WS Chronicle

By Todd Luck

The Chronicle

The Downtown Bike Patrol is asking the community to donate new or gently used blankets, gloves and knit caps to help the homeless this winter.

The Downtown Bike Patrol is comprised of 12 officers who respond to calls in the downtown business district. Sgt. Terry Fulk said they’ve given blankets to homeless people who come by their office for years, but last year was the first time they sent out a request to the community for donations. The community responded in a big way, and about 1,500 blankets were donated. After that success, the patrol is adding knit caps and gloves to this year’s donation requests.

Fulk said the reason why homeless people come by their office asking for blankets is familiarity.

“We’re the people who have the most contact with them,” he said “On a daily basis, we’ll come in contact with a half dozen to a dozen of the homeless people. They all know us by name; we know them by name.”

He said the Bike Patrol has tried to treat homeless people as respectfully as possible even when responding to calls about them. He said the patrol has developed a relationship with them based on trust.

Since the patrol comes in contact with the homeless population so much, they have information on shelters and services they can refer them to. On cold nights they do their best to find them a shelter they can get into, but some people, no matter what the weather, will refuse to go to a shelter.

“We don’t want people sleeping out in the public and we know that’s a violation of city ordinance but the thing is, they do,” said Fulk. “And so the reason we give them a blanket is we don’t want them to freeze to death.”

Fulk said a few hundred of last year’s blankets were donated to shelters but the vast majority were distributed by the bike patrol directly. Many who receive blankets will come back for another when their blanket gets wet or taken by someone. And it’s not just the homeless, but also those in need who stop by the bike patrol office asking for blankets. Fulk said they’ve had families come by for blankets.

Andrea Kurtz with the 10 Year Plan to End Chronic Homelessness said that the number of people who are homeless in Winston-Salem has remained steady in the last five years. The growth in poverty in Forsyth County hasn’t resulted in a big increase in homelessness, but instead has resulted in more people living “doubled up,” staying with friends and relatives. She said the number of chronic homeless, which is a disabled person who has been homeless for a year or more or who’s been homeless four times in the past three years, is half of what it was in 2010.

Kurtz said the top priority for homeless agencies and activists is to get the homeless into permanent housing, but in an emergency situation a blanket can help them make it through the night. She said some churches and those in Empowerment Project outreach teams – who try to find mentally ill homeless people and steer them to services– give out blankets, but no one does it as systemically as the Bike Patrol.

Blankets, knit caps and gloves can be dropped off outside the Bike Patrol Office at 414 N. Cherry St. across from the Marriott hotel; at City Hall outside the Human Relations Department, 101 N. Main St., Suite 109, and at the Public Safety Center, 725 N. Cherry St.