Friends of the State Street Family Overview & Outlook Entering 2022
As we are nearing 2 years of COVID impact on our community, we felt it appropriate to give you an update on how we have been performing and what our goals are as we move forward, continuing our mission to provide help and hope to people experiencing homelessness in Dane County.
Over the past couple of years, FSSF has expanded our outreach efforts to all corners of Madison as the population on the Isthmus has decreased and pockets around the city have increased. Our focus hasn’t changed. The values we anchor to are dignity, collaboration, friendship, trust, and community. But given how the need and scope expanded, mostly due to the pandemic, FSSF adjusted some of our outreach activities from daily walks up and down State Street and around the Capital square, to expanding our focus to include encampments and pocket areas where our friends are staying.
We are partnering with many of the great organizations that Madison has, such as the Greater Madison Resource Center (GMRC), The Beacon, First United Methodist Church (FUMC), Madison Area Care for the Homeless (Mach 1), as well as others. Working together, we improve and expand the services that best help our friends. While the situation in Madison is challenging, the collaboration with our partners has alleviated a lot of hardship that would have otherwise been compounded by COVID.
FSSF has partnered with Mr. Bob’s Under the Bridge to provide our friends with showers and fresh clothes. In some of the heavier populated encampment areas, FSSF has developed and maintained “Friend’s Stations” which store and provide emergency meals, hygiene and essentials needed for survival on the street. We have also placed and maintained water stations to help provide clean water for our friends – the most basic element of human need.
Our volunteers have been shuttling supplies to all four corners of Madison, while maintaining our presence in the Isthmus area. Due to the increased demand for supplies and services, our budget has tripled over the past two years. Thankfully, we have a wide net of dedicated supporters that have met the needs presented to us so far.
Our team is extremely encouraged by some of the things we are seeing from the community to address the needs of the rapidly growing homelessness population in Madison. By all accounts, the “Tiny Home” community on the north side has been a success. And we are hopeful we will see the same results on the far East side at Dairy Drive. Friends of the State Street Family will continue to support these efforts while doing our standard outreach around the city.
Connecting and establishing relationships with our friends experiencing homelessness will always be our core objective. The challenge we are facing is a growing population spread out over 100 square miles. A lot has changed since parking our vehicles at FUMC and walking our supply wagons in and around the Isthmus.
With that, our goal for 2022 is to increase outreach to connect with anyone experiencing homelessness in the Madison area. To do this effectively we will be pursuing the acquisition of a utility vehicle which will serve as a resource for distribution to our partners, tiny home villages, encampments, and areas throughout the city. We feel this will greatly improve our ability to serve the community, as we provide help and hope, giving our friends basic services for survival. We thank all of you who have supported FSSF throughout the years and will keep you posted on how you can continue to help and support us as we expand our efforts to help those in need.