People often ask, “What can be done about all those homeless people on every street corner?”
The answer: Support those who are making a difference!
There aren’t a lot of resources for the homeless person on the street to escape their environment. There are virtually no shelters in the Palm Springs area to handle the 300 souls (or more) who need shelter every night, and there is no place for them to even lock up their personal possessions.
If you can’t protect your stuff, you have to take it with you. Everywhere. If a street person is forced to leave their cart, bike or backpack unattended, odds are it will be looted, stolen or deemed “soiled” and thrown away by local police—and the vicious cycle of homelessness starts once again, with them owning absolutely nothing, with nowhere to go.
Except to the Well in the Desert.
The Well in the Desert is a local charity and the main food supplier to hundreds of Palm Springs and Coachella Valley residents who are homeless and hunger-challenged. We help the hopeless. We feed those who can’t provide themselves with a warm meal—the unemployed and the unemployable. The disabled and the mentally depressed. The addicts who refuse to leave their addictions. The former addicts who are trying to go clean. We feed them all. We care because no one else will.
But we do so much more. Suppose a street person wakes up from a fentanyl binge, beaten and bloody, dirty, starving, desperate. The first place they would go would be to one of our daily free meals, held at four local Palm Springs churches. There, 911 would be called, or they would be given the chance to clean up, take a shower, get new clean clothes and shoes, be given a new sleeping bag or blanket, be given a warm nutritious meal, visit with medical personnel, discuss their plight and needs with staff, and be given a bus pass or other types of needed transportation. It’s a life-saving, non-secular service the Well has given the city of Palm Springs for the last 25 years.
What would happen if the Well didn’t feed the starving and clothe the naked? If the homeless folks’ injuries or medical problems weren’t addressed, left to fester and rot? If their mental challenges weren’t listened to and cared about? Where would the 300-plus homeless individuals go? Starving people can do stupid and dangerous things.
We protect the residents in Palm Springs in so many unseen ways. One way is by curbing the need to scavenge about for food and basic survival items from local homes and businesses. Our bike-gifting program has attempted to reduce the theft of local homeowners’ bikes. Many times, a bike is stolen, or “parted,” because the street person desperately needs that part for their only means of transportation. But why steal a bike for its wheels or tubes when you can be given a tube, a patch kit, or even a whole bike, for free, by the Well—one that is registered, engraved and photographed?
One of the shining examples of kindness has been the 2-year-old bike-gifting program. Almost 170 donated bikes, as well as thousands of parts, have been gifted to street people in need of reliable transportation, allowing them to get to jobs, parole meetings, medical appointments and basic services needed to change their life’s trajectory. When asked if they have reliable transportation, they can answer that they now do. The bikes have all been donated by desert angels who want to see their bikes reused in a meaningful way. Every bike is a good one—repaired, re-tired, greased-up, made road worthy and gifted with really good bike locks. Clients from the Well help repair the bikes; no one knows a bike better than a street person.
The program has done wonders for passing kindness from one giftee to another. It has peacefully solved more than one street skirmish. Street folk seem willing to fight over two things: drugs and bikes. The trust built through the gifting of bikes can be further developed into helping them break the cycle of homelessness.
Bicycles are the future of Palm Springs. More and more residents are riding bikes on local bike lanes and paths. Bikes are good for the environment. They are good for traffic. They are good for the health of retirees and snowbirds—but they are especially important to the person who is trying to work themselves off the street.
It has taken a lot of love, sweat and bikes to get to this point—but with a renewed vigor, the Well is stronger than ever. Some 88% of our donations go directly to serving our valley’s most hunger-challenged—a rare ratio indeed for a charity that serves the poor. We truly are a well, the provider of the “water” needed by the poorest of Palm Springs residents. But there must be sustenance to fill the bucket, to pull up to those in need.
Please donate to the Well in the Desert, so that we can continue to help so many.
Eric Frankson is a board member for Well in the Desert. Donations to Well in the Desert are fully tax-deductible. Donate, volunteer or learn more at www.wellinthedesert.org, or call 760-656-8905.