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An Air Force veteran and volunteers bring showers to help Sacramento's homeless

Sacramento Bee - 6/24/2021

Jun. 24—Six months before COVID-19 struck, Air Force veteran Mark Lytal, 51, bought a silver mobile trailer and parked it outside churches to provide showers to unhoused residents in Sacramento. Within the first year of the pandemic, he provided approximately 10,000 showers, 70,000 meals and 100,000 pounds of clothes to the homeless.

Now Lytal's Sacramento-based nonprofit Shower on Wheels for Unhoused Patrons — or Show UP, for short — is set to receive $150,000 from the California Department of Water Resources. A portion will be dedicated to constructing a wheelchair-accessible double mobile wash unit for unhoused residents to help reduce Sacramento's e coli count in the rivers and give homeless a friendly option to clean off.

"A lot of our homeless bathe in [the river] and use them as bathrooms and things like that," Lytal said. "The goal is to provide the showers and the bathrooms for them so they can actually bathe in a proper environment, versus in the river."

The 128-square-foot, all-steel trailer will be equipped with two showers, two toilets, two sinks, two mirrors, two benches, handrails and a contractible ramp so patrons can roll in and out of the unit. According to the Napa native, the trailer will be strategically placed at the intersection of the Sacramento and American rivers.

"It's an environmental impact as well, not just helping the homeless but helping all of the folks in Sacramento by decreasing that possibility of illness," Lytal said.

Hiring the homeless

In 2014, California voters passed Proposition 1, authorizing $510 million in Integrated Regional Water Management funding. With its mission to finance watershed projects for the health of ecosystems and people, a sum of that money was set aside to fund its mission of getting clean water to California's most vulnerable population.

Lytal plans to use $100,000 of the money to hire unhoused Sacramento residents and put them through a paid nationwide custodial certification course. According to Lytal, his new employees will spend time working at the trailer and studying custodial work in the program.

"When they graduate, they'll have a national certification to go be a custodian anywhere and not have to have a college degree," Lytal said. "They'll be able to make enough money to live."

For now, Lytal and his team of three volunteers use the original trailer about five days a week to provide showers, food, clothes, prayer and administer the COVID-19 vaccine.

Elk Grove resident Mark Fowler, one of the three volunteers, wakes up at 5:30 a.m. to service unhoused residents by 10 a.m. He helps unload benches, carpets, tarps, trash and recycle bins, cones and cleaning materials.

Fowler, 70, who has volunteered for Show Up since June of last year, then disinfects the trailer as he did the night before locking up the trailer for business. By then, patrons are patiently waiting their turn.

"Then we start letting people in and usually they're lined up pretty good because everyone knows the regular spots we stop at," Fowler said.

What the shower trailer is like

When a patron arrives at the trailer, they're put on a waitlist, given a towel, washcloth, undergarments and a single-use hygiene kit.

"Every single individual that stepped foot in my shower gets a brand-new pair of socks and brand-new pair of underwear bottom line because there's no reason to come and take a shower if you're going to put on dirty underwear and socks," Lytal said.

In between their wait time, they're offered food, conversation and the choice of receiving the Johnson and Johnson single-dose vaccine. In partnership with local medical professionals, Lytal helped vaccinate approximately 400 unhoused Sacramento residents.

Once inside, patrons are greeted by a small sink on their right, mirrors, a bench and a shower. Each shower includes a lever the patron must hold onto to activate water flow. Because Lytal starts his day with only 300 gallons of water, each shower can only be 10 minutes long.

"We don't like the pull-chain design because they get broken," said Clint Nelson, 46, the co-owner of AMS Global located in Arkansas. "It's easier to break because people will grab them and just hang on them and they're just not designed for that."

Therefore, the anticipated wheelchair-accessible trailer will feature a push-to-start button where patrons will be able to access the water 30 seconds at a time before having to push the button again. The toilets will also be something similar to those found on cruise ships and will provide more flushes compared to commercial toilets, according to Nelson, who's heading the construction of Lytal's trailer.

Flower, who volunteers approximately six days a week, said running the trailer is a lot of work, especially when each shower area has to be disinfected between uses. But with the anticipation of the new trailer, he's hoping that it will motivate the community to get involved.

"Invariably, the times are going to come when you're going to have to clean a shower that somebody that just took a shower in has taken their clothes off and their clothes are just trashed," Fowler said.

But with a GoFundMe drained of cash and California returning to a new normal, Lytal, who says he is currently in heart failure, doesn't have an option but to wait for help while he and his three volunteers continue to fund an effort much bigger than themselves.

"Keep in mind, I am not a social worker — I'm a retired military guy," Lytal said." And the joke is this started out because I was a guy with a dog, a truck and a trailer."

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