Visit with homeless yields surprises

The first stop for University Police Lt. Susan Holmes and Horizon House outreach coordinator Brenda Cooper-Cutt was People's Park, an area behind the Free Library at 40th and Walnut streets, where homeless have lived and stored their belongings since late summer. They were headed there to transport a homeless couple and their dog to a shelter which would accept the trio. It was part of an intensive University and Horizon House effort to get as many of the homeless as possible off the streets and into shelters before the University's "sweep" of the campus today. But Holmes and Cutt were in for a surprise. When they arrived just after 10 a.m., Rebecca Jones was in labor, only six months into her pregnancy. She was in visible pain, groaning as she grabbed her expanded abdomen. Jones was one of three pregnant women who have lived in the park in recent months. Holmes and Cutt rushed her to the emergency room at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, and waited with her while she was processed. "All right Rebecca, hang on," Lt. Holmes told Jones as she groaned. "OK baby, take big breaths, it will help the pain," Cutt said. Jones was taken into the hospital in a wheelchair, and soon after gave birth to a baby girl, her third child. "God is good," Cutt said. "We were there at the right place at the right time." James was the first person Holmes and Cutt managed to get off the street yesterday. For the past few weeks, however, Holmes and representatives from Horizon House, a city-funded organization that provides services to the homeless, have been talking to homeless on campus and asking them to accept the services being offered. Yesterday, Cutt and Holmes were a team, and after they placed Jones in proper medical care, they moved on. The two drove down to the Class of 1923 Ice Skating rink. Holmes wanted to show Cutt a compound of homeless people which had sprung up under the Walnut Street Bridge. There was no one there, but the tents, couches, a chest of drawers, pictures hanging from the concrete pillars told a different story. This was a full service encampment. Cutt took a mental note, saying she would be back. The duo then visited a small compound at a the Laboratory for the Research for the Structure of Matter at 33rd and Walnut streets. And one behind the Hutchinson Gymnasium. It wouldn't be until their next stop that they would again take people off the streets. Under the front steps of the Van Pelt Library, Cutt and Holmes found two men sleeping under a pile of blankets, and their belongings scattered about. "We had a TV, we have a cooking facility, we have a hot plate," said one of the men, Ontonio Johnston. "Sometimes I hate it; sometimes I like it," Johnston said of being on the streets. He said he ended up on the streets when he started taking drugs, and now collects cans and scrap metal to make money to get by. "I make good money doing this every day, and then I mess it up, and I'm back on the street," he said. The other man, Tyron Dawkins, said he had been homeless for two years. "I ended up here because of drugs and alcohol," Dawkins said. About 10 minutes after she began talking to them, Cutt convinced the two men to go with her so she could place them at a shelter. "When I see an individual, I never know what I'm going to say," Cutt said later. "It has to be their decision [to get off the streets]. I just give them options. I go with the mother approach." She said it is important to build up a rapport with the homeless in an area, not just push them off the streets. "Follow-up is very important," Cutt said. "Your work is your bond, and that is what makes the network [of providing services] work." Cutt was pleased. She had taken three people to seek care and be placed in long-term shelters, and had yet to return to People's Park for Jones's husband. It wasn't even noon yet.