The face of homelessness is changing. Once upon a time if a person were asked to describe the homeless they would talk about a middle-aged man on a street corner with a bottle of whisky in a brown paper sack. Although this stereotype is true for some, the population has shifted with the decades, and a …
Meet Jason Spears. He is articulate, educated, skilled and mild-mannered. But just like the next person, Spears is a work in progress. The 48-year-old went from being a happily married construction manager making a six-figure salary to being broke, divorced and living in shelters. He needed more than a change of circumstances. He needed a …
Karen Prescott likes to reflect while sitting on her front porch, amid colorful flowerbeds and garden sculptures with inspiring messages. “I’m a nature person.” In her window sill sit three decorative frogs named Hope, Dream and Love. A small pastel flag with a smiley face and peace sign welcomes guests at the foot of green …
When I was a teenager, basketball was basically my world. I lived, ate, and breathed basketball from early in the morning until late at night. At some point in the tenth grade, I was watching a video of myself shooting the ball and realized that my technique was way off. If I wanted to be …
When Fred Barksdale’s Veterans Administration counselor picked him up from the closing veterans’ boardinghouse with only the clothes he was wearing, Fred was homeless, hopeless, and tired. Even though he had been clean and sober for five years, he couldn’t just turn things around. “What I thought was a gutter fall turned out to be …