Bean's Cafe offers hope to Anchorage's homeless
James Halpin
- Page 1 of 1
| |
|
The rules are simple: no booze, no sleeping and no disorderly conduct. Drugs, smoking and weapons are out too. Those in violation of the rules are outlisted, as is anyone who admits a violator.
It’s 6:45 a.m. but still a long way from daylight. The mercury sits at a frigid 2 below, though one couldn’t tell that by the more than 50 people waiting to get into Bean’s Café in downtown Anchorage. They mill around, clouds of breath drifting up in the air, mixing with the smoke exhaled from scavenged cigarette butts.
It is a mecca of sorts for the homeless and disenfranchised, whose population is estimated at 1,113 in Anchorage. It gives out free meals, but it is also a place where people can go to escape from arctic temperatures and cold shoulders.
There’s no such thing as a free lunch, the saying goes, although Bean’s proves that’s not always true. Along with its affiliate, Kids’ Cafe, Bean’s serves about 1,000 free meals each day. But Bean’s represents more than a free lunch to its customers: It represents hope. Of its 15 paid employees, 12 used to live on the streets.
Inside the kitchen, the air is humid and smoky. It smells of the burnt grease that coats everything, and there is spilled pancake batter on the rubber floor mats. Dennis Neary, a wiry 61-year-old cook, is preparing a breakfast of pancakes, bacon and eggs, directing the volunteers like a general conducting his troops. Suitably, he’s wearing camouflage fatigues, though with white sneakers instead of combat boots.
Neary first worked at the café in 1990, though he has taken some time off since then. Work starts at 6:30 each morning, when he helps prepare the 250 meals the café serves at breakfast, and it’s evident Neary enjoys doing it – it’s more than just a job for him.
"In the wintertime it’s brutal, but it’s well worth it," he said. "There’s not enough room in the shelters, but we always have enough food."
Just outside the kitchen in the cafeteria, a line is beginning to form in front of the monitors’ desk, as security is called here. Among the most common violations are drunkenness, fighting and people sneaking into the kitchen.
Fliers hang nearby for Alcoholics Anonymous, the Salvation Army, medical services and education opportunities. On the door of the Social Services office is a list, completely full, of those looking for work. When someone calls to find labor – shoveling snow, for example – the people on the top of the list are called first. There were 952 job referrals in October alone.
Jeff Weeks stands nearby, scanning the room. He has been a Bean’s Café regular for the two years since he lost his job of 16 years as a postal worker after sustaining a shoulder injury that made him miss too much work. He now lives in a boarding house.
"It’s hard to find another job because my resume is not accepted and also I feel discriminated against because I am deaf," he wrote on a notepad.
He has been deaf since he contracted German measles when he was 3. Finding work has been tough, he said, mostly because there are too many people competing for the same jobs – jobs that are already scarce because of little snow to shovel so far this winter.
Across the room, a brightly colored mosaic hangs on the cafeteria’s east wall, depicting the sun’s rays radiating out over the jagged peaks of the mountains below. Under the mountains is a line of human shapes, each representing a person connected to the café who has died.
Isaiah-Henry Wilson, 55, walks back into the kitchen. He has worked at Bean’s for two years and is the cook responsible for the salad bar. Like many Outsiders who come to Alaska, Wilson fell in love with the state’s wilderness when he moved here from New York five years ago.
He is an aspiring writer who has had eight of his poems published, and he found Alaska’s scenery and wildlife inspiring. But once he got here, finding work proved more difficult than he expected and, in the end, he ran out of money.
"For the most part, it’s just people down on their luck that ran out of money," Wilson said of the homeless. "The only way to know what it’s like is to live it: Try living on the street for a week, not eating for a week."
There are an estimated 3,474 homeless people in Alaska, according to the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation’s "Statewide Homeless Survey" published for the winter of 2006. The report reveals that homelessness continues to be a growing problem for both Anchorage and the state as a whole, with the number of "chronic homeless" having increased from 4 percent in 2004 to 11 percent in 2006. There are 313 such individuals in Anchorage, according to the report, making them the second-most populous homeless class behind those having chronic substance abuse, which totaled 415 people.
While the proportion of people in Anchorage who are homeless remains relatively low – less than one-half of 1 percent – the increasing number of people is putting a strain on the municipality’s facilities. This is especially true during the winter, when shelters fill up early on the coldest nights and Bean’s experiences an influx of patrons.
As a result of the growing number of homeless in Anchorage, Bean’s is planning a nearly $1 million renovation and expansion project that will increase its capacity by 50 percent, said the café’s executive director, Jim Crockett.
That’s a lot of money for an establishment that relies heavily on donations and volunteer labor to stay afloat. Its annual budget is $3.2 million, of which $900,000 comes in the form of cash donations, Crockett said. The rest comes from the state and United Way. On a given day, Bean’s and its affiliates need between 60 and 80 volunteers just to function.
"They want to make this place better than what it was before," Crockett said. "My real obligation is to the donors, because if we don’t run this right, the donors won’t give us money."
But he realizes his obligation to the clients as well, some of whom his organization engages in preventive measures, like the kids they help feed in the Crossroads Program in the Anchorage School District, which helps pregnant teens finish their education.
"We feel we’re preventing those people from being in the line here at Bean’s," Crockett said.
Being in the line at Bean’s can be a death sentence for some, as the mosaic demonstrates.
"I’ve made a lot of friends here, many of them buried now," said Tom Reel, who has been both an employee and volunteer at Bean’s since the early ’80s after the steel mill where he worked in Pittsburgh closed in 1979.
But Bean’s also represents life to its clients, who are welcome to sit inside for warmth during the day between meals. It is a place where there are always familiar faces and admirable examples of those who have been homeless and found escape. People here know that, for those willing to work at it, there is a way out.
"I spent some time over there in Saint Francis, and I don’t want to go back. It’s not a bad place, but it’s about what it represents: homelessness," Wilson said of the nearby homeless shelter, his voice retaining the blunt, matter-of-fact quality of a New Yorker’s.
That is a common sentiment at Bean’s, where there is, if nothing else, hope. A book called "Where Light Lives: Voices Without Walls" makes that much evident. Bean’s published the book to help cover its overhead costs and it features writings by Anchorage’s homeless, including one of Wilson’s untitled poems that ends:
"Many of us roam the dark corners of our minds, letting cheap booze and drugs rule.
"But this demon will not beat me. I’m too damn cool and too damn bad to let it.
"I will rise again."
And he did.