It may not be much, but it's home

EVAN WILLIAMS / FLORIDA WEEKLY A rainy day under the tarp in the woods, three friends surviving without a home and Americorp worker John Wages. The melaleuca-choked woods bordering a well-traveled thoroughfare in Fort Myers were quiet and beautiful in a late-afternoon summer rainstorm. Drivers passing by don't see what the melaleuca grove also is: a place that people call home.

If you know where to look, there are primitive shelters of branches and palm fronds. One resident left behind eating utensils and shoes, soaked by the rain.

Another place a few hundred yards from the street, where Alan Thompson lives, included a tent and a makeshift kitchen. Two of Mr. Thompson's friends, who are also homeless, waited out the rain with him under a grey tarp hung from the trees. They included Jack Allan Warson, 50, a native of Flint, Mich., who once managed a nightclub in North Carolina; and "Wolf," 56, a former gang member from Michigan who said he's been in and out of jail since he was 14. The three talked of making the best of the worst, scrambling for basic needs, and wondering about the climb back to normalcy.

EVAN WILLIAMS / FLORIDA WEEKLY Prospective homeless speakers bureau members, from left, Jack Allan Warson, Alan Thompson, Wolf and Vista worker John Wages. "If you were to look at me a few years ago I was a whole person — Corvette in my driveway — and now I'm less than zero," said Mr. Thompson. A 60-year-old former electrician, he lost his job about four years ago, and along with it, a three-bedroom home with a pool in Cape Coral. He's made the woods his home for the past two months.

John Wages, a 28-year-old AmeriCorps Vista worker, and a reporter, listened to the three men talk. Mr. Wages is one of 23 AmeriCorps Vista workers in Florida who are part of a pilot program run by the National Coalition for the Homeless. They are charged with assembling a group of homeless or formerly homeless public speakers willing to talk about their plight to the community. This day, he's recruiting Mr. Thompson and his friends.

As part of his Vista work, Mr. Wages has made it his business to get to know "every homeless person in Lee County," and be a friend to them — visit them in the hospital or on a birthday, for instance — and help connect them to local agencies such as United Way houses and churches.

He estimates that as many as 30 people spend the night within a few acres of Mr. Thompson. Other people who sleep in the nearby woods refused to be interviewed or photographed. Mr. Thompson and his friends, however, want to raise awareness.

Often considered "the domestic Peace Corps," AmeriCorps workers perform a wide variety of community services for modest compensation. Mr. Wages gets just enough to live on, as well as health care, but isn't making enough to own a car. The idea of using Vista workers to assemble homeless speakers groups came about in 2007, according to Michael Stoops, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless in Washington. AmeriCorps first sent a Vista to Orlando to organize a speakers group there as a way to reduce hate crimes against the homeless. Since then, the speakers groups have become a way to "put a human face on the problem of homelessness," Mr. Stoops said. The program is in effect in Georgia as well.

"The AmeriCorps budget has tripled (due to federal funding) and that's why we've been able to expand throughout Florida and soon nationwide," he said. "What John is doing in Lee County will be replicated in other parts of the country."

The speakers groups look for engagements at schools, churches, clubs or whatever venue will have them. "It's like everything you've always wanted to know but were afraid to ask," Mr. Stoops said. During an appearance, audience members ask speakers questions: "Where do you sleep at night? Where do you go to the bathroom? Do you have a family? Are you from out of state?"

Mr. Thompson, Wolf and Mr. Warson have all, tentatively agreed to be a part of Mr. Wages Faces of the Homeless speakers bureau in Lee County. Mr. Wages is also seeking ongoing sponsorship from a nonprofit organization so he can gain a landline phone, an office and keep the speakers bureau intact once he leaves the Vista program. Mr. Wages can be reached at 878-0270 for more information.

Leaving for the night

The light coming through the treetops was fading. Mr. Warson — who plans one day to be a bicycle police officer — was telling a story about how he rode his bicycle a few thousand miles from Clover, S.C., to Fort Myers. "It took me exactly two weeks," he said. Mr. Wages is collecting the stories of the three men and others, with plans to write biographies of each.

Once it became too dark to see the trees outside the tent, the group disbanded, wishing Mr. Thompson a good night. A miniature LCD lantern that Mr. Thompson puts on the ground near his campsite — "My welcome light," he says — disappeared from sight on the twisting path out of the woods.

From across the street in the parking lot, there was no sign of Mr. Thompson or anyone else in the dark spindly forest.

"I hate leaving him out here," Mr. Wages said. "I'm gonna go home and take a shower and eat chicken and shrimp and see my girlfriend. And here he is — out here."