Friendship is preceded by meeting, and OTN has a particular way of characterizing this initial contact. OTN members say that they “meet people where they are.” It is a refrain that can be found on OTN’s website and across many of my interviews. Indeed, OTN members appear to take it for granted as a turn of phrase; for example, one staff member summarized OTN’s
practice of outreach as: “go to folks, meet them where they’re at, getting to know them, making contact, developing those relationships, building that trust and reputation with those individuals, and then navigating those who are willing and ready into housing options.” As part of a larger
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practice of outreach, “meeting them where they are” seems important, and it happens early. But what does it mean?
For OTN, there are many dimensions to meeting someone where they are. Its website indicates that this practice happens “geographically, mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually.” Informants stressed these varied dimensions as well; one informant added
“medically,” which emphasizes the physical and perhaps also the mental. “Meeting people where they are” is a phrase layered with meaning, referencing multiple distinct practices.
Going to Them. There is a literal sense to meeting someone where they are: the
“geographical” sense of going to people experiencing homelessness rather than expecting them to come to a central office for assistance. Unlike many homeless outreach organizations, OTN holds no outreach office hours. Instead, OTN’s outreach workers walk up to campsites, canvass streets, swing by apartments, visit hospital rooms, go to court hearings, and travel to other local places where OTN’s “friends” are located at a given moment. As a result, the organization’s outreach workers tend to work out of their cars and spend much less time at OTN’s headquarters compared to administrative staff.
Meeting Their Immediate Needs. In another sense, to meet someone where they are is to perceive and meet their immediate needs—that is, to engage in personalized, day-to-day assistance that recognizes “where” the individual exists experientially. Meeting immediate needs may or may not be directly related to permanent housing; for example, it may include assistance securing “social security cards or birth certificates to be able to get them into housing” or basic resources such as “a pair of socks or sometimes … a food box.” Other common immediate needs include coping with or escaping dangerous weather, finding medical help, and accessing
financial or employment resources. In addition, some needs are immaterial. Emotional needs
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motivate OTN’s pursuit of outreach relationships that are based on friendship and co-presence.
Spiritual needs are relevant as well. One staff member explained why OTN embraces an
“interfaith” identity, as opposed to a secular one:
I had worked with a secular nonprofit before, and there was no possibility of holistic healing, of incorporating conversations... If people wanted to talk about faith, we couldn't do it there. And a lot of people, especially in the South, have a lot of baggage with their faith and are wrestling with that. So, we have had, for instance, interfaith street chaplains that can help people as they’re processing major losses in their life—like, on their
deathbeds, doing end-of-life care, helping plan memorials and funerals for individuals in the city. That kind of—people aren’t just brains, heads, and hearts; there's a spirit in us, too, that grapples with big questions.
Whenever possible, OTN tries to meet needs directly. In lieu of this, OTN connects people to other organizations in the community that can better meet the need.
In trying to meet immediate needs, OTN has also made efforts to fill gaps in Nashville’s inventory of temporary shelter options. On a weekly or monthly basis (depending on the time of year), OTN partners with local churches to create “resource shelters”: designated church
facilities where people experiencing homelessness can receive basic resources and services from OTN staff, plus a place to sleep. In addition to resource shelters, OTN launched The Village at Glencliff: a community of 22 “micro homes”—each consisting of a bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom—as places of medical respite and bridge housing for people experiencing
homelessness who are particularly vulnerable. The newly constructed micro homes are located on the property of Glencliff United Methodist Church (which also provides OTN with its office space). Although The Village has since become an independent 501(c)(3) organization, it began as an OTN initiative. OTN members do not include shelter and housing provision in the
organization’s “core” activities, but The Village illustrates how OTN has made significant efforts to provide some temporary shelter options—as part of a larger project of doing what it can to meet the immediate needs of Nashvillians experiencing homelessness.
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During the COVID-19 pandemic, OTN has tried to maintain its direct assistance efforts as much as possible. Connecting their “friends” to healthcare is all the more important, especially when they have COVID-19 symptoms. The need for basic resources has expanded; because of the economic disruption, some of OTN’s “friends” who were formerly experiencing
homelessness are newly in need of food and other supplies. While doing all of this, OTN members are trying to follow CDC guidelines for safe interactions.
Meeting the immediate needs of people experiencing homelessness accounts for many of OTN’s outreach activities. These activities are resource intensive and often require a high level of staff reactivity. However, they are important to OTN’s mission of meeting people where they are. Meeting immediate needs is one way of parachuting in to where someone is on their
personal journey, establishing and maintaining an interpersonal connection through prompt and meaningful offers of help.
Suppressing Expectations. Finally, to meet someone where they are is to suppress one’s expectations for them—namely expectations for how they should behave or what goals they should strive for. That is, an outreach worker tries to join the journey that their prospective friend is already on, rather than coercing them to take a different route or change their chosen
destination altogether. For example, multiple informants talked about getting people into housing
“if that’s what they choose.” Consistently, informants expressed a desire to respect the autonomy of the people they work with. Respect for autonomy also happens to be a key principle of
Housing First.
Related to this, of course, is the issue of alcohol and substance use. In the homeless assistance field, policies and practices around alcohol and substance use are a common way for people experiencing homelessness to lose their autonomy; with the staircase model still
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prevalent, it is common for service providers to leverage the promise of housing to coerce people to stop using and to seek treatment. OTN members uniformly reject this approach. For OTN, meeting someone where they are means respecting the decisions they have made for
themselves—just like we would a friend’s.