Every life matters — especially the ones we've been told to ignore
Because mental illness and addiction should never equal abandonment
It started with a shared feeling we couldn't ignore.
As individuals, the founders and initial Board of Directors, we found ourselves doing what so many do. We rolled up our car windows at intersections. We turned our eyes away from people experiencing homelessness, particularly those visibly struggling with mental illness or drug addiction. Not out of cruelty, but out of helplessness. We knew we weren't equipped to fix what had gone so wrong. The problem was bigger than any one of us.
But that helplessness didn't sit right. We couldn't keep walking past human beings who had been left behind by every system meant to protect them. What troubled us even more was the realization that our inaction was part of the problem. We couldn't fix everything, not as individuals, but together, we could do something. We could offer the kind of help that ordinary people can provide: ensuring that others survive long enough to see tomorrow, and to still be here on the day our society finally decides to see them as people too.
Decades ago, America made a devastating decision, one that still echoes through every city street and highway underpass today.
In the early 1980s, under President Reagan's administration, the federal government began dismantling the mental health care system. Thousands of psychiatric hospital beds were eliminated, and the promise of robust community-based care was never fulfilled. The result was predictable and preventable: people living with serious mental illness were pushed out of institutions not into care, but into chaos.
Instead of being supported, they were abandoned, many directly into homelessness.
Over the years, another wave of crisis followed: the explosion of serious drug addiction, often intertwined with untreated mental illness. Without stable housing, without access to comprehensive care, and with deep social stigma surrounding both mental illness and substance use, countless individuals were left to survive on their own, day by day, hour by hour.
These are the people we serve, and the people we refuse to turn away.
Our organization was born from this history and from the urgent need to respond with compassion instead of punishment, with presence instead of abandonment. We are here to reduce harm, preserve dignity, and protect life for those our systems have failed, particularly individuals experiencing homelessness while living with serious mental illness and substance use disorders.
We meet people where they are, literally and figuratively. Through mobile outreach, we deliver survival essentials like tents, coats, socks, and hygiene kits. We provide harm reduction tools and transportation to access showers, laundry, recovery programs, or a safe place to rest. We offer suicide prevention, overdose response, and ongoing wellness check-ins, not just once, but again and again, building trust with those who have been given every reason not to trust anyone.
Our care is nonjudgmental and person-centered. We never require sobriety or behavioral change to provide support. We believe that every life has value, and that helping someone survive today creates the possibility of a different tomorrow.
This crisis was created by decades of disinvestment, stigma, and silence. We are part of a growing movement that refuses to accept this as normal, because no one should be left to suffer in isolation, to die in the shadows of a broken system.
We are here. And we are not turning our backs.