‘Someone actually cares’: Man gives firsthand account of living unhoused in blistering cold

By Grant Stephens

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    KANSAS CITY, Missouri (KSHB) — It’s still awfully cold, and that means the need to help people living outside or on the streets is still just as great.

A group of KC-metro area volunteers hit the cold streets to help Monday night.

Steven, a man who has spent the last few years homeless, said this cold spell has been the worst he’s felt in years.

“Oh it’s terrible,” Steve said. “It hurts. You try to go to sleep and you wake up with your feet hurting and your hands hurting and your knees and everything’s so cold and nobody cares. The other night I was in the middle of 12th street just screaming, ‘Somebody help me! I’m freezing!’ I need a ride you know? And nobody stopped. Nobody stopped.”

There are hundreds of unhoused people like Steven in dozens of camps across KCMO.

“Everybody has a story,” said Shelle West, the founder of Show Me You Care KC. “And everybody’s not homeless or houseless by choice. Sometimes, it’s the last option. Sometimes, this is all they have.”

For whatever reason, they’re outside in the cold, a place many believe is their only option.

“You can’t even hardly imagine,” Nikki Klein, one of the volunteers said. “I’m constantly in my mind thinking, ‘How do people live like this? How do you literally live outside when it’s below zero.”

Klein and other volunteers brought blankets, food, and hand warmers.

They do their best to convince people to get treatment for some of their cold-related injuries.

Frostbite is common.

“The pain in your feet mostly and your hands. Yeah, it’s bad,” Steven said.

Coats, socks, fuel – physical things go a long way – but a warm heart takes it further.

“We want to show them that we care,” West said. “And that there are people out here that truly care, that won’t ride past them.”

It makes all the difference to Steven.

“It’s just the love that they show you more than anything, that someone actually cares,” Steven said.

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