Imagine being homeless: living on the streets, scavenging for food, struggling to stay warm. Last weekend, (Jan. 29-30) 29 teens and several adults from the Orange Congregational Church got a taste of that life during the second “Freeze Out” to raise money for the Habitat for Humanity home they are helping build in Bridgeport. All of the participants raised money from friends or family to go for the cause. Any extra money would be put toward the Youth group’s upcoming trip to a Habitat build in Virginia, during February vacation.

Preparations for the Freeze Out began days in advance with the teenagers, all members of the church's Youth United group, shoveling through the mountain of snow in front of the church across from the Town Green. They were creative when they cleared the center portion, shoveling out walkways and tunnels to make their stay in the cardboard “house” a little fun.

The structure was constructed of large cardboard boxes, pieced together with Duck Tape and covered in plastic, just in case the forecasters were right and a little rain or snow fell. After a prayer circle and instructions from Youth Director Beth Rafferty the group gave its undivided attention to Eileen Bakos, Volunteer Services Manager for Habitat for Humanity.

Bakos thanked the youths for volunteering their time to build the home in Bridgeport. She shared information about the recipient, who was living in a hotel room with her four young children after her rented apartment became infested with rodents and the roof began to leak and the family was evicted.

The woman and her husband both work full-time jobs and they were having a hard time making their hours at the building site [a requirement of Habitat is putting sweat equity into your future home].

The woman never told her co-workers about her plight, but when they found out about it, 11 of them went to the site and worked the hours for her. Most of them had never even met her because they work different shifts.

Bakos said the Habitat neighborhoods are tight-knit communities where everyone looks out for one another. The homeowners take pride in their properties and are making these areas of Bridgeport a better place to live.  

With all of this in mind, at 7 p.m., the teens gathered up their sleeping bags, ski mittens, hats and coats and made their way outside. A few of them immediately went inside the “house” and began sealing any openings with Duck Tape, while others stood in a group by the street with large poster board signs that read “Honk 4 Habitat” and “Habitat For Humanity.”

A couple of the older teens spray painted the snow bank in front of the temporary home with messages easily read by passersby.

It was close to freezing outside, but the mood was cheery as the energetic teens put in their two-hour shifts.

The nice thing was that every team of 4 to 5 teens that shared the house during a shift was randomly chosen: some friends were with their friends; some were with acquaintances. No cell phones were allowed, so instead of being distracted by texts and phone calls, the teens had to talk to one another. Many of them bonded overnight.

Guest Speakers

After they settled in, the second guest speaker, Rebekah Ohlsen from Columbus House shelter in New Haven, took a seat at the top of the circle in the warm church hall and spoke to the remaining youths.

She had each of the teens introduce themselves and to reveal what his or her favorite part of being in [whatever grade] they were in.

Ohlsen is a member of the community outreach team at Columbus House. “We go out on the streets of New Haven and look for homeless people that we don’t know about. The homeless community is as diverse as our community,” she said. “There are people that struggle with alcohol and drugs. There are people who just fell on hard times, lost their job and couldn’t pay their rent. We run into kids your age out there too.”

She told them that Columbus House runs the only emergency shelter for women in New Haven. Here they enforce a 90-day policy. Clients come in for 90 days and then they have to leave for 90 days. “If we let them stay for an unlimited time, we’d enable them,” she said. “In the winter, we open an overflow shelter. This is different because we don’t turn anyone away. There are a few homeless shelters in New Haven, but at the overflow shelter people come in drunk, they come in on drugs, but it’s better to let them in because it is so cold outside.”

At Columbus House there are 16 “male” beds and all women are let in… beds are available by lottery. Clients pick a chip and if it has a bed number on it, they get a bed. If they draw a blank chip, a van will transport them to a nearby shelter.

Ohlsen deals with homeless people with alcohol and mental problems, who don’t feel they deserve anything better than what they have. “We try to motivate people to get off drugs and alcohol and to understand their mental illness, if that is what they suffer from,” she said.

Several other programs are available to New Haven’s homeless community.

“They are all races, ages, nationalities. And everyone has a different back story,” she said. “The homeless community is very tight knit. When someone else comes to the streets of New Haven everyone else watches over them and they tell us that there’s a new person in the neighborhood. They’re an amazing group of people and you just can’t judge them. It could be you or me.

“We’re here to help them,” she said. “The homeless people who live in the tent cities take care of their areas.”

Columbus House welcomes volunteers who want to work with the clients.

Another shift of Youth United kids made their way to the box house and the first group came inside to warm up.

The next speaker was Orange Police Officer John Aquino, the designated DARE officer. Everyone said his presentation was not juvenile or lame, but rather interesting. Aquino gave the teens a quiz and depending on how they answered their questions, he could tell them if they were inclined to become bullies, if they were bullies or if they were “good kids.”

"We had no bullies in our group," Beth Rafferty said.

The teens and adults alike enjoyed the exercise and found it to be fascinating.

Following Aquino for a different audience (after another shift rotation) were college students from Sacred Heart University who also are working on the Habitat House in Bridgeport.

Many of the older teens said this was very interesting to them because through their discussions they realized that they could be part of Habitat for Humanity when they went to college. The college students hosted a hammering contest, in which Rafferty said she bested her daughter Kelli.

As the night went on and the rotations continued the kids played games and had a dance party that seemed to last forever.

“I don’t know where they got their energy,” Rafferty said.

Lessons learned

When the sun came up, 18-year-old Anita Dyer was there to greet it. “It was beautiful, you could just see the sun rise up through the trees at the end of the green,” she said.

Tired, but pleasant, Amity student Ally Kramer talked about her night in the cold.

“Being out there was something you would imagine to see a homeless person in basically. It’s a cardboard box, surrounded by snow, at night in the middle of winter,” she said. “You really got a taste of what their life is like, minus the fact that I was with friends and we were all cuddling up and keeping each other warm. But it was an interesting experience and I would gladly do it again to raise money for a good cause.”

Kelli Rafferty, 16, is a repeat Freeze Out participant. Her mom is the Youth Director.

This is her second year sleeping outside and she was better prepared because of it.

“We are better prepared than homeless people are; we only take the night in shifts and I had so many layers on that it wasn’t as bad as it could have been,” she said. “You think about the conditions that homeless people have to deal with. I had the 4 a.m. shift and it wasn’t too bad because there wasn’t any wind. Last year it was so windy and it swept right through the cardboard boxes.”

Kelli is among the youths that will travel to Virginia during February Break to help build a Habitat Home for a nice family down there.

This is the first time Cara Sluganski, 17, has taken part in the fund-raising event. “I think it was a good experience. We all experienced what the homeless people have to go through, and now we can see it from their perspective,” she said. “It really makes you appreciate what you have.”

Andrew Barcoe, 16, echoed Cara’s thoughts. He had the 4 a.m. and 9 a.m. shifts and he walked away with a better understanding of the difficulties the homeless people face every day.

Anita Dyer said she found the experience interesting. “The first time I went out there, it really wasn’t that bad, I just stayed in the box with the two other people I was out there with,” she said. “I went out again at 6 or 7 a.m. and saw the sunrise. Something that I noticed is that we formed our own community, like the woman from Columbus House was talking about — I felt we were much stronger force as a group.”

“Even though I am so tired and I could pass out right now, I would do it again in a heartbeat,” she said. “It was so much fun and you get to learn a lot about people.”

Jake Noyes is a first-time participant in the sleepover. He said he particularly liked the Sacred Heart University Student’s presentation because it showed them what they can do in the future and how they would help people by being involved in the Habitat for Humanity.

His shift was 10-11 p.m. “I thought I’d be freezing but it wasn’t that bad. It was a lot more fun and social than I thought it would be,” he said. “I was surprised by how warm it was inside the cardboard walls. I’m totally fine.”

Adult perspective

One of the young adults who participated was Stuart King. “The kids wore me out,” he said through sleepy eyes. “It was a good night. I didn’t do anything special; I was out in the box with the kids most of the night. I got to know a lot of them on a different level. People kept coming by with food and donations, everyone’s been very supportive.”

He said Officer Aquino’s presentation on Bullying was really interesting. “I learned a lot about Amity (High), which has changed in the past five years since I went there.”

“I really liked listening to the Sacred Heart kids talk about their mission to Mississippi, where the area was hit by a disaster,” he said. “Where we’re going in West Virginia, there is so much poverty. It’s hard to believe that without a disaster, people still don’t have homes.”

As a crew cleaned up the meeting room, Beth Rafferty stopped to talk for a moment. “We raised more than $3,500 for the Bridgeport house,” she said. “More keeps coming in. As I’m in here cleaning, people keep coming in and handing me checks.”

State Farm will match the funds through a grant.

Rafferty said in addition, a minimum of $2,300 is needed for the mission trip to Virginia and any money that the 2011 group may have left over will go to the 2012 mission group.