Homeless an issue clouding effort to shine up Detroit for Super Bowl

Published: 2006-01-27

DETROIT (CNS) -- Detroit officials and residents hope to spit-shine the city's image when the Super Bowl comes to town Feb. 5, but to do that the city has had to focus on a growing concern that screams for help: the problem of homelessness. Depending on who's counting, there are 5,000-13,000 people living on the streets of Detroit at any given time. Other estimates say 30,000-50,000 have no homes of their own but are taken in by friends or relatives. A sizable portion of the homeless population resides in downtown Detroit -- within blocks of where the National Football League's Super Bowl will be played. It's in this area that a handful of organizations have dug their trenches in the war against homelessness. Among them are Most Holy Trinity, Sts. Peter and Paul (Jesuit) and St. Aloysius parishes, the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker House shelter for women and Manna Community Meals soup kitchen. "The focus right now is to take care of their daily needs," said Kathy Lynch, director of St. Al's Center in downtown Detroit. "But it's also to reroute them in their journeys so their daily needs will be satisfied in different ways."

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