Giving Voice to the Homeless

Student journalists take part in a convention’s intense community service project in Hollywood, Fla.

By Kevin Woo  One+ | November 2, 2009

WHEN CRYSTAL VOGELSANG MET SHAWN ANDERSON, SHE KNEW HE WAS THE ONE. “I waited my whole life for him, and he’s the one who God chose,” she said.

“I want to be with her all the rest of my life,” he said.

In April, the two were married at a public park in Hollywood, Fla. She used a small, crowded bathroom to slip into an emerald green wedding dress that was purchased from Kmart. He nervously tried to find a pair of matching dress socks while waiting in a parking garage for the ceremony to begin. She is HIV positive. He is a recovering cocaine addict.

This would be no ordinary wedding. At the time, Vogelsang and Anderson were homeless.

Most journalists would ignore the story of two homeless people getting married. Covering the Anderson wedding, however, was a coveted assignment for 25 college journalism students who gave up a Saturday night to spend time at the Coalition of Service and Charity (COSAC) homeless shelter. The student journalists wrote about the experience for a special edition of the Homeless Voice, the world’s largest newspaper dedicated to issues affecting the homeless.

The project, “Will Work For Food,” was part of the Southeastern Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) convention held in Hollywood, Fla., just outside Fort Lauderdale. Founded in 1909, the SPJ is dedicated to encouraging the free practice of journalism through its advocacy efforts.

Michael Koretzky, chairman of the SPJ Affairs Committee, says creating the community service component for the convention provided valuable, real-world journalism experience for student attendees and was critical to the overall success of the conference. “When we told the attendees about the project, the professional journalists said, ‘Eeew,’ and declined to participate,” he said. “The students, however, were enthused about the opportunity. We approached people at the Homeless Voice and said, ‘We’ll take over your paper for one issue and write a special edition from the students’ perspective.’ The people at the paper responded enthusiastically to our idea.”

Thick and Black Steel Bars

As the students arrived at COSAC, they couldn’t help but notice the thick, black, steel bars that protect the shelters’ 150 clients from the outside world. “I started freaking out,” said Maryann Batlle of Florida Gulf Coast University, recalling her emotions as she arrived at COSAC. “I’ve never been exposed to poverty before. It was scary and I wanted to go home.”

Rachael Joyner, a graduate from Florida Atlantic University (FAU), and Michele Boyet, an FAU student, served as editor in chief and executive editor, respectively. They visited the shelter prior to the SPJ chapter conference to plan logistics.

“COSAC was definitely stranger than I thought it would be,” Joyner said. “The inside kind of reminded me of how you’d picture a psych ward. The rooms were kept neat, and the place was pretty clean, but the people definitely looked haggard. It was strangely quiet on the second floor where the clients’ rooms were. Of course, there was the occasional yell, and a good amount of mumbling from some of the homeless people.”

Two days prior to the conference, Joyner and Boyet learned about the Anderson wedding via an e-mail from COSAC’s director, Sean Cononine. “We couldn’t believe our luck,” Joyner said. “We had a perfect lead story put in our laps.”

For the students, the introduction to life at COSAC was hardly subtle. They ate dinner and struck up conversations with the residents to better understand homelessness. The dining hall was small, dingy and dimly lit—quite different from anything the students had experienced previously.

An editorial meeting was held after dinner, and story assignments were handed out. Some students jockeyed to cover the wedding and outreach stories as plum assignments.

Pam Geiser of Florida Gulf Coast University interviewed the bride and groom before the wedding and says the experience helped put her own problems into perspective.

“I’m not sure what it was that hit me when I saw them. I think it was when the pastor said, ‘You guys are poor but you’re rich in love,’” she said. “I thought about all the things that stress me out, and I have nothing on what they’ve gone through.”

Hitting the Streets

Not all of Hollywood’s homeless end up at COSAC. Many remain on the streets. Joanna Chau of Florida International University interviewed Nick Davis, a member of the shelter’s rescue team, as he prepared for another night driving the streets of Hollywood looking for people who might need help. Chau reported that Davis brought his own perspective to the job. He was homeless in early 2009 and knows what it’s like to live on the streets with an empty stomach.

Sivan Fraser of FAU rode along in an ambulance with Davis and a nurse, a clinical psychologist and a police escort in search of those who needed help. She wanted to experience life on the streets firsthand. “I went back and forth between riding in the ambulance and riding in the police car. I amassed so much information about the homeless way of life in such a short period of time that I felt like my legs were filled with lead,” Fraser said. “Writing my stories until 5 a.m. was dreadfully difficult because I was so overwhelmed. I felt blessed, empowered and grateful, yet also felt angry, confused and bothered by the medical outreach. I realized how lucky I was to have the information and the resources that I do to be able to live my life in a financially, scholastically, emotionally and mentally stable environment. On the other hand, I was so enraged that there were so many homeless people who seemed incapable of realizing that they did not have to live on the streets.”

The group stopped to inspect a small area on the corner of Interstate 95 and Hollywood Boulevard that was littered with empty beer cans, bottles of cheap booze, tattered clothes and a discarded sign that read, “Vet Please Help.”

Fraser learned there are some in the homeless community who prefer not to leave the streets, because they want to preserve their dignity. “The goal of the outreach program is to get the homeless off the streets and into a shelter with the proper mental and health care, a clean and safe place to stay and eat,” Fraser wrote in her story. “But on most trips, [the rescue team] ends up just handing out food, water and cigarettes—things that they hope may one day coax [the homeless] into coming to the shelter.”

The Chain Smoker

Managing the chaos at COSAC falls on Cononine’s broad shoulders. The 44-year old, who smokes five packs of cigarettes a day, is part funeral director (10 people have died in his office over the years), pastor (he performs about five weddings a year) and law enforcement officer (he and his staff go on patrol to discourage drug dealers from selling to clients).

Cal Colgan of Flager College shadowed Cononine for several hours, watching and observing. Colgan saw Cononine give US$10 to a resident with a warning not to use the money to buy crack. Cononine also provided aid to a woman who went into labor in the shelter’s second-floor hallway and wrestled a box cutter from a man trying to commit suicide.

For Cononine it was just another day at the office.

“I thought that he was going to be, at best, a bureaucrat and at worst a crook posing as a civil servant,” Colgan said. “But after talking with and being around him for the first five minutes of my assignment, I realized that Sean could be as down-to-earth as anyone. He seemed agitated at times, but he seemed to genuinely care for all of those at the shelter as if they were his family. When I realized that he sleeps at the shelter at night despite owning a house that is only a six-minute drive away, I understood that he had devoted his entire life to helping these people.”

Colgan lives near St. Augustine, Fla., and volunteers time to an organization that distributes food and clothing to the homeless and the working poor. He’s had significant contact with the homeless but this experience, he says, was different. “This was the first time I have been inside a shelter,” he said. “I must admit that at first I was a little nervous, because I would be in contact with residents who came from every imaginable category of homelessness—drug addicts and those with illness and diseases. But I soon discovered that my fears were unfounded.”

Lyn Millner, assistant professor of journalism at Florida Gulf Coast University and co-advisor of the project, says the project has had a deep and long-lasting impact. “Everyone raved about the work that all of the students did and [the project] led to two freelance jobs for Pam [Geiser],” Millner said. “It’s safe to say that the project changed my students’ lives, and mine, in profound ways.”

For Joyner, the project reinforced her career choice. “This project was, by far, the best part of the conference. So often when you go to conferences you just sit and listen to people talk about what they’ve done,” she said. “This project let us go out and get our hands dirty and put into practice the things we learned. It reminded me how much fun journalism can be. This project reinforced that I’m in the right profession. I love storytelling, tight deadlines and working with other writers. It made me want to run my own publication.”

Looking Up

Crystal and Shawn recently moved into their own apartment. Both are gainfully employed selling the Homeless Voice. They visit Cononine once a week at his office, continue to grow and still act like a newly married couple. One+