Patty spends her days waking up at 7 a.m. and getting ready for her first stop each day – the Spartanburg Soup Kitchen on South Forest Street.
After eating a hot lunch there, she hangs around for a little while before walking about 20 minutes to the Spartanburg County Public Library on South Church Street.
Patty spends her afternoons at the library until it closes in the evenings. She then returns to a family member’s house, where she has been living on and off since last February.
“I’m in the process of trying to get out; it’s not exactly an ideal living space at all,” Patty said.
Without having a job or reliable transportation after her vehicle broke down, Patty said she has struggled to find a place of her own. She has considered going to a shelter, but can’t bear to leave her dog and cat behind.
“I’m trying to do everything and start all over, back at block one,” she said.
On Monday afternoon, Patty poked her head into an agency fair inside the library. More than a dozen agencies had set up booths to answer questions and provide resource outreach to the homeless and people in need.
Like others attending the fair, Patty said she was looking for information about medical insurance, housing and employment.
“We have agencies here representing financial institutions, shelters, adult ed, legal aid, health care, housing and just a whole bunch of resources for a one-stop shop to help people,” said Beth Rutherford, executive director of Spartanburg Interfaith Hospitality Network, who helped organize the second annual fair. “My whole theory is that if we help one person, we’ve accomplished something.”
The agency fair was held in conjunction with the annual South Carolina Interagency Council on Homelessness Point-in-Time Count, which continues through Tuesday in Spartanburg.
The Point-in-Time Count is a one-night count of both sheltered and unsheltered homeless people in communities across the nation during the last week in January. Rural states like South Carolina are given a week to count, asking each homeless person where they slept on Jan. 24.
Spartanburg County was ranked fifth in the state in 2017 for people experiencing homelessness, according to last year’s count data.
Rutherford said the agency fair was organized again this year because it proved to be helpful to people last year. She shared how a chronically homeless man filled out a housing survey at last year’s fair and four days later he was given an opportunity for permanent housing.
“He was a man that was homeless on the streets for at least 10 years in Spartanburg and another 10-plus years in another state,” she said. “He is still housed today.”
Rutherford said the fair also provides participating agencies with a chance to gather more knowledge on how to help homeless people or those facing homelessness.
Jannet Littlejohn, an outreach coordinator with ReGenesis Health Care, was at the fair providing people with information about health care resources.
Littlejohn said ReGenesis works in partnership with New Horizon Family Health Services in Greenville to offer medical services to homeless people in Spartanburg and Cherokee counties.
For qualified applicants vetted by New Horizon, Littlejohn said ReGenesis helps them set up physician appointments, pay for medications and sign up for other health care benefits.
“Once New Horizon approves them, they’ll pay for them to come to ReGenesis Health Care for a couple of months and they also pay for their medication up to $35,” she said. “We work with (homeless people) so they can still see the doctor.”