One day Greg Schneider picked up the local newspaper and to his shock and dismay, Covington possessed no homeless shelter anymore. He called Lisa Raterman, the person in the newspaper, and they set up a time to meet and see what they could do to patch this hole in the social safety net. Lisa and he put a small group of like-minded people together and set up meetings to see if they could solve this problem. Greg said that Lisa held the group together like glue, always ensuring that they found a place to meet over the two years they planned. The locations ranged from Mother of God Parish spaces to any office at Greg’s body shop in Covington.
They faced disappointment after disappointment over those two years as place after place rejected their proposal to build a shelter in the area. Many people think that shelters bring homeless people to the area, Greg said, but most do not realize that they always lived there, you just choose not to see them. Even when they thought they found the perfect location for the shelter by a floodwall in Covington the neighborhood rejected them at the last minute.
After that meeting, the team felt pretty low in spirits, but out of nowhere walking down the stairs a fellow board member approached Greg and asked him if they had considered the old Dressman Health Center building at 634 Scott Street. He possessed little hope at this point, but Greg took a chance and called Judge Executive Ralph Drees and ask if the group could have it, and oh, by the way, we
don’t have any money to pay rent. To their surprise, a miracle arrived in the form of Ralph letting them rent the building for a dollar a year.
Greg loved opening the doors on the first night of shelter knowing that all staying there would be safe for the night. He says he remembers it as his favorite day of working at the shelter. His least favorite part about working at the shelter is when they have to turn people away for legal reasons and wishes that they were allowed to take as many people as the walls could hold.
As one of the founding board members of the Emergency Shelter of Northern Kentucky Greg was a regular volunteer at the shelter, usually on Monday evenings which were very busy. He loves all the people he works with. ” I feel like a million dollars knowing I had the opportunity to be involved with this shelter and all the people with like-minded intentions.”
He, unfortunately, got cancer for a bit so he has been unable to be as active at the shelter as he would like. He has been pronounced cured though so he is looking forward to serving again.
A favorite memory of serving on the board is when the shelter partnered with Storefront Ministries and an old drug store was letting people stay there for the night. It was Christmas Eve and a sixty-year-old man came up and greeted him and the ministry’s volunteers. Greg said, “The pastor took the lead and asked him if he wanted to spend the night with us and the man looked up at us with his hollow brown eyes and said ‘Can I?'”
For Greg what hit him the most was that the man looked like him. “I always ask why it was not me in his shoes and him leading a successful life? What if the tables were turned?”
By: Emily Broyles
Scripps Howard Communications Intern