The Current Summer 20

afford stable housing again. For this reason,
these donations are the most requested
by many homeless shelters and other
organizations that assist those suffering from
housing instability.
In the Greater Lansing area, Punks with
Lunch Lansing works to distribute these
items to people who are homeless every
other Saturday in Reutter Park. Punks with
Lunch Lansing began in September 2017,
spearheaded by Julia Anne Miller. She was
inspired by the West Oakland Punks with
Lunch program, and decided to open a
local chapter in Lansing. According to their
website, Punks with Lunch is “a guerrilla
not-for-profit organization providing food
and other necessities to people in need
within our community.”
In addition to distributing food, clothes
and sanitary products, Punks with Lunch
is working on providing laundry coupons
and bus tokens. Last year they finished their
street pantry project — building a fivefoot
tall “mobile food bank” designed
to look like the TARDIS from BBC’s hit
sci-fi show Doctor Who. The TARDIS
is on Michigan Avenue in front of the
28 SUMMER 2020
Everybody Reads bookstore with easy
access for anybody to donate or take from.
Further east, people at Michigan State
University are using the university’s plethora
of resources to tackle the problem on a
different level than individual donation
and community-based volunteer work.
One notable example is the Spartan
Street Medicine (SSM) program, started
in June 2017 by osteopathic medical
student Brianne Feldpausch. SSM works
on “bridging the gap in healthcare for our
homeless community members in Lansing,
Michigan,” going out to talk to those
suffering from homelessness on their own
terms and fostering trusting relationships.
SSM’s focus is on providing health care with
trust, empathy and respect; an experience
that those suffering from homelessness
don’t always get in traditional offices. SSM
provides services including treating medical
conditions, educating people about their
health and providing needed donations.
SSM also worked with students in the
department of Writing, Rhetoric and
American Cultures at Michigan State.
Together, they developed a visual guide
to basic diabetes care to attach to care
packages during their clinics. SSM
explained the challenge to the students,
who then came up with different ideas for
not only displaying the complex information
in a simple, clear manner, but presenting
this information on a donateable item,
such as a bag or tupperware, that was
weatherproof and useful.
Also within the WRAC department,
professor Benjamin Lauren is fighting the
stigma around homelessness by amplifying
stories. In the summer of 2018, Dr. Lauren
collaborated with the Michigan Coalition
Against Homelessnes to begin a project
to “help reduce the social stigma of
homelessness by changing hearts and
minds,” said Lauren. Together they’ve
created a speaker’s bureau to serve
as a platform for people suffering from
homelessness to tell their stories. Lauren
then works with associate professor Mark
Sullivan in the College of Music and
Rebecca Tegtmeyer in the Department of
Art, Art History and Design to record these
stories to create spoken word compositions.
Lauren says, “I think the best case scenario
is that it would help people to understand
that homelessness can happen to anyone,
and that there is a housing crisis going on
in this country that needs to be addressed.
The survivors I worked with said as much
in each of their stories.” Lauren also hopes
that these stories will inspire those who are
currently struggling with housing insecurity.
Lauren also works to fight homelessness
within Michigan State University itself.
Working with associate professor Stuart
Blythe in WRAC and Kim Steed-Page,
Director of the Student Parent Resource
Center, they had public presentations and
discussions with other MSU faculty and
staff. They conducted research and came to
a dismal conclusion: many students at MSU
also struggled to get basic needs like food
and housing.
Blythe said, “We studied it, and realized
that more students than you’d think were
having problems… having enough money
to buy food, and eating ramen every
night, [they] might have short-term housing
problems, may get kicked out of their home
or they may get a landlord kicking them
out because they didn’t pay rent, so people
who were maybe sleeping in a car. Then of
course mental health, people dealing with
depression. It’s happening more often than