A Roof Over His Head
I have been telling the story of how my friend and I have been trying to get a homeless man back on his feet. There has been some progress in this story. First, I can now reveal that my friend in the story is John Kowalko. I have known for some time that John was my kind of legislator, but he is also my kind of human being. He has been on the lookout for resources to help this guy ever since we found him living in the woods. Johns tenacity has yielded some results.
One of Johns constituents owns a few properties in Newark and was able to provide our guy a room to live in for a while. He has been there for about a week and a half and he seems to be doing well. I have been delivering food to him every few days (someone suggested that we refrain from slipping him cash) and we are working to find him some odd jobs to help him out for a few weeks.
In the meantime, on Monday I drove him over to the Newark Empowerment Center. This is a program for the homeless in Newark that helps with job searching and the ubiquitious problem of re-establishing identification. After he worked with them for an hour or so, I drove him over to his girlfriend’s assisted living facility. He was supposed to go back the the Empowerment Center again on Tuesday, but I haven’t spoken to him since then.
It is funny how much “connectedness” we have gotten used to. I would like to call him and let him know that I’ll be dropping off food, or check to see if he had been able to follow up. But I am back to the early 20th century in terms of stopping by his house and perhaps visiting in vain. Currently I am driving around with about $20 in canned goods in my trunk, hoping to catch up with him.
Finally, we have a possibility of getting him some tools. This will be important if we can find him some work. He is a carpenter, so work is hard to come by right now. But to be without tools (his were stolen from a jobsite) make the task all the harder. One of John Kowalko’s constituents has offered up some used tools and a little bit of work.
I think I’ll get him a Home Depot giftcard for Christmas.
Tags: Delaware, homelessness, kowalko
you are a good man, lg.
anonymity in charity
is a virtue indeed
acts of kindness
need no witness
True. My hope in this series is to highlight the problem and the resources available (and to garner some suggestions from our readers).
Another example of how John Kowalko,who has been in the forefront of statewide issues like windpower,mobile home owner’s rights and governmental transparency, looks out for the interest of individual local people as well.
I hope all goes well for the man you have been helping.
Perhaps what you need to get him is a pre=paid cell phone, assuming there’s a power source at which he can recharge it. By the time you burn all of the fuel to chace him down over the course of a few weeks, you could have paid for a cell.
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Not a bad idea. I’ll look into it. It could also be a good way for potential employers to reach him.