08/18/2026
How can people who have housing help?
Many organizations that don’t provide shelter still interact with people experiencing homelessness and can benefit from understanding how the homeless response system works. These organizations can help brainstorm community-wide solutions, said Josh Benti, homeless initiative project director for the Greater Green Bay Blueprint to Prevent and End Homelessness.
“Housing is something that affects us all, either housed or unhoused… Our hospitals aren’t homeless providers, but they provide services to those who are experiencing homelessness,” he said. “Our employers hire and employ people who are experiencing homelessness… So, it’s getting all these systems to work and communicate and collaborate better.”
People who want to help can donate if they have disposable income or volunteer with organizations serving people experiencing homelessness. Volunteering can start with contacting a local shelter or attending a coalition meeting.
Even if you can’t donate or volunteer, you can still help fight the stigma surrounding homelessness. Brusewitz said she welcomes tours of the SAM25 shelter for greater community understanding.
Ryan Graham, homeless systems manager for the Wisconsin Balance of State Continuum of Care, said widespread homelessness reflects a broader affordability issue, with many people just one crisis away from losing their housing.
“What you’ll see is we have all these people who just can’t afford basic needs or can’t afford their current housing, and they’re one bad event from becoming street homeless,” Graham said. “If we don’t have any kind of homeless prevention or diversion programming to stop that from happening, you’re just increasing the bottleneck that we have at our crisis response system, which we don’t have enough of already, right? So it’s really a tough environment across the country, but in particular in a lot of our rural counties.”
1,200 people face homelessness in Northeast Wisconsin — a number experts say is severely undercounted.
Explore the factors behind hidden homelessness in our region: https://gopresstimes.com/stories/understanding-homelessness-in-northeast-wisconsin,349425
