Florida Catholic | Pinellas Hope

“I didn’t have to
ask them to do this, so they shouldn’t have to ask me to help.”

Helping while being helped

Roger Anderson has found purpose at Pinellas Hope tent-city assistance center.

CARLOS BRICENO | FLORIDA CATHOLIC ST. PETERSBURG BUREAU EDITOR

Published: 12.14.07

CLEARWATER | The most amazing thing happened to Roger Anderson recently: He discovered he likes to help people.

He admitted he is reclusive by nature. During the past two years, he has left mainstream society to be more by himself. In that time period, he has been a homeless person, living on the streets and making ends meet by visiting construction sites on his bicycle, gathering discarded aluminum and copper, and selling them at recycling places.

Life hadn’t always been that way. He said he had been making more than $100,000 a year owning a custom-home business. He was so handy with his hands that he used to build homes from scratch. But two years ago, as he put it, “the world closed in on me and I ran one day.”

The weeks of scraping by and dealing with the weather and the difficult lifestyle of having no home caught up with him recently and he admitted he was “tired.”

“I didn’t know what I was going to do,” he said.

And then, literally five minutes later, two police officers who know him drove by and told him about Pinellas Hope, the five-month, pilot project coordinated by Catholic Charities that helps homeless adults by giving them a place to live in tents and helping them with social services, case management, food and job placements.

Anderson’s been there since it opened Dec. 1, and has been a whirlwind of help. He’s put out sleeping bags, helped set up tents, unloaded supplies and, on a recent cold night, was putting together a gas heater so that other people could be warm.

“It’s a great feeling,” he said. “It’s an experience that I’ve never been through. I have never been a real social person and this has given me a chance to get out of my turtle shell in a real safe environment. It’s a high. It’s the most satisfying feeling.”

He said he’s never had an opportunity to help others and he’s discovered he enjoys it. What fuels him is that he is being helped, he said.

“I didn’t have to ask them to do this, so they shouldn’t have to ask me to help,” he said. “I could be here for the free ride. But I’m not. I’m not here to get paid. … It gives me another view of life.”

Officials said one of the main objectives of the Pinellas Hope project is to get the homeless who live there the help that they need to attain self-sufficiency.

During a recent evening, volunteers were busy serving chop suey and stir-fried vegetables, along with rice. The dinners are brought already cooked to the site, but the need exists for more people to volunteer to make dinner and to serve the food, officials said.

One of the volunteers, Barbara von Mooren, said she volunteers already at Religious Community Services, which helps feed the homeless in Clearwater, but also decided to serve food at Pinellas Hope.

“Many of these people aren’t here by their own choice,” she said. “They are, by circumstances, forced to be on the streets. I’ve got a soft spot for anybody like that because I feel like they need a kind word to get back to where they want to be.”

About seven years ago, Rickie Wright, another volunteer serving food, said he decided to see what it was like to be homeless. A disabled veteran of the first Gulf War, he had veterans as friends who were homeless and had heard how difficult it was, so he wanted to see firsthand.

So he didn’t renew his lease, and he took 50 cents and six cookies and lived on the streets. He had money in the bank, but he didn’t take any out during those weeks to simulate what it would be like to not have anything.

He said he slept outside of churches, schools and even in a graveyard. He said he got bitten by fire ants. And he ate one cookie during the morning and one cookie at night. But he could only last two weeks, he said. That experience led him to volunteer to help the homeless, something he had never done before, because he said he understood what they were going through.

“Imagine if it was you who needed food,” he said.

One of those staying at Pinellas Hope, Daniel Dilley, said he had been homeless for about six days because he had lost his roofing job. There are usually fewer construction jobs this time of year, he said, because business slows during the holidays. He and his wife, who he said has high medical expenses because she was beaten and raped recently, lost their lease because they couldn’t pay rent, so Pinellas Hope has been a wonderful experience for them.

“I love it,” he said. “It’s great. When I lay down and go to sleep at night time, it’s a safe place. I have no worries.”

Things are also looking up. Since he’s been at Pinellas Hope, he has found a roofing job, so he hopes he and his wife can stay as long as they need to save some money.

He was asked the difference between living on the streets and living at Pinellas Hope.

“It’s the difference between heaven and hell,” he said with a big smile.

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