DES MOINES, Iowa — This winter we had the opportunity to ride along with employees of Primary Health Care in Des Moines. Outreach workers took us to visit the people they serve every day. Most have very personal stories about how they ended up homeless.

“My mom died and lost everything, and I ended up here,” says Julie. She’s been living in the homeless camp for two years and says she never dreamed this would be her life. “No…. never. I used to be on the other side. When I would see somebody with a sign I would give them a couple bucks and just drive on home and thank my lucky stars that I wasn’t out there living like them.”

Josh Wittenberg, Jenna Schuck and Scott Sithonnorath have been working with the homeless for years. They say many of the people they serve are surprised to get help, and that it feels good to know they’re providing all the resources they can. The physical items are important, but PHC is also the central point for homeless people to get healthcare and supportive services.

“You can’t pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you don’t have any boots, right?” says Scott. “We need spaces for people coming from homelessness to address all of their needs.”

City leaders have repeatedly pointed to part of the new homeless ordinance that increases the number of outreach workers from one to four, as a solution.

“It’s hard to hear that we’re going to save the day,” Jenna says. “I think that we will help keep people safer. We will help give people the resources that we need. But this is truly about housing. I just hope we’re going to paint a more serious picture about the need, and the need is housing.”

According to PHC, right now about 1,000 people are experiencing homelessness in Polk County. In recent months there have been as many as 850 people on housing waitlists and as many as 150 families waiting to get into shelters.

“The apartments that are available are great,” Julie says, “but there’s not enough of those either.”

She’s right. According to the organization Homeward, for extremely low income renters in Polk County — which is classified as individuals who make less than $14,000 a year, and families making less than $25,000 a year — there is a shortage of more than 11,000 units.

A common misconception is that most of the people living out here don’t want to be part of the community.

“It’s just we don’t got an address,” one of the men explains.

“I’ve applied to live in one of those places!” Julie adds. “Unfortunately, in order for us to get a job, you have to have an address. And most people don’t realize that we don’t have an address out here. It becomes a vicious cycle.”

As a case manager at Bethel Mission, Nick Kearns sees the cycle every day.

“We serve people who are homeless,” he explains, “that means zero financials, zero insurance, no medications, no diagnosis. Nothing. Ground floor.”

WHO 13’s Erin Kiernan asked how someone ends up there. 

“Well, I can personally speak to that because I wound up there myself,” Nick says. Nick’s mom died when he was 14. He spent the next two decades living on the streets. “I was living out of a laundry basket, 96 lbs., and it took 20 years to get there. Twenty years. I was 35 when I came in here.”

Bethel Mission is part of Hope Ministries, a non-profit, privately funded, Christian organization. It has seven centers around Des Moines. Every location is always full, serving 230 men, women and children every day.

Leaders wanted to take over the former Orchard Place child mental health facility on the southeast side to create 12 supportive housing units for men who are already part of Hope Ministries life recovery programs. Neighbors overwhelmingly spoke out against the project, saying they were scared to have homeless men in their neighborhood and that the facility didn’t belong there.

The city council voted against it and in the same meeting members voted “yes” on the homeless ordinance. Nick says he felt frustrated during the meeting.

“If it was your son or your daughter, you would say yes, but you have a misconception about who it is that needs this housing. I don’t understand it. It’s like I’m not a human being. I don’t deserve the same things that other people deserve. Which isn’t true.”

Nick has gone from being homeless, to being a homeowner. But he says housing is just one chapter in his success story. 

“It took community. It took support. It took all that stuff to get me there. I didn’t get me there. Everyone else got me there. I participated in it. It was a group effort.”