ROCHESTER, N.Y. — There is an effort to reach out to the homeless during this stretch of hot weather.
MC Collaborative’s Andy Carey along with members of Cameron Community, Health Reach and other community volunteers in the city of Rochester spend time on the streets, looking for folks who live or are at risk of living on the streets.
“Because of the heat, we’re really focused on handing out water, making sure people are aware of places to go to stay cool, and then also looking for symptoms of dehydration, heat stroke, that type of thing,” said Carey.
One woman the team helped goes by her street name, Yessie.
“Yeah, I’m homeless," she said. "I ran away from home kind of a while back and some of us don’t want to go back, you know, we try to survive on our own and it’s easier to survive out here.”
“It’s really hard when you’re living on the streets just to make sure that you have a good water source, a cool place to go,” said Carey.
“They’re amazing people," a thankful Yessie said. "For them to come out here and know that this more of a dangerous area to people and they come out here faithfully and they commit their time to us and we benefit from it tremendously because some of us don’t have the money right to buys these things.”
“I just got some freeze pops and a bottle of water and yes, trying to stay hydrated while I’m trying to beat the heat,” said Leron Williams, who was also thankful for the cool donations on this scorching day. “It’s amazing that they’re actually out here doing it, because most people don’t have cold water. So I greatly appreciate it.”
Carey says coping with the extreme heat can be worse for those who have no roof over their head. University of Rochester’s Family Medicine Residency Outreach program also joined in.
“A lot of the people, if they happen to be using substances, this can really exacerbate dehydration," said Dr. Gabrielle Capone, U of R Family Medicine resident, who was walking with the team. "People may not be aware of how warm they are, how dehydrated they are, and we’re really worried about that when we have heatwaves like this."
“So what we really look out for is people who have significant mental health issues or on some of the medications, some of the antipsychotics make it really hard to understand the temperature of your body,” said Carey.
It is a team effort to help in the heat.
“I mean I never thought that in a million years that we would have something like this in the city," Yessie said. "It’s amazing what they do for us."
Carey and his team return to the streets with necessities a few times a week.