‘Cardboard city’ setup by Jacksonville church simulates homelessness

3 years ago 266

Family Promise uses lawsuit arsenic mode to rise consciousness of homelessness

Cardboard structure setup astatine event.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A “cardboard city” was setup Friday nighttime down the Lakewood United Methodist Church arsenic a mode of kicking disconnected National Hunger and Homeless Awareness Week.

Volunteers, unit and families with the enactment Family Promise of Jacksonville were determination to walk the night.

“They walk the nighttime extracurricular arsenic if they were homeless,” explained Shaun Nelson, committee president of Family Promise. “Whatever the upwind is -- is what it is.”

Because stateless radical and families can’t choose.

“It’s an accidental for families to travel acquisition what it mightiness beryllium similar to beryllium homeless,” said Mark Landschoot, the organization’s enforcement director. “So families tin slumber successful their cardboard, tin slumber successful a tent, they tin slumber retired connected the crushed oregon successful their cars.”

Family Promise says it’s shining a airy connected the fig of families successful Jacksonville that volition walk the nighttime extracurricular connected the streets, oregon successful a wooded area. They adjacent connection radical a elemental meal, similar they mightiness find successful a shelter.

Family Promise believes stateless shelters tin really interruption up families.

“There whitethorn beryllium a pistillate structure and a antheral shelter, truthful could you imagine, being separated from your kid conscionable to find shelter,” Nelson said. “Our extremity is to support families unneurotic and instrumentality them from homelessness to housing.”

This marked the group’s 11th yearly lawsuit to rise consciousness of homelessness.

Organizers accidental they bring struggling families back, aft they person gone done the Family Promise program, to stock their experiences with others and wherever they are now.

The families served by Family Promise person an 82% occurrence rate.