Don’t underestimate the power of soap and hot water to help restore a person’s dignity.
Dianne Woodhouse has seen the transformation a simple shower can provide when offered to one of Richmond’s homeless through the recently launched, Saturday morning shower program at St. Alban’s Anglican Church.
Woodhouse, a longtime nurse who coordinates the program that had a shower installed in an old storage area inside the parish hall, said she recalls the profound effect it had on one regular user of the church’s numerous outreach programs.
“The first guest, I’ll never forget,” she said.
He frequented the church’s extreme weather shelter during the frigid winter months and was in dire need of more than just a place to sleep overnight this spring. But because of his poor attention to personal hygiene, Woodhouse said he was not very social — rarely talking to anyone and would quietly sit by himself, eat a meal and then go to sleep on the shelter’s floor.
During a recent visit, Woodhouse offered him a shower, and initially he refused. But about half an hour later, he accepted.
“After he had his shower, that was the first time he came over and sat at the table with other guests and actually had dinner with them,” Woodhouse said, adding the boost to his confidence and stature was apparent. “You could see it written all over him.”
All guests are presented with a new set of clothes once they are showered up.
“We outfitted him top to bottom,” Woodhouse said.
It’s just that sort of boost the program is hoping to achieve with others as word gets around the local homeless community, which is about to lose one of the only other places in the city where they can get a free shower — Minoru Pavilion.
When that facility is bulldozed sometime this summer to make way for a re-developed older adults centre to replace Minoru Seniors’ Centre, Woodhouse said the current, slow trickle of shower users at St. Alban’s is expected to flow regularly.
“It was timely that we put together a shower program,” Woodhouse said. “And we’re just now working out the kinks so we’ll be ready when there will be much more of a need.”
To date, just three have used the church’s facility in the past three Saturdays. But flyers have been distributed in areas where many homeless are known to congregate, such as some parkades in the city’s core, bottle depots, the main branch of the public library, and the soon-to-be demolished Minoru Pavilion, to make potential users aware.
Earlier this spring, preliminary statistics released by the 2014 Metro Vancouver Homeless Count show Richmond’s homeless population remains well below the per capita rate for municipalities, as the cities of Vancouver and Surrey continue to bear the brunt of the region’s social problem.
It was found that only 38of the 2,770 homeless found in the region were in Richmond.
But whatever the numbers are, Woodhouse said they will be welcomed for a shower, plus a pancake and sausage breakfast each Saturday morning.
“No shower, no breakfast,” Woodhouse quipped.
And depending on their requirements, shower users are presented with a package of toiletries — toothbrush, soap and shampoo.
“Some of them want to shave. So, we also give them a razor and shaving cream.”
Another shower-using guest with a large mop of hair shyly asked if he could get some conditioner to go with his shower and was provided with a small, travel-sized bottle so he could be tangle-free, Woodhouse added.
Much of those supplies come through donations from area hotels and even airline personnel who gather them from hotels during their out-of-town trips.
Helping out with getting the storage space renovated for the shower was a host of local businesses including Ashton Service Group, which took care of the plumbing, Dan Scott Interiors, which was responsible for drawing up the plans, and Billings Construction, which laid the tile flooring.
Woodhouse said the city expedited the permitting process and helped coordinate the renovation.
But there is an ongoing need for new wool socks and underwear to supply the shelter and shower users.
The St. Alban’s shower is offered each Saturday morning from 8-10 a.m. in the parish centre at 7260 St Albans Rd. (St. Albans and Bennett roads).
