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The nurse waved the cab over. She hurriedly loaded a young woman into the back along with a pair of bags holding everything in the world the discharged patient owned.

The driver lowered his window. “Where to?” he asked, cigarette bobbing at the corner of his mouth.

“I don’t know,” the nurse responded. “Just somewhere. Take her to 15 Place I guess.”

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Lyn Manz-Walters walked the halls of 15 Place, the multi-service center for the homeless she directs, and greeted those she encountered with exuberance. She bent to retrieve a flower from the floor.

“Did you bring this for me?” she asked an employee, most obviously a former client, then showered the man in gratitude.

The man’s face flashed with bashfulness, a little embarrassed at the good-natured teasing, but loving the attention nonetheless.

For 11 years, Walters has worked with the homeless out of this facility in downtown Mobile and the work seems to feed her determination at making her world a better place.

“I do this because I love Mobile,” Walters said. “I have lived and been all over the world. I could have settled anywhere, but I chose Mobile. Not because I was born here or stuck here but because I love it.”

Walters’ peripatetic life wasn’t always aimed at community work. She began as a dancer, then traveled for 18 years as a jazz vocalist. Even now she relays anecdotes of experiences littered with names of some of the great musicians of the 20th Century.

She later earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology, then a master’s degree in counseling.

But her work in the brick building at the corner of N. Joachim and St. Francis streets in downtown Mobile is what has earned her local notoriety.

Walters told of misunderstandings with the local business community, of entrepreneurs with erroneous ideas as to the mission of 15 Place.

“The public perception of us is inaccurate,” Walters said. She reads correspondence from a business owner who summarized their daytime-only effect as attracting the homeless then turning them loose to run the streets at night, not unlike opening the gates to a kennel.

“We have a van here,” Walters said, “and contrary to popular opinion, we don’t use it to bring in the homeless from out of town. We use it to transport the homeless from the downtown area to shelters where they can sleep for the night. We are trying to help alleviate the problem.”

The facility first opened in 2000 with an effort by the Homeless Coalition backed by then-Mayor Mike Dow who signed on to the Plan to End Chronic Homelessness

According to Walters, seven agencies collaborated to form 15 Place in a joint effort that was a watershed in its time.

“Urban Development had a Washington D.C. workshop involving their plan to address homelessness in the nation’s 100 largest cities,” Walters said. “The first year, Anchorage was invited to explain their efforts and then we were the second.”

A nexus of services is maintained in the brick former church.

“We have healthcare here, with triage on site and transportation to other facilities if needed,” Walters said. “We have substance abuse counselors next door. We have employment counseling, we have counseling for homeless vets. We’re bringing the mountain to Mohammed.”

The facility’s Web site also lists case management, mental health services, advocacy, child day care and mail and telephone among the services offered.

The director is quick to dispel stereotypes, the images of unkempt and psychologically unbalanced homeless shuffling the streets.

“Sure you have those people, but they aren’t the largest portion of the homeless,” Walters said. “A lot of the homeless we encounter have jobs, they just don’t earn much. Even one of the police officers at the precinct over here said that once we give these people access to hygiene, when they get showers, do their laundry here and get cleaned up, they look just like everybody else.”

An emphasis on self-sufficiency is evident when Walters quickly draws a distinction between the homeless and “panhandlers.”

“Not all the homeless are begging,” Walters said. “Panhandlers are people with limited income and an unlimited addiction and they will do whatever they can to get that money. A great deal of them have homes, have places to stay where they go back and get whatever high they can with what they buy from what they beg.”

“The way to stop panhandling is don’t ever give anyone anything,” Walters said.

She carries a black-and-white pamphlet, a simple tract that pleads on the front to “Please help reduce panhandling in Mobile” above directions to “Give this pamphlet to someone on the street.” The pamphlet contains information needed to find meals and assistance, a map to area facilities and shelters. In short, it’s all the help any beggar would need to cease solicitation.

“We’d like to see people start handing these out to anyone that tries to hit them up,” Walters said.

Walters believes further panhandling should meet a stronger rebuff. “I just call the law,” she said.

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The cab rolled down Springhill Avenue, bound for downtown.

In the backseat, the young woman from the hospital looked out the window. The thin twenty-something pulled at her shortly cropped strawberry blonde hair, her mind reeling at a narrowing future, a world closing in around her and threatening to finally kill her without some form of help.

She fought back the tears in her electric-blue eyes and told herself she would manage, she had scraped by this long, she could keep going.

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The most hectic part of the day at 15 Place is lunch. In conjunction with a myriad of local organizations, they offer free weekday lunches and weekend brunches to anyone who desires. They average serving about 160 meals per day.

“We’ve had restaurants bring us leftovers,” Walters said. “Even a bride who once brought us the stuff left over from her wedding.”

“This isn’t just for the homeless, it’s for lower income people who need the service to keep their bills paid,” Walters said. “I know one young woman who is about to take a welding class that needed this. She has a job at the moment but is only making about $48 a day. These lunches, when she had more month than she had income, allows her to make it.”

The lunchroom hums along. A line of diners snakes up the left side of the room.

A row of volunteers on the serving line scoop out food and fill plates. Today, the servers are a group of office workers from Praytor Realty where company owner Jamie Praytor takes particular pleasure in assisting the facility. Other days, the serving line will be filled with volunteers from area churches, even kids from parochial and private schools.

The diners are quiet as they wait their turn, humble as they receive their portions.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“Bless you, ma’am. Thank you.”

One man quietly turns down an offer of bread to go with his meal. “My teeth just can’t handle it.”

Once at the tables, the diners recognize familiar faces and joke back and forth, their nature fueled by the comfort of food and full stomachs. Others eat quietly and go about their way.

“People think it’s more dangerous in here than it really is,” Walters said. “In all these years, we’ve only had one altercation and it was over the television.”

Before one o’clock, the volunteers have cleaned up and are on their way back to the office.

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Roy Branning stood behind the desk at the 15 Place entrance, directing traffic and handing out numbered tickets for lunches.

“I like working here because it gives me a chance to see how I was and how I don’t want to be again,” Branning said. He has been working there for 13 months, one of only about six or so employees.

Stocky and grey-haired, Branning said he came from a Mississippi family of means but lived in Mobile most of his life. He also admits to squandering the opportunities given him.

“I’m a 40-year alcoholic, a 33-year addict,” Branning easily admits. “I was on opiates for seven years, cocaine for 26. I was an addict longer than a lot folks are alive.”

“I was doing lawn care when I was an addict,” Branning said. “I wasn’t ever really homeless but for a real short while, but I was still living day-to-day. Man, I would’ve done anything to get money to get high. I’d steal your glasses off your head if I thought I could get money for them.”

“I lost my mom and dad while I was on coke and it’s not pretty, man,” Branning said. “It’s hard enough to face something like that when you’re straight but when you’re speeding, it’s something else.”

“I walked out of Metro Jail and walked straight into here,” Branning said, motioning around him. “This place changed my life. I was down to nothing. As an addict, we’re taught to glance back but not to stay there and this helps me do that, helps me humble myself. You’ve got to focus on life on its own terms, not through something else. If you can’t do that, you can’t live.”

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The taxi stopped in front of 15 Place. The cab driver grabbed the young woman’s bags and motioned her inside. Younger and seemingly more vibrant than many of the other clients, she at first looked like a volunteer in her bright summer clothes.

A few scars on her skin, one on her hand that appeared fairly fresh reveal a harder story underneath her veneer.

The taxi driver dropped her bags at the desk and quickly headed back to his car.

Fear is evident in the bright blue eyes as the young woman tentatively approached the desk and talks to Branning for a moment. She asked if it is a treatment facility and Branning bluntly answered no, but starts to tell what they do offer.

The woman, now clearly confused and frightened, wheeled and headed for the door to catch the driver, to tell him she’s in the wrong spot. By the time she returned, Walters had emerged from the lunchroom.

The girl began to stammer a story to Branning, her elocution belying roots in a middle-class family not from the region.

Walters stepped up to the woman and calmly explained the woman need not go anywhere, that whatever she needed – be it a women’s shelter, a rehab program, whatever – they could arrange for it for her.

“Look, we’re just going to check your bags in over here, where we do everyone else, and then we’re going get you some lunch. Don’t you need some food?” Walters asked.

The girl nodded as her eyes began to well.

Walters stepped closer and grasped the woman’s hand, speaking in low, reassuring tones. A short reference to domestic abuse emerged.

After few moments more, the woman began to fully cry as Walters comforted her. It wasn’t clear whether the tears come more from exhaustion, fear or gratitude.

Or maybe all three.

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“We find that a lot of homeless come from a childhood of institutionalization,” Walters said. “A lot were foster kids who just grew used to the transitory nature of life.”

“We’re lucky now in that this president (Bush), seems to be dedicated to addressing the homeless problem more than some others. And our governor, too.”

A recent report from the Governor’s Statewide Interagency Council on Homelessness gives figures that place homeless situation in a different light than conventional wisdom might suggest.

On any given night in Alabama, almost 5,400 people are homeless. Of those, 1,000 are chronically homeless, over 2,000 are substance abusers, 1,000 are in families with dependant children, almost 1,700 are unsheltered, almost 1,000 are veterans and 400 are victims of domestic abuse.

On that same night, Baldwin and Mobile counties will contain 621 of them.

Compare that to Birmingham where, on that same night, the Magic City will host 2,104 homeless.

According to Walters, certain local phenomena bring a surge in those numbers, too.

“Everybody that ever built a chicken coop with their grandfather thinks they can get work after a hurricane,” Walters said. She also credits Mardi Gras with bumping homeless populations because they can get extra money, find more things for free and generally pass less noticed in the chaos.

Walters is glad 15 Place is making a difference but wants to do more. She is determined to get a women’s shelter started.

Yet she also fears what the future may hold.

“I’m afraid if things keep going the way they are in the economy right now, we’ll see a bump in the numbers,” Walters said. “And these newer homeless will look a lot more like average Americans than we think.”

“Most of us don’t know just how close homelessness can be to us,” Walters warned. “For many, it’s just one illness or accident away.”

Kevin Lee is Lagniappe associate editor. Contact him at klee@lagniappemobile.com.

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