it's just been an awesome experience for everyone we decided to put up a bulletin board next to our giving tree so that we could display to our customers the the effects of the giving and we have posted the thank you letters that have come in from the different agencies that we have supported so we have a letter from the salvation army that describes the actually the poundage of food that we had had provided during one of the drives we have a letter from the brown bag lunch program st vincent de paul provides also a letter from an area youth and family services and from the pediatric interim carrots and other campaigns see in august we profiled the dog days of august and we collected pet food and supplies for the salvation army food bank they have a special pet area in the food bank for those people who need help feeding their pets and we also have included a couple of photographs of the tree through to the end of some of the drive to the goods to how many items actually have been collected ok the the giving tree that is currently up this is for the month of september kids are going back to school and the renton closes bank has an annual drive that provides underwear socks t shirt and jeans for children who are going back to school this is a very important for those kids to be dressed appropriately and have nice things and so we have profiled them this month we're about halfway through the month at this point in time and we have a good collection of items and this is very very helpful to the right and close because they have had some funding issues this year and so this particular driver is critical for their success we've done salvation army also collects personal hygiene items for those folks that need help with toothbrushes toothpaste deodorant shampoo laundry detergent these things that might not otherwise be available in their monthly budget these things help immensely with keeping their household running smoothly we've collected baby food items specifically again for the salvation army food bank formula cereals these types of things that are that that are expensive diapers that maybe these families otherwise would not  personally it is shown me that there is a great desire in our community to support people who otherwise can't support themselves the other thing that it has shown me is that there are so many agencies out there that support so many people until i started really looking into it i didn't realize how many support services there really are and how many are are located right in the heart of our community  the other thing is that how many of these agencies are in need of donations so much more right now than ever before i think especially with food items there are just so many people in our community that that are having trouble making ends meet and personally it makes me thankful every single day that i can support myself and my family and do the things that are necessary to be successful myself would seven foot fence around to keep out the deer and we also planted a garden the victory garden was something that my wife and i decided to do during our service to  president obama's service day and we decided to make it something that we can share with other people we decided that we needed to grow some grapes we went out and got a clone from france opinion was great that we planned it and we build a fence to keep the deer out to and to protect the grapes from other scavengers my wife and i went listen to president obama give a lecture about service to the country so we decided that that we would make a victory garden a part of a service project for the community we went out and went to lectures on how to plant the yard and we decided that we had to build a four by eight by twelve section and plant our our garden up the garden actually started in my greenhouse easter weekend when my grandsons were here from arizona and of course the weather was quite cool so we decided we would start the little seedlings where they would be warm and out of the wind  and of course the rain so when you look in the garden you will see squash that started easter weekend and some of the being started easter weekend and as they grow then i was able to bring them out many of the other plants that are a little difficult to see were actually bedded in the garden itself i have carrots i have green beans i have green peppers i have jalapeno peppers that's my husband's favorite so living out here in the woods we do have the deer and we have the bunnies and we have other creatures that would enjoy my garden and so we've planted flowers hopefully to keep the deer and so far the only trouble we've had are the snails so we have to do snail alert on a regular basis like i said there are still things growing in the greenhouse but basically it's all out here and the reason for it is for us to be able to share with our neighbors our community and to be a part of helping others that need help i decided to experiment this time with my tomato plants i have grown tomatoes in the past but that's the only other thing i have ever grown so this time i went all organic and i did seven different tomato plants that will be buried in hopefully through november in the front of the garden you'll see marigolds and marigolds are supposed to help keep the deer away from your plants so so far we've done very well and the only intruder we have are the snails this is where my gardening life began and the very first seeds that i ever planted were bachelor buttons and as fate would have it in the corner there by the red rocker are bachelor buttons now they're an annual flower but for some reason this little seedling decided he would come back year after year after year so he's this i think it's his fourth year now so i'm very very happy to have him this is my greenhouse and it's actually three years old now and this is where a lot of the vegetables and flowers had their start this year i actually tried to buy a lot of sea flower seeds and do my own from scratch and actually turned out to be quite successful they're all out in the garden beds now and as you can see the