Rough Sleepers: Dr. Jim O'Connell’s Urgent Mission to Bring Healing to Homeless People

Kidder describes Tony’s life living on the streets. He describes the immense lengths to which Tony must go to survive on the street, including sharing his nights with women companions for warmth and company. As Kidder and Jim follow Tony through trains and tunnels, Tony shows them how he navigates the city and shares Boston’s history with them.

Members of the Street Team, like Eileen and Julie, explain to Kidder the importance of community in the face of what they, through their patients, face. The team members tell Kidder it’s important to be dedicated to the job and remain flexible. Angie gets evicted, though the team works to find her new housing. Kidder describes Arnold, an elderly man who struggles to find somewhere to shower, stay, and be taken care of. He’s been kicked out of nursing homes, hospitals, and shelters. Tony takes care of him, eventually taking him to the hospital.

Kidder describes the chaos of Tony’s life and the many times he leaves against medical advice. Kidder tracks Tony’s pattern—he goes through moments of illness and disappears, but when he can rest, he is calm and lucid. Tony joins Kidder and his wife for a visit to the Museum of Fine Arts. Tony shares his insights and perspectives, which Kidder details as astute. Kidder also describes his initial embarrassment at walking around the museum with an unhoused man.

Kidder writes first about the annual memorial service held in 2018. Jim feels that developing relationships with the new generation of rough sleepers will take more time than he has left to give. Kidder details a conference held by Jim where Jim shares the importance of boundaries and a willingness to accept the Sisyphean nature of the work.

At a gala event, Jim shares a slideshow and stories about various patients the Health Care for the Homeless Program has treated over time. Jim focuses on one woman, Beckie, who’d received housing and built a life free from drugs off the streets. Because Beckie no longer needs the voucher to maintain the apartment in which she has lived for over nine years, she is being forcibly evicted so that the building can be converted into condominiums. She is now being removed from the home she’d worked for.

Jim uses Beckie’s narrative to share the larger realities of houselessness. He tells the gala that the problem is like a “prism,” reflecting the fissures in American educational, health care, and corrective systems. Kidder details statistics about nationwide figures of houselessness in areas like Los Angeles and Colorado. Jim provides examples of community-based programs that are working to solve it.