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JULIANA:
Welcome to They Are Us, where you’ll hear stories of resilience and hope from folks in recovery and insights from experts in the field. I’m your host, Juliana. In my work with Central City Concern, a nonprofit devoted to housing, healthcare, and employment, I’m often asked by community members, what can I do to help the homeless? You’ll hear a few answers to that question in this episode. Let’s get started.
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JULIANA:
Amalie Roberts is a community health outreach worker at CCC and was the inspiration for our podcast title, “They are Us.” She has been on the ground helping folks on the street gain services they need. Welcome to the podcast, Amalie.
AMALIE:
Thank you so much. Glad to be here.
JULIANA:
Oh, I’m so glad to have you. Okay, before you did this work, you owned a restaurant. How did you go from restaurant owner to outreach worker?
AMALIE:
Portland was very bucolic back in the day, and everyone knew each other. And we kind of started restaurants for each other in this way where your friends could come and have a good time. And then all of a sudden New York Times, they were coming and snapping pictures and, “oh, what’s the most expensive wine that you ever had to drink?” Things like that. And it got just really fatiguing. And so, yeah, when I started getting that feeling that maybe I didn’t want to work in this anymore, I thought, “I know what I’ll do. I think I’ll go out on the streets and see what’s happening with the people that I keep seeing out here.” So, this is a funny story. So, one day I got up, I told my partner, I said, today, I’m going to go to the streets and I’m going to feed people. And neither one of us knew what that meant really. So, I made all of this oatmeal and I got these little folded tables. It was super cute. I got these little tables. I put up little cloths.
JULIANA:
Oh my goodness.
AMALIE:
I got the whole thing down. And I went to St. Francis Church and stood outside, and people were kind of like, “What? What is this thing?”
JULIANA:
Did you have some customers? Did you have some customers?
AMALIE:
Well, after a bit, but I was really nervous because I thought, “I don’t know these people.” And this is something that I really is big in my mind and in my heart is that we don’t know each other, but why do we always default to being fearful of each other? And so that’s kind of a sad commentary, I think, on our society. But by the end of the day, I had tons of friends. There was one guy that ate seven bowls of oatmeal. Seven. He said, “that’s all I’m going to have today.”
JULIANA:
Yeah, right. That’s all he’s going to have the one meal.
AMALIE:
That’s it.
JULIANA:
Okay, so now you’re an outreach worker with Central City Concern. Tell us what a day in your life is like. What is it like for you to go out and do outreach work?
AMALIE:
So historically, outreach workers, they get up in the morning and they get assigned a designation to go service. And you go out and you talk to people. You just kind of gently walk up, “how’s everybody doing today? Can we get you anything?” And sometimes people just from the inside of the tent say, “Nope, leave me alone. I’m asleep.” But then many, many times people will come out and are very generous and thoughtful and want to talk. It’s really wonderful. And generally, we go out in teams like say two people, or sometimes four, depending on how big the sites are. And then we just go and we just walk around, talk to people and see what they need. You just want to be humble like you’re going to somebody’s house for dinner.
JULIANA:
So what would you tell the average Portlander who wants to help but doesn’t know where to begin?
AMALIE:
I think first I would ask people to maybe practice some skills. Because I feel like people don’t really know really how to relate to people a lot. And so they get scared and they get closed off, and so just coming up and just talking to people and inviting them to talk to you, not demanding that they talk to you.
JULIANA:
Right. That’s a little thing, but it can go a long way.
AMALIE:
It’s huge.
JULIANA:
Yeah. This kind of ties into what you said earlier about how sad our society is that we approach people from a, are they going to hurt us or I’m afraid, versus just how can I engage.
AMALIE:
One time, I was in front of Seven Eleven over on MLK, and I had to deliver some clothes to somebody that I didn’t know who they were. They were his work clothes. He needed them for the next day. I went up to the side at the Seven Eleven, and there was a guy standing on the corner and he was screaming, and he was looking out in the traffic and things, and I thought, oh my gosh. And I walked over to him and I said, “Hey, do you know Jorge?” And he said, “yeah, he’s in the tent right over there.” So the person was able to auto-correct themselves to fit into that conversation. So that’s what showed me that just because somebody’s standing there screaming doesn’t mean they’re going to do anything to you.
JULIANA:
Right, right. I’m reflecting on your superpower. Your superpower is empathy. It’s pretty remarkable. And maybe a little bit of courage in there too.
AMALIE:
I get it from my mom.
JULIANA:
Yeah. I mean, that’s really, we can all learn a lot from how you approach folks, because I know that as I work in Old Town, Portland, I find that just simply being kind goes so far.
AMALIE:
Yeah. If you just kind of walk and talk to people with just a tone of acceptance, we’re all people, we’re just here. This morning. I was walking in, walked by this gentleman. I just kind of bowed my head and he said, “good morning, Ma’am.” And how nice is that? To have somebody greet you with “Good morning, Ma’am.” It’s lovely.
JULIANA:
Yeah. The whole premise of our podcast, the name of our show, They Are Us, comes from you. It was something that we got from you a couple years ago. We were recording a video. Tell us the inspiration for that.
AMALIE:
When you look at it, it’s like everybody goes through the same life experiences. Everybody has bad days, has good days. And so when you look at somebody on the street like, who could that person be? Could that person be your best friend from college? Could that person be your grandmother? Could that person, and it’s true. They are us.
JULIANA:
Yeah, I agree. I agree so much. We were inspired to focus on that sort of focus on the stories that we meet, the stories of the people that we meet outside and who they could be and how close we are all to becoming that kind of experience. And it’s really meaningful. So thank you for sharing that.
AMALIE:
Absolutely. Thank you so much.
JULIANA:
Yeah, OK. So, tell me about some of the people you’ve assisted.
AMALIE:
When I first started doing outreach and things and there was a couple, they had a lot of physical disabilities, some developmental disabilities, and they had been on the streets for 16 years, yeah. But very happy, sweet people, love them so much. And they’re now in housing. The couple broke up and one of the partners is in housing, and I helped them figure that piece out. And then today, when I walked outside, the ex-husband of the person was on the sidewalk looking really, really good, better than he’s ever looked. And he has no toes and things. So he’s in a wheelchair. And he’d always told me that he wanted to get a bike one day. He used to run track at Grant High School. I went to Grant High School.
JULIANA:
Oh, wow.
AMELIE:
Hey generals. And so it was really painful for him to not have his toes. But, so now I came out, we talked about his bike and how he’s still pursuing the bike and he’s looking really good and feeling really good. And so we’re trying to get him now into one of our programs in our Golden West building.
JULIANA:
Yeah.
AMALIE:
Yeah.
JULIANA:
Oh, that’s amazing. So, from the moment you met them to now, how long has that relationship been?
AMALIE:
Three and a half years.
JULIANA:
Three and a half years.
AMALIE:
I was wet behind the ears when I met them.
JULIANA:
And yet here you persevered. And now they’re in housing. I think that’s a pretty powerful statement about how long it takes sometimes to talk to folks and to build a relationship. Have you found that to be true?
AMALIE:
I have found that to be true. There are a lot of barriers. I mean, some because people have developed habits while they’ve been outside. They have a community outside. They call each other mother, sister, brother, sometimes they live outside, multi-generationally. They’ll be a grandmother, a mother, and some kids. So there’s a lot of entrenched kind of ways of living.
JULIANA:
Yeah, right. And then here you are trying to build a relationship, trying to build trust. I mean, isn’t that what this is about?
AMALIE:
And you can’t go fast. It’s all the long game. Yeah.
JULIANA:
Talk about ways you collaborate with other organizations and businesses in Portland.
AMALIE:
So Transition Projects and MAHO, the Mental Health Authority of Oregon, they both have been very close partners for a long time, which is very beneficial to all of us. We all have kind of different ways that we work, so we’ve been going out with them for three and a half years now. Yeah, we’re very close. And then also because Old Town and Chinatown is very much a neighborhood, so we have a lot of people that actually have service-based projects going on in the neighborhood. So Trash for Peace. We have Blanchet House, which is just wonderful.
JULIANA:
Blanchet House does food service, is that right?
AMALIE:
Food service two times a day. Yeah.
JULIANA:
So will you actually refer people to Blanchet? Is that one of the things that you tell people?
AMALIE:
Absolutely. We have a list of probably a couple hundred resources that we use all the time.
JULIANA:
Do you use the Street Roots book?
AMALIE:
All the time.
JULIANA:
Yeah. Tell me about the Street Roots book. That’s a really…
AMALIE:
The Street Roots book is a comprehensive bible, I guess, for all the services that are in Portland, Oregon.
JULIANA:
If an average person wanted to learn more about what resources were available, that might be a good resource.
AMALIE:
Yes, absolutely. Yeah.
JULIANA:
Street Roots, everybody.
AMALIE:
It’s good to know what’s out there in their community.
JULIANA:
Yeah, I know that Central City Concern is one of the resources in the book. There’s a bunch of them in there. Alright, good. So tell me something that the city or elected officials or anybody could do. What’s the thing that you need to do your job better? And by better, I mean reach more people, get more people into services, have better outcomes.
AMALIE:
People have to be off the street before they can repair, even begin to repair. Some people have been through things that are so horrific. Maybe they didn’t have parents to teach them these things. And so we need to just make sure that people can at least get a good night’s sleep and some food.
JULIANA:
It seems pretty basic, doesn’t it?
AMALIE:
Pretty basic.
JULIANA:
Tell me about a time that you have to instill hope in somebody.
AMALIE:
I’ve been working with a person who has been living in a property in Old Town Chinatown, and they were exited. So we’re trying to figure out next steps. She came by and she really just needed to blow off steam. So she was just saying a lot of stuff and talking and talking. And I literally, I reached over and I put my hand on her shoulder and I said, “you know right now I need you to breathe.” I said, “through your stomach and through your chest, open all of that up.” And so we just sat there for a couple minutes and then we were able to have a conversation before it was her blowing off steam and we weren’t really accomplishing anything. And then I was able to get information from her. And then we developed a plan. And a plan is the next step to being there.
JULIANA:
And a plan is hope.
AMALIE:
A plan is hope. Yeah.
JULIANA:
Thank you so much for being here today. It was such a pleasure talking with you. I think that you have given me hope. And I really appreciate that because times can sometimes feel a little heavy and people like you who come at it with such a beautiful attitude, just really make me feel hope.
AMALIE:
Aww. Thank you so much.
JULIANA:
Thank you for being here.
AMALIE:
Thank you for letting me have this time.
JULIANA:
Thank you for tuning into They Are Us. There are so many ways that individuals can help in the homelessness crisis. From volunteering with a nonprofit, to writing to your local representative, to just saying “hi” to someone living outside. Visit central City concern.org to find out ways you can be a part of the solution. Email us at podcast@ccconcern.org with questions or suggestions for future topics. Until next time. I’m Juliana.
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