Homeless in America: The gift of hope (part one)

Robin Reilly knows she’s getting too old for this. A 66-year-old homeless advocate shouldn’t get so excited about anything, especially when every homeless shelter she’s operated in Hackensack, N.J. has been closed because of code violations and run-ins with city officials, police and other homeless advocates. She’s thinks just like the people she pulls out of the alleys and gutters and tries to help. Don’t get your hopes too high, she says, because the disappointment will be worse.

But there she was on a warm October day in Hackensack, scrubbing the burners and wiping off the insides of a large commercial oven in the kitchen of her next new “place.” Her husband was setting up cans in the cabinets, wiping off the counter tops and checking the refrigerator to see if it had any, in his words, “funny smells.”

Out in the dining area of the 300-year-old First Reformed Church, Reilly set up table clothes and worried about place settings. She fussed over dirt on the floor and having visitors see this. “Oh no!” she said as she rubbed the spots with a dish towel.

When she was reminded that her new three-day-a-week homeless outreach center wasn’t set to open for another two weeks, Reilly had to stop and – as she did every so often – lean against a counter or sit in her chair, and collect herself. She held her stomach and her waist – a much smaller waist than what she had in June, because she lost 10 pounds from “worrying.”

Then she winced. “I’m so excited, I’m shaking. I’m sick about this,” said Reilly.

This could be it, she says. It could be the end of yet another stint as “a homeless advocate without a home,” as she’s called herself every time she’s been forced to look for new digs for her posse of homeless people in Hackensack who rely on Reilly for care. They’re people who are usually too drunk, mentally ill or drugged up to get into the local county shelters. Many of them don’t last long in life, unless Reilly is there with her safety net of care.

For three months, since she was booted from her last place on State Street, Reilly was riding around Hackensack, giving food and water and giving homeless people a chance to cool off from the heat by sitting in her car for as long as a half-hour, with the air conditioner on full-blast. One of her “lieutenants,” as she calls them, named “Coach” would scout the neighborhoods carrying a cell phone, looking for people who were wasting away. He’d call her, and then she’d drive 10 miles from her Oradell home in the north, and find them. Then she would usually drive somebody who was on their deathbed to the hospital to get medical assistance.

Most of them lived; some of them didn’t. Four died before Reilly was able to get to them this summer and give them assistance.

In the meantime, Reilly lost weight. “I’m sick – sick with worry,” she said. She never lost this much weight before, but she never worried so much about being without a place, because she thought this was really the end, finally.

She always thinks that way, she says. She always worries. Once she got a place, however, she got new worries about setting up a new service center. “I thought I was done,” she said. “I thought this was really it. I thought they really got me this time.”

She was thrown out of her last stop in June because, according to city officials, she was breaking the law by feeding homeless people on site. Sure, Reilly’s had to deal with this before. But this was perhaps the most traumatic closure she’s had to deal with yet. She had been at the State Street site in Hackensack for seven years, by far her longest stint. Usually, she lasts anywhere from three months to a couple years at any given place.

“I was cited for having people sitting on my couch with their eyes shut,” she said.

In came the people from the First Reformed Church, who gave her fourth place in a decade, and granted the space that finally opened to the public on Oct. 23. It’s the kind of place she’s been kicked out of before – an old church that’s part of the city establishment, where some members have been attending for 90 years. It’s the kind of place that’s given Reilly a chance in the past, such a church-based homeless shelter called “Peter’s Place” that employed Reilly as a homeless advocate nearly a decade ago. Usually, at these types of places, Reilly’s self-described demands to put the homeless first run afoul with management, and she finds herself out in the street again, pulling the homeless into her car.

This church, however, needed what it called “a mission,” and the mission was her.

The church’s blessing may not mean everything, however, because it’s the kind of place that could still make the city squeamish – and angry. She didn’t even bother to tell Hackensack officials what she was doing – not after the way they treated the last time, when they led her to believe they supported her “Faith Foundation” center, only to pull the plug in June and “use phony excuses to throw me out,” she said. This time, Reilly hoped city officials wouldn’t find out until the last minute. “I’d like to slap them in the face,” she said.

Reilly doesn’t mean to be angry, really. Other than the June flare-up, she had a good relationship with the city for as long as she’s been a homeless advocate. But having the cops throw her out in June in such an unceremonious way was so appalling and wrong, she says, that the resentment still lingers.

It brought out her aggressive spirit that has helped her prevail for so many years. It brought out a side of her that is only witnessed by people who stand in her way – such as Bergen County Community Action Program, the county homeless agency that she calls “a toothless bureaucracy” and, in her view, doesn’t do enough to help.

“If you’re strong, you’re strong, and no matter how many times you get knocked down, you get up, again and again,” she said.

Reilly doesn’t worry about her image, either, because she’s more than an advocate, she says. She’s a diplomat and an ambassador for a homeless population that numbers in the hundreds in Hackensack, largely because the city is the Bergen County seat and, therefore, offers county-sponsored welfare services. In public, she’s shown herself to be as sweet-as-pie, one who is no afraid to curry favor with the media and present herself as maybe the one person who actually makes an effort to take care of the homeless.

She’s been sad, too, when she’s had to eulogize fallen homeless veterans whom she cared for and nurtured and hoped that they would somehow find a way to rescue themselves.

Mostly, though, Reilly is a self-described “rebel,” and that’s what she’s most proud of. Rebels, she believes, make the best advocates. They don’t worry about what could happen to them, she says, because that kind of worry only impedes progress. They get things done because they’re not afraid of pissing people off, she says, and she’s done a lot of that.

Some of the people she’s cared for have died, but many more have lived. With her new place, she hopes to save hundreds more – at least that many – as long as she can stay on her feet, maintain good health and keep doing what she’s famous for in the Bergen County, N.J. area.

“My prayer to God was for him to tell me if he wanted me to continue my work and if he could open the door for me,” Reilly said. “It swung open.”

Indeed, despite the wide range of emotions she’s had in recent months, Reilly’s always been a big-picture person. Two weeks before the opening of the church mission’s day shelter for the homeless, she was getting more confident that this will finally be the place where she will finish her work as Hackensack’s chief homeless advocate, and pass on her legacy to the next selfless person who can care for a population that is among the largest in any city in New Jersey.

To Reilly, the big picture is this: Regardless of what happens, she’ll always have hundreds of homeless people, God and, perhaps, some people of influence on her side – all of them happy that she’s doing something to keep people off Hackensack’s streets. Keeping the big picture in mind, she’ll always land on her feet as long as she can keep a roof over other people’s heads.

Just look at her track record – particularly recently, she says. “Can you believe somebody still wants me?” she said.

Many homeless people come to Hackensack because its status as the Bergen County seat attracts various service agencies that help the needy. Advocates estimate that at any time there are 200 to 300 homeless people in the city, far more than the capacity of shelters.

Some of the homeless and poor, as a result, consider Reilly their guardian angel. Unlike the local county homeless agency, Bergen County Community Action Program, she takes people who are in every condition – drug addicted, alcoholic or on the brink of death.

"I don't like what they're doing to Robin. It's unfair, because I come here every day. When she's hurt, I'm hurt," Robert, a recovering alcoholic, told the Bergen Record in 2001.