For the past 18 months, Mal O’Connell and I have been talking to people living on the street in Chattanooga along with the army of professionals working to help them. For most of those 18 months, we were very much like the blind men and the elephant trying to grasp the enormity of the problem.
But over time we began to understand that it’s not one problem or one person, but a huge shifting population of people each with their own unique perspective. Realizing that helped us to begin telling the story one topic at a time.
This is our first stab at the story we have called On The Outside in Chattanooga. We decided to start by talking about food. Something most of us spend at least some time every day thinking about, but for the unsheltered and the people working to feed them every day it’s always on their mind.