'Washed in the blood': Shelter provides services during spike in homeless population

Ken Stickford’s voice started slow and deep, but in a matter of seconds, it was suddenly joined by others singing praise.
  
“I’m going to need as much help up here as I can,” Stickford said to the crowd of about 20 men as he prepared to lead them in song.

“Amen,” a man shouted from his seat in front of the lecture podium.

“Have you been to Jesus for the cleansing power?” the crowd of men sang.

Stickford is the weekend night chaplain at the Backstreet Missions shelter for men. He is a graduate of the services that Backstreet offers and now finds himself on the volunteer side of the fence, offering his services wherever they can be used.

He said when he was a member of the program at Backstreet, he always felt called to serve others in the shelter and to become proactive within the walls of the facility.

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According the most recent census report by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2010, Bloomington’s poverty rate, at the time of the report, stood at 39 percent. This figure is about 25.8 percent higher than the statewide rate (13.2 percent).

Bloomington has been seen as one of the cities with the most resources for the homeless according to residents at Backstreet.

Robin “Butch” Honeycutt, a resident staying at Backstreet Missions, said he believes homeless people flock from all around to take advantage of the services Bloomington has to offer to its homeless community.

Honeycutt said he speaks from experience.

At one point, he was living out of his van and doing his best to get by on a daily basis.

Honeycutt once lived a life he described as typical: married with a child, maintaining a management position at a restaurant and attending classes in hopes of becoming a psychologist.

He became addicted to pills, first having experimented with them at parties in his junior year of high school.

“There’s certain people that have to be that way, and there’s some things you can’t do anything about, but not all of them,” Honeycutt said. “(The homeless) could go to all these different places and get free things. That’s why they hang around.”

His addiction led to what he described as his downfall, but he also described that downfall as one of the best things that ever happened to him seeing how it allowed him to view the ongoing adversities present in his life from a fresh perspective.

“Sometimes, we look at people that are addicts or homeless, and it’s easy to see flaws,” Honeycutt said. “Everyday people in life have the same problems. You can mask things pretty well. You might see somebody that has a nice life, and their life inside might be just as destroyed.

I would say with anything, with my life, if I would’ve had self control and discipline, those two things, none of (my homeless situation) would’ve happened.”

Honeycutt said he realized he had reached a breaking point one morning as he lay in his bed, sweating and wrapped in a blanket, doing what he could to maintain his body heat.

It was just another withdrawal, he would tell himself.

Like other mornings before, his son would come and stand bedside wanting to play with his father.

But each time this would occur, a broken record played in the place of a father’s words to his son. “Daddy’s sick,” Honeycutt would often say to his young son.

This was just a typical morning. It had happened hundreds of times before. But this time something was different. Honeycutt said something just clicked. He proceeded to seek the help that was long past due.

“You can’t go on desires all the time,” Honeycutt said. “That’s what gets you into trouble. You get mad, and you want to say something. That’s a desire. It could
destroy you. When I get upset, my first instinct is to take a pill. It’s a desire. You see a girl, and you’re married, and you cheat. It’s a desire. Desires destroy you, and that’s where discipline and self-control come in.”

Honeycutt said he believes there exists a set of factors that would ideally contribute to a person’s downfall. He described these factors working in cohesion and ultimately accumulating in a life on the street.

“My main problem is I don’t have self-control, I don’t have discipline, I procrastinate and I set my priorities in the wrong order,” Honeycutt said. “Those are the four things that will cause a downfall in a person to me. You have to want it. You have to do it for yourself. You have to really want to change and fix those things. If that isn’t first, everything else will fall.”

Honeycutt said the biggest reason people are addicts is because they’ve become accustomed to the habit of doing drugs.

“It goes back to the laziness, the self-control, the discipline and procrastination,” he said. “They don’t want to put the effort in. I’ve been there, so I can say these things. I’ve sat on the couch for three months and flipped through channels, ate pills and not wanting to go put applications in. It’s sad to say, but it’s the truth. I’ve been around it, so I know.”

Backstreet Missions is a high-barrier shelter, meaning those who show up to utilize the services may not be under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of treatment.

A women and children’s shelter also associated with Backstreet is located down the street from the all-men’s shelter.

Poverty and homelessness in the streets of Bloomington are discussed across many platforms, ranging from political debates to personal conversation.

People who have lived on the streets said the problem is not in how to accommodate the homeless population, it’s how to manage it.

“It’s crazy, but if these resources were to get taken away, like this place right here (Backstreet) requires that once you enter into the 90-day program to turn in a piece of paper once a week stating how many jobs you applied for,” Honeycutt said. “It puts pressure on them and keeps them accountable. That’s a lot more to say.”

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As the chapel service continued, the men’s voices progressively became less independent and began to intertwine as one universal voice singing aloud.

Their eyes were glued to the ruby hymnals that lay in front of them, and the group of men sang, “Are you washed in the blood of the lamb?”