Stafford RISE Adapting its Outreach to Meet the Needs of the County's Unhoused Population
What worked in one part of the county wasn't working in another, so the coalition kept looking for a solution.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
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Stafford RISE has been around for almost two years, and in that time, the coalition has learned that there’s no one way to minister to the county’s unhoused and precariously housed population.
Since July of 2023, the coalition—which is made up of individuals, nonprofits, churches, and government organizations—has been bringing aid and resources to the unhoused population clustered around the hotels and motels on U.S. 17 once a month.
This model now provides resources—food, clothing, a mobile health clinic—to between 80 and 120 people in the southern part of the county, said Steven Curtis, a sergeant in the Stafford County Sheriff’s Office.
Last year, RISE—an acronym for Rebuilding Independence through Support and Empowerment—decided to try duplicating this model at the hotels along State Route 610 in north Stafford.
But it didn’t work.
“We tried the same model on 610 for three or four months, but we’d only get maybe six to eight people,” Curtis said. “So we decided to switch methodologies and take our resources and go mobile—go find people where they are.”
That didn’t work either. The coalition knew where there were encampments, but when they’d visit the encampments, they’d find them empty.
“We learned from Micah [Ecumenical Ministries, the Fredericksburg-based organization that cares for the city’s unhoused population] that you either have to go between 4 and 6 a.m. or 9 and 10 p.m., which we can’t do, because we’re made up of volunteers,” Curtis said. “We were getting discouraged. We know there are people out there who need help.”
That’s when the coalition decided to try a third approach—one that attempts to meet individual unhoused persons and establish connections with them where they are.
On the second Thursday of every month, volunteers gather in Stafford’s public safety center to assemble outreach bags, filled with hygiene products, food, supplies, and information about community resources.
“Every volunteer takes however many bags they want to give out to people they see in the community as they go about their day,” Curtis said. The coalition maintains a GIS map, where members make notes of where they gave out the bags, and—if they were able to make contact with the person—where they can describe the person’s needs.
The map is shared with Micah, and staff members of that organization can then follow up and get the person connected, established in their system.
“The whole idea is to build relationships,” Curtis said.
Shay Curtis, a volunteer with RISE for the past year who was at the public safety center on a recent Thursday to help fill the outreach bags, said she usually gives out about eight bags each month. She said “making contact with people” is the most rewarding part of her volunteer work with RISE.
That’s also the part that takes the most effort, but has the most potential to help, said Kim Orr, public health specialist with Stafford County Fire and Rescue.
“Building that rapport takes time,” Orr said. “I go out a lot in plain clothes and just chat with people.”
It’s through these chats that RISE volunteers learn what led someone to become unhoused or precariously housed in Stafford—and it’s often not drugs or alcohol, which Steven Curtis said is a common misconception.
Instead, Curtis said, “the people we talk to are transient, between locations.”
“They’re coming from Florida, Texas, Georgia, or New York, and they got stuck here,” he said. “Maybe they came through on their way to visit someone, or to get away from someone, and they had a health emergency or a car accident, and now they are stranded.”
People are living in their cars, Curtis said, because they can afford a $200 monthly car payment, but not a $2,000 monthly rent or mortgage payment.
Orr said many people she talks to are employed, but can’t afford housing costs or save for rental deposits. Without established credit histories, they’re unable to qualify for loans, but educational resources on affordable housing options and ways to improving credit would help them tremendously, she said.
“If we just hand them a card that lists all the local resources, a lot of them won’t engage, because it’s overwhelming,” Curtis said. “That’s where it helps to sit and talk for five minutes with someone who is maybe charging their phone in a Wawa.”
That’s when volunteers can help someone get connected to the specific resource they need—whether it’s Faith Housing Coalition, which provides financial counseling; Empowerhouse, for domestic violence services and shelter; the Lloyd Moss Free Clinic, for free or low-cost medical and dental care; or FailSafe-ERA, for reentry services and support post-incarceration.
David Humphrey, a longtime volunteer with RISE, said the established model of bringing resources to the U.S. 17 motels once a month is successful in that it reaches a lot of people, but it doesn’t create opportunities for one-on-one conversations.
“We would like more volunteers, ideally, who are willing to engage and talk with people [as they go through the line to pick up food or clothing],” he said. “We’ve set up the format that draws them, but getting them to talk is still difficult.”
RISE will continue to “do what we can and hope to have some breakthrough,” Humphrey said, and Curtis said the coalition will continue coming at the issue “from all angles.”
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Knowing that many unhoused or precariously housed persons are employed is helpful to my understanding but unimpressive to friends who continue to believe old falsehoods.