SAN ANTONIO — Addressing homelessness continues to be a concern for large cities like San Antonio.
One councilman is calling on the city to do more – which raises the question, what exactly is being done to help those living on the streets.
For Valerie Salas who serves as the director of homeless services at the Christian Assistance Ministry, building connections is just as important as the organization's services.
"One stigma that a lot of the community has is that [homelessness] is absolutely a choice," she said.
For Salas every decision leads to a different path.
"We're going to check on one of our babies right now that's been out here for a while. We’re trying to sell freedom from bondage, and trying to sell and encourage a higher quality of life.”
For her, everyone deserves that decency.
“Two things that I personally believe people need to thrive and function, and that is connection and purpose," she said. "A service didn’t save me it was a relationship.”
For two years Salas was living on the streets she now serves.
“It got really bad in 2011, and then I finally reached out for help in 2013 and got off the street and got sober.”
Her decision, drove her purpose, leading her outreach team as director of homeless services.
“I would really love the community to not only know the layers of homelessness, but trust that we’re out here doing this work.”
District 8 councilman Manny Palaez wants to see more efforts from the city on disclosing data of homeless encampments – what he calls a ‘human crisis’.
“The first step at solving a problem is understanding it at every level,” he said.
Including learning more about the heavily populated locations and biohazards.
“At the end of the day, we’re using public resources to lean in and solve for homelessness and the public is owed as much transparency and as much data as possible so that they can make up their own minds to know if we are succeeding or whether or not, there’s room for improvement," Palaez said.
You can do your part in helping organizations like Christian Assistance Ministry – just by simply preparing sandwiches for sack lunches for the outreach team to give to those in need.
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