For Anchorage homeless, a shower, clean clothes and a sense of hope

Early Tuesday morning, 11 men and a woman stood on the concrete steps outside Anchorage's Downtown Soup Kitchen. The night before, they'd slept in tents, in cars, abandoned buildings and on shelter mats. But that morning they were lucky. They were about to get a shower.

There are only a few places in Anchorage a person living on the street can take a shower for free. Brother Francis is one. The Rescue Mission is another. The Soup Kitchen shower house opens to a group of 12 twice a day. Each person is entitled to 20 minutes of hot water in a private bathroom, shampoo, shaving cream, lotion and sunscreen. The morning group may also have their clothes washed by volunteers. People sign up in advance and look forward to it.

"Take a shower, change my T-shirt. You know, you feel clean, you feel better about yourself," said Nick Makaily, a 57-year-old in a ball cap, a regular. He's been sleeping in a homeless camp since January, he said.

Anchorage's homeless population is highly visible in some respects — most recently in news stories about crime and loitering in Town Square Park — but people standing outside the shower house this week described feeling invisible. Looking dirty, especially, marks you as different, they said. People look right through you.

Being homeless complicates life in a thousand little ways, Soup Kitchen volunteers say. Everyday conveniences like receiving a letter or charging a phone get complicated, cutting people off from connections that can help them, deepening their isolation.

"Once you're homeless, you learn to appreciate things a lot more, like little things, like taking a shower, watching TV, sleeping in a bed, being warm," said Mike Kuphaldt, 38, as he waited outside.

The doors opened and the lucky 12 shuffled into the shower house. The television was on. There was hot coffee. People traded stories that were all a variation on the theme of losing things. Backpacks. Cellphones. Court cases. Girlfriends. Sobriety. Tents taken by threat of violence. Children that hadn't been seen for years. Old bosses that might give them one more chance.

Kuphadlt was there with his girlfriend, whose face was sunburned and blistered. She covered her head with a coat. Lately they have been spending their days walking, looking for cigarette butts mainly, he said. Like a lot of people on the street, he has a criminal record that makes it hard to rent or get a job, he said. This was his second year living outside, he said.

"I can cook, I can do construction, but mistakes I made in my younger age came back to haunt me," he said.

Soon, volunteer Marcia Schilling gathered the group to pray.

"Your current situation may sometimes feel like a gigantic mistake to you … the past cannot be different from what actually occurred, " she said. "I want to help make a new beginning instead, starting right where you are."

She asked if anyone wanted to pray for something specific.

"Pray that my family will forgive me," said one man.

"I'm six days sober," said another. Applause from everyone.

A shower has a practical purpose and a spiritual effect, Schilling said later. People's faces change between the time they go in and the time they come out. Schilling is a retired Anchorage School District speech pathologist. She's been volunteering for two years.

"I feel like my understanding of what people have been through has increased greatly," she said. "I have learned a lot about forgiveness."

The Soup Kitchen is a nonprofit supported by evangelical churches across the city. It provides lunch, nightly overflow shelter for single women from Brother Francis and job training in its bakery, among other programs. Its director, Sherrie Laurie, began as a volunteer in the shower house years ago. Homeless people have complex stories, she said. Substance abuse and mental illness and abuse. Taking a shower is a simple way of giving people a sense of hope, she said.

"They have had so many bad things happen and a lot of them never knew in their whole life they were loved," she said. "We want them to know: We see you, you are valued."

Jimmy Wanamaker, 54, is recently out of jail. He has a cast on his arm. Sitting on the couch, waiting for his turn to bathe, he looked down at the line of dirt under his fingernails.

"I gross myself out," he said.

He used to work as a cook, he said. He showered twice a day. He pulled a plastic fork out of his pocket. He's been using it as a comb, he said.

"I try and keep as clean as I can," he said.

He'll slip into a hotel lobby on occasion, he said. Wash up a bit. Borrow a newspaper. Get water. Use the bathroom. He has an easier time doing things like that than his homeless friends who are Alaska Native, he said. If you're white and clean, he said, it's easier to pass.

Makaily, the regular in the ball cap, had a black eye from getting jumped in a city park a few days before. He plugged his dead cellphone into the wall and it flashed to life. Before he was homeless, he said, he'd lived in Juneau, where he cared for his mother until she died. They were Aleut, he said, with people in Chignik and St. George.

Makaily held up the phone to show a picture of himself from his Juneau days. He was plumper, smiling, holding a big salmon he'd caught off of Douglas Island. It seemed like a long time ago, but it was only a few years back, when things were easier and he didn't realize how many little comforts he took for granted.

Julia O'Malley is a freelance writer who lives in Anchorage. Find her work at juliaomalley.media.