Imagine, if you will, that you are sleeping in a tent. It is winter; you have no income except for bottles collected and occasional day jobs; you are surviving, but barely. You decide to apply for subsidized housing. Where to find an application? When you finally get one it is a huge stack of forms. First information that they want is your address. “A tent in the woods” will not work. A post office box? Too expensive. General delivery? Maybe, but that is scary to someone who spends much of his time trying to be invisible.

Next thing that is wanted is your identification. Your driver’s license expired years ago. You may have never gotten your birth certificate from your parents and paper doesn’t do very well in a tent that leaks. It is the same with your social security card. To get a state ID card you have to be able to prove who you are. So you contact the place where you are born. They want you to provide proof that you are who you say you are. You are trapped in a Catch 22. Giving up and going back to your tent seems to be the only thing to do.

And so it goes with health care and opening a bank account. There are barriers to almost all of the services that you need. What about the homeless shelter, you ask. It’s full. Its capacity reduced because of COVID-19 and the lack of affordable housing for its present occupants to move into.

Where does one turn? One of the primary sources of help is The Gathering Place. Along with our partners; Tedford Housing, Oasis Free Clinic, Mid Coast Hunger Prevention Program. The Gathering Place reaches out to the area’s individuals experiencing homelessness and others with urgent needs. In addition to providing a safe and welcoming place to be five days a week, it has been a goal of The Gathering Place to assist our guests in navigating the paths to appropriate services.

At first volunteers did the job. However, many times they did not have the skills nor the time to do the job. But we did our best and with some successes. When we hired our executive director, Mary Connolly, she brought many skills in these matters and assisted many more people. However, the lines were long outside of her door and she had other duties as well.

With the receipt of a special grant, the board of The Gathering Place was able to hire a full time staff person to help our guests and any person who needs assistance. Alex Bessey started with us on April 1. His title is Community Navigator. Alex is available from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Monday-Friday or by appointment.

Alex brings many skills and experience in assisting individuals to acquire the necessary resources to meet their needs. He has helped folks get their identification documents. They now have a Birth certificate, a State ID, and a Social Security card for the first time in years. People with mental health and substance use disorders have been helped to appropriate resources. Alex uses a low barrier approach to connecting our guests with various needs, to local resources that support self directed goals. This happens at The Gathering Place but sometimes assisting our community requires Alex to go to them.

Alex meets our guests and community members where they are. This includes meeting with unsheltered individuals at their campsites or in the community, bringing needed, available resources to individuals and families, and acting as a source of information related to navigating helping systems or being connected to resources.

With Alex at their side, many of our guests for the first time feel like they are not alone. They are daring to begin the daunting process of applying for Social Security Disability as well as other cumbersome processes because they feel supported and encouraged to navigate a complex system with assistance. But for many finding help is difficult so outreach has been an important part of providing support.

For the last two months Alex has served over 50 guests all who have expressed the same sentiment: “Thank you for seeing me and hearing me, and finding ways to help me.” The Gathering Place has worked hard over the last ten years to create a safe, supportive space for our guests and with the addition of Alex to our community we now can provide an opportunity for people to be more richly connected to outside resources.

The guests, volunteers, staff, and board members of The Gathering Place welcome Alex Bessey to his new position as Community Navigator.

George Hardy is a volunteer and board member at The Gathering Place. Giving Voice is a weekly collaboration among four local non-profit service agencies to share information and stories about their work in the community.