HAMILTON, Ohio — Her phone barely stops ringing. In the car. At the library. In the woods.
These are the places Sara Peters goes to check on people experiencing homelessness. Peters is an outreach specialist with Community Health Alliance in Butler County. And her main job is to find people housing.
“I was trying to get someone into shelter this morning,” Peters said. “But everything’s full.”
It’s why she’s been waking up in the middle of the night lately. And it’s why she was standing in the middle of the woods, her pants covered in snow, breathing heavily in 19-degree weather.
“I think I’m lost,” Peters said.
WATCH: I spent the day with Sara searching for people experiencing homelessness in the snow
We walked into the woods somewhere in Hamilton, following footprints in the snow to a series of tents. But no one was there. Or at least no one was answering. Peters had good news to give. In her bag, she held a couple of birth certificates. And one of the people she’s working with received a housing voucher.
She just had to find him.
“Knock knock,” Peters said. "I left some supplies out here. Call me if you need anything.”
Eventually, we walked out of the woods 100 yards away from her car — and where we went in. Her phone was still ringing.
“Instead of calling 911, they call me," Peters said. “There’s just so many things that could happen. Especially out here in the cold.”
She told me she gets at least 150 calls every day, starting at midnight. Because Peters knows where most of the people experiencing homelessness in Hamilton live. She helped them move the last time authorities forced them from their camp.
“I could have all the empathy in the world, but I could never prepare myself for this,” Peters said. “It hurts to know this is how people have to live."
On Tuesday, she didn’t find who she was looking for. We went to the library next.
“Oh, you’re Sara?” a librarian said. “They talk about you all the time.”
But no one was there. So we drove to a church in New Miami that opened as a warming shelter this week because of the dangerously cold temperatures. Inside, Ken Bowling told me he uses blankets and a heater to stay warm in his tent.
He told me it often feels like people don't care about him.
“Over time, you learn to survive in the cold," Bowling said. “Once you’re out here, it’s hard to get out of here."
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After our interview, he put his head in his hands and asked Peters if she had a housing voucher for him. She didn't.
“It’s heartbreaking,” Peters said. “I know.”
Then, her phone rings.
Shortly before this story was published on Thursday, Peters found the person she was looking for. She says she expects him to move into housing in February.
