Monday, January 24, 2011
By LAURIE LUCAS
The Press-Enterprise
- Photo Gallery: Riverside County Homeless Census Survey
- Read about Richard Burleigh’s personal journey here.
As Richard Burleigh approached a small homeless encampment in Riverside, he bawled: “Teddy Joe Stark Jr., give me a hug!”
Huddled in a sleeping bag under a mound of blankets, Stark popped up grinning, began coughing and bummed a cigarette.
His makeshift digs on a grassy patch beside the Metrolink tracks overlook 14th Street and Highway 91.
"We're from the homeless counters," Richard Burleigh tells his friend Teddy Joe Stark Jr. early Monday morning in Riverside. After more than 10 years as a street person, Richard Burleigh knows every downtown place where the homeless hide at night. Now he is helping with a count of the homeless. Photo by Stan Lim
Burleigh, 57, knows the turf and the man he calls “Vodka Joe” very well.
“We’re from the homeless counters,” Burleigh told his friend. His teammate, Enid Reece, a social worker who volunteered for Monday’s job, jotted the number five on her clipboard.
Paired up at 5:30 a.m. at the Cesar Chavez Community Center, the two spent the next four hours trolling a designated route for homeless, many still asleep.
After more than 10 years as a street person, Burleigh knows every downtown underpass, overpass, alley, park, knoll, tree and building where his comrades hide at night. Sober for the last 19 months, he’s proud to be an ex-street person.
Burleigh was among 100 homeless or formerly homeless “guides” recruited and trained by Riverside County to help tally the number of people living on the street. Using a new approach, each guide, assigned a territory, was partnered with a volunteer, most of whom work in homeless programs. Besides Riverside, deployment centers included Hemet, Moreno Valley, Indio, Palm Springs and Temecula.
On Wednesday and Thursday, San Bernardino County will dispatch 500 volunteers from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. from the valleys to the deserts and mountains.
The purpose is to get a head count to renew existing programs in hopes of wiping out homelessness within the next decade.
Next month, Washington will award more than $6 million for 20 programs in Riverside County targeting homeless veterans, women and the mentally ill. San Bernardino County will get roughly $2.3 million for more than a dozen programs focused on transitional housing, job training, substance abuse and other challenges for street dwellers.
At last count there were an estimated 3,366 homeless people on a given night in Riverside County and 1,736 in San Bernardino County. This week’s surveys — Monday and today in Riverside County — Wednesday and Thursday in San Bernardino County — will update those calculations.
Reece, 32, who works for the Loma Linda Veterans Administration Medical Center, parked downtown. Burleigh, now outreach manager for U.S. Veterans, a nonprofit at March Air Reserve Base, led a sad walking tour that cut a swath through homeless haunts. It was supposed to be only “visual contact” for the tab, but Burleigh refused to snub his buddies.
“That’s my old spot, back there,” he said, pointing to a grassy patch off 14th and Vine streets. “I used to bathe in this canal,” he said of the icy water that runs parallel to the Metrolink tracks.
Enid Reece, a social worker, and Burleigh talk with a homeless man during a count Monday morning.
Enid Reece, a social worker, and Burleigh talk with a homeless man during a count Monday morning.
Teddy Joe Stark Jr. introduced himself to Reece, 33, as “the pride and joy of Moreno Valley,” where he grew up and graduated from Moreno Valley High School in 1972. He reminisced about playing lead and rhythm guitar in a band. He bragged about Sunday’s Dumpster diving, where he scored some good grub from Jack in the Box.
Another old friend, Joe Brown, peered out of his lean-to a few yards from Stark’s bedding.
