King Day unites volunteers in service to less fortunate

Makeover will provide housing for mentally ill homeless people

Steve Ozark, with Trinity Lutheran Church's Interfaith Initiative program, left, and Bob Harwood, Lawrence, volunteered Monday in helping to clean up and begin renovation on a house at 500 Mo. Volunteers with Grace Evangelical and Trinity Lutheran churches, the Roger Hill Volunteer Center and the Youth Volunteer Corps joined to assist the Bert Nash/Lawrence Community Shelter program HomeMakers in refurbishing the house for use in a supervised living arrangement for homeless adults.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

About a dozen volunteers marked Martin Luther King Jr. Day by helping refurbish a house for the homeless in Lawrence.

That’s exactly what Congress intended when it passed the King Holiday and Service Act in 1994 to encourage people of all races to work together to help others on the national holiday.

“Through King’s Day of Service, the government is encouraging people to go out and volunteer in the community and use this day as a way to create partnerships between different people,” said Rachael Perry, an AmeriCorps member.

She was among people from various Lawrence organizations who tore out carpet and tile, swept floors and replaced vents in a two-story, three-bedroom home at 500 Mo.

The structure is part of HomeMakers, a new program by Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center and Lawrence Community Shelter that aims to house homeless people who have persistent mental illness.

“When people are on the streets, they don’t have an address. Living in crisis, they don’t know where they’re going to be next,” said Steve Ozark, a volunteer coordinator for Interfaith Initiative. “Now, you know they’re going to be in a home.”

Ozark hopes the program will eventually be able to provide the 130 units that Lawrence needs to house people who need supportive, transitional or temporary housing.

“We hope people will support housing and begin to look in the community for resources that we can find,” he said. “We can learn as we go, begin to build other sites – small sites – to get this housing taken care of and get people in homes and out of the cold.”