HAMILTON, Ohio — Doug Lockhart takes a long puff of his cigarette. He knows it’s a bad habit, but he has worse.
Lockhart is sitting outside New Life Mission, a nonprofit best known for its food pantry. Last night, he slept at the Butler County Sheriff’s Office. He wasn’t under arrest, he just needed somewhere warm to sleep.
“Anybody could be in this situation,” Lockhart says.
The 48-year-old used to run a successful cleaning business, but lost his home and his wife because of struggles with addiction.
“You never see it coming,” he says. “Most people don’t even realize they’re one paycheck away from it.”
On Thursday, he came to New Life for coffee, a cigarette and a group of volunteers he calls family.
“People think it’s just a soup kitchen,” Lockhart says. “This is way more than a soup kitchen.”
Felix Russo knows it must be. He’s the director of the Hamilton nonprofit, which is most known for its food pantry and free lunch.
“It’s frustrating for us,” Russo says. “We almost become like hospice. In other words, we’re just making people comfortable until they die.”
Because he knows his organization can’t solve homelessness with just a warm meal. That’s why he started inviting counselors and doctors to the mission — to fill in the gaps for as many people as possible.
“They’re still falling through the cracks,” Russo says. “They’re here. And we see it every single day.”
And that’s why Kathy Becker is here, too. Because she knows there are more people experiencing homelessness in the county than the most recent official estimate of 246.
“People have developed a distrust of the system,” said Becker, the director of mental health outreach services for Access Counseling. “It matters when you meet people where they’re at.”
It’s why she went looking for Lockhart as soon as she arrived. She finds him drinking a cup of coffee with lots of cream and sugar. She tells him if she didn’t find him today she was going to send a search party after him. They both laugh, but she says later she was not joking.
“I don’t want someone to die out there because no one is looking for them,” Becker said.
Outside, Lockhart starts crying. He's talking about how he's treated at New Life and how he is treated everywhere else.
“They see a person,” he says. “I don’t mean to get emotional, but when you get sh** on so much, it’s nice to see people with a heart — people who actually care.”
Lockhart tells a recovery worker he was supposed to go to a rehab center last week.
“You go when you’re ready,” she tells him.
A few minutes later in her car, he says he’s ready.
“It’s been a long time coming,” he says.
