MICHAEL S. WIRTZ / Inquirer Staff Photographer
Keith Givens (left) and Dave Antonini of Horizon House help Don Opher, 72, into a wheelchair at Girard Medical Center. The outreach team brought him in from Rittenhouse Square, where he had spent a cold night sleeping on a bench.
Homeless in Philadelphia: First of three parts
Taking help to the homeless
Ride with two Horizon House outreach workers as they assist those in distress.
Keith Givens and David Antonini patrol the front lines of homelessness in a beat-up blue minivan.
On this cold fall day, the outreach team from the nonprofit Horizon House crisscrosses the city, checking out homeless hot spots.
The city added this 12th outreach team last summer with the mandate to respond to complaints in Center City within an hour.
Last year, the city's 40 outreach specialists made contact with 5,688 different people who lived on the streets for short or extended periods.
Only one in three sought help.
11:30 a.m., Benjamin Franklin Parkway - "the Wall"
At the rear of the Youth Study Center - a place known to police and outreach workers as "the Wall" - someone has built a rectangular hut made of cardboard and black plastic, a makeshift shelter held together with rope and attached to a drainpipe.
Out front are a couple of big empty Pepsi bottles - portable urinals.
Antonini, 29, raps on the hut. "Hello?" he says, peeking inside.
No one's home.
"These are the ones who really don't talk to people," says Givens, 44, a seven-year veteran of outreach work. "That's why they hide here."
12:15 p.m., under an overpass at Penn's Landing
The team checks out an encampment with a beat-up chaise longue. Antonini picks up a ball of steel wool - paraphernalia for crack pipes.
The only person home is a bony old man. He's in no mood for visitors.
"I've been here for nine years," he says with irritation. "How you going to put me in jail for trespassing?"
1 p.m., Rittenhouse Square
Base to Horizon House.
Rittenhouse Square.
Man near entrance.
The call comes over a walkie-talkie as the van heads west on the Vine Street Expressway.
Fifteen minutes later, Antonini finds Don Opher, 72, on a park bench. Opher was discharged the other day from Hahnemann University Hospital. He smells like a taproom.
"How you doing, buddy?" Antonini asks.
"Not too good," Opher says. "It's cold. I want to go in and just be done, done with everything."
They head to the detox center at Girard Medical Center. Wheeling Opher in, Antonini says, "You should be all right."
At 2:07 p.m., Givens heads back to Center City. "We got it started," he says. "We're not going to let him just fall by the wayside."
The walkie-talkie chirps to life.
Base to Horizon House.
17th and Walnut Streets.
Man on a grate.
