Meet This Year’s Strangercrombie Charities

Every year, The Stranger auctions off a whole catalog
of unspeakably awesome items—sex toys, bongs, our own
integrity—to benefit local charities. This year’s Strangercrombie
auction debuts in next week’s paper, and we’ve got some wonderful,
weird, and wonderfully weird items up for bid (start bidding Wednesday,
December 2, at thestranger.com/strangercrombie).
It’s no secret that 2009 has been a difficult year for nonprofits, and
so we’re trying to stretch your dollar to benefit as many people as
possible. Three charities—Urban Rest Stop, Country Doctor, and
Senior Services—will split the Strangercrombie money evenly. This
week, we wanted to give you a chance to learn a little more about
them.

by Paul Constant

I don’t know anyone with a bathroom cleaner than the showers and
stalls at Urban Rest Stop (www
.urbanreststop.org). This year,
transient men, women, and children have taken over 36,000 showers at
the hygiene center. The showers are disinfected between each use;
there’s no trace of mildew between the tiny white and blue tiles, the
air doesn’t reek of bleach or ammonia. It just smells clean.

Patrons, as URS staff call them, are given a towel, a razor, a
toothbrush, and small paper cups filled with toothpaste and shaving
cream. Inside my assigned room, I find a toilet, a sink, a mirror, and
a shower, along with a wire rack for my clothes and towel. I have 15
minutes to get clean.

The packed-full laundry room at URS is calm and quiet. The homeless
and jobless sit together, making calm conversation. Many are wearing
jumpsuits with PROPERTY OF URBAN REST STOP stenciled on the
back—their only clothing is being washed—and they flip
through donated paperbacks and newspapers, waiting. Everybody looks up
when a drunken, wobbly man walks in and tries to get a friend to go
find some booze with him. “Come on, man, we got to go!” he shouts. His
friend waves him off. “Man, I’m gonna take a shower.” The drunken man
leaves, disappointed. His friend shakes his head. “Fuckin’ drunks,” he
says. In the other corner of the laundry room, a deaf man points to a
mostly full 40 sticking out of someone’s knapsack. He makes a “no-no”
gesture with his finger, and the chastened man tucks his bottle away. A
woman named Terry teaches an old man how to use a washer; it’s his
first time here.

Homeless and disadvantaged people have taken over half a million
showers here in under 10 years. They’ve washed over 200,000 loads of
laundry in URS’s washing machines. The all-purpose soap in the showers
is top-notch—it smells of mint and washes away without any
residue—and Judy at the front desk says she wishes she could
afford the laundry detergent URS buys for its patrons. URS also
provides basic health services and podiatry. The center is on the front
lines of public health, says Ronni Gilboa, the manager at URS. Good
hygiene, she explains, is the best way to prevent diseases like swine
flu from flooding the streets of Seattle.

Gilboa says that URS’s $600,000 annual budget has remained basically
the same since its founding in March of 2000, even as costs have
increased and the hygiene center has expanded its services—the
administration has gotten better at belt-tightening measures every
year. Last year’s financial downturn led to over 1,000 men, women, and
children visiting URS for the first time. Some of them were homeless.
Others were in transitional housing, and still others were unable to
pay their utility bills in time and needed quick access to basic
hygiene services to hold on to their (usually minimum-wage) jobs.

In a remarkable show of trust, the doors to the bathrooms at URS are
full-length, and they lock. Once you get into the shower—if you
choose, you can make the water as hot as you can possibly bear, and
while the water pressure isn’t exactly worthy of the Grand Hyatt, it’s
more than serviceable—all the outside sounds, the conversation
and the laundry machines and the traffic, fade away. For most people,
the shower is the one guaranteed moment of meditation we get in a day.
Homeless people don’t often get four walls to themselves and a quiet,
clean space to collect their thoughts; the psychological benefits of a
good shower are invaluable.

by Eli Sanders

I walked in on a Wednesday afternoon, not looking particularly
needy—and, in truth, not being particularly needy. Around me in
the waiting room of the Country Doctor Community Clinic (www.countrydoctor.org) on Capitol
Hill was the typical doctor’s office tableau: fish tank, magazines,
hand sanitizer, masks for the active coughers and sneezers. I stepped
up to the receptionist and told her I was unemployed, had no health
insurance, and wanted to get a physical. (All lies, but all in pursuit
of a worthy cause.)

The receptionist asked if anything was wrong with me.

Nope, nothing particularly wrong with me, I said. Just hadn’t seen a
doctor in a while.

Without much further trouble, I had an appointment. Depending on my
future proof of income—or, as was allegedly the case, my future
proof of no income—this visit to the doctor would cost me as
little as $40 (with only $15 required up front). I was on track to be a
beneficiary of Country Doctor’s generous sliding scale and fast,
professional treatment. No humiliation at a dingy free clinic. No
terror of being turned away. No need to explain myself.

I canceled the appointment soon after—I have a job and health
insurance, and thankfully I don’t need Country Doctor at the
moment—but the experience was amazing given how ruthlessly
money-centered the rest of the health-care system can be. Here is a
nonprofit doctor’s office dedicated to treating those of us without
health insurance as humans who all deserve quality health care, no
matter the size of our bank accounts.

It’s a rare and special thing—and, as it turns out, Country
Doctor needs donations now more than ever.

“Right now our situation is such that we are seeing more patients
and getting less public funding,” said Emily Bader, the organization’s
development director. “So the need for private support is the greatest
it’s ever been.”

Cuts to the Washington State budget are one reason; more people are
more needy than ever before, yet state-funded health-care programs that
often reimburse Country Doctor for some of its services are smaller and
harder for low-income people to access than ever before. The soured
stock market is another reason; the income of the private foundations
that help keep Country Doctor afloat is often based on how their
investments are doing and, said Bader, “last year and this year aren’t
exactly golden years for that.”

So Country Doctor is making a push to close the gap with increased
private donations.

It’s not just the organization’s two clinics (the one that I visited
on Capitol Hill, plus another in the Central District) that need to
stay solvent. Country Doctor also provides health care at four women’s
shelters, two of them safe houses for women fleeing abuse. “More women
are coming seeking shelter because more men are taking out their
frustrations of having lost their home or job—taking those
frustrations out with physical or verbal abuse,” Bader explained.

Keeping all of these services going—the care at women’s
shelters, the cheap clinics—is a must, especially when people’s
limited alternatives are considered. “If we weren’t there, then they
wouldn’t have any place to go,” Bader said. “The only other alternative
is to go to a public emergency room where they really don’t
belong.”

by Megan Seling

A frigid midmorning rain beats on our heads harder than it has
fallen all season, but Fai Mathews, a driver for Senior Services’
(www
.seniorservices.org) Meals on Wheels program, is all smiles
anyway. Fai has been cruising around the streets of Seattle, delivering
meals to Seattle’s seniors for four years now. This morning—this
rainy, miserable morning—she lets me ride shotgun in her big,
white cargo van as she hops from apartment building to apartment
building on First Hill. Even in this weather, she insists that she
loves her job. And it sure seems like it; she explodes with laughter as
she tells stories, like the one time she had to chase after a runaway
dolly cart.

Stop after stop, we climb out of the van, pile a few bags of Senior
Services’ frozen meals and various other groceries onto a cart (one
that thankfully doesn’t go renegade) and deliver a week’s worth of food
at a time. Senior Services offers everything from breakfast items to
entrées such as Swedish meatballs and vegetarian lasagna. People
can also order groceries like milk, cereal, bread, and juice through
Senior Service’s Mobile Market.

One woman, who is watching The View with the volume turned
up to 11, has a feisty little wiener dog that does not stop
barking until Fai tosses his bone for him. Another woman, 95 years old
and living in a small studio apartment decorated with black-and-white
photos and decades-old yellowed newspaper clippings, couldn’t remember
how to work the new microwave her son had bought her. Fai patiently
shows her, over and over again, what buttons to push and waits with her
while her meal cooks.

Another man sits in his recliner, as Fai says he usually does,
eating one of his breakfasts to show her how much he enjoys it. Another
woman (who’ll turn 90 years old on Thanksgiving Day) gives Fai two
little ceramic clown magnets that she made and painted herself. She
gives me a Santa Claus magnet with green eyes.

Senior Services’ Meals on Wheels program—just one of the many
services the nonprofit operates, from retirement planning to in-home
care—is delivering more than just microwaveable dinners. For some
of these people, Fai and her Senior Services coworkers are the only
visitors they’ll get all week. And judging by the smiles on their faces
when they open the doors of their apartments, they look forward to her
company. Fai greets every single one of them with a smile, a hug if
they’d like, and sincere interest.

Honestly, and I’m aware that this sounds completely ridiculous, I
had never considered the fact that these people existed right down the
street from you and me. The only old people I know are my grandmas. And
I don’t think of them as being old; I think of them as being my
grandmas. And all I see on Capitol Hill are young people—people
crossing the street from the Comet to Neumos, people reading on the
sidewalk outside of Vita, people who are healthy enough and spry enough
to leave their apartments and get their own damn food. But this
morning, I was introduced to another side of Seattle—other
people’s grandmas and grandpas, great uncles and great aunts. And they
were wonderful.