This story is part of Southwest Michigan's Second Wave's series on solutions to affordable housing and housing the unhoused. It is made possible by a coalition of funders including Kalamazoo County, the city of Kalamazoo, the ENNA Foundation, and the Kalamazoo County Land Bank.

It's a simple fact: Clean clothes are essential for one's dignity.

So, we do laundry. A chore that we might grumble about, we might put off until it piles high, but it needs to get done.

But there are those who have a much harder time getting laundry done. They may be housed, but their finances force them to choose between money for the laundromat or food. Or they may be unhoused with no means to do laundry other than a bucket of cold water.

Volunteers hope to give these folks a bit of Soap and Hope.

Kalamazoo Together for the Unhoused hosted its returning Soap and Hope, a free laundry day for the community, on a gloomy Nov. 6.

It was the day after the election. Life goes on.

"We're not talking politics today, we're doing laundry!" Judy Lowery has to tell someone, as she's signing people up on her laundry list in Ye Ole Central Laundry's parking lot, in the Vine neighborhood. 

Lowery is "a one-woman show," volunteer Kim Chandler says. But there were many other volunteers with Lowery's grass-roots group, plus other advocates for the unhoused, handing out laundry pods, serving food, and giving out used clothing. 

Fran DwightA bike trailer loaded with laundry.ACT Foundation USA volunteers served 80 meals that day. Eric Fialkoff, whose MT25 (from Matthew 25) is working on creating a day shelter, brought some people in for help. An unhoused woman, even though she was staying in a shelter, hauled in three pots of soup she'd made for the event. 

Lowery had raised enough money for around 91 people to get 2,600 pounds of laundry done, she estimated later. 

She would like to do it every month, but Kalamazoo Together for the Unhoused is "a grassroots group. So that means we are not a nonprofit and cannot get any type of grant funding for this. It's solely dependent upon me raising funds from the community."

She had organized three other Soap and Hopes at another laundromat. Lowery felt that Ye Ole Central would be more welcoming to the clients she'd bring to them. "I can't express how grateful I am for this laundromat," Lowery says.

We asked Sam Kim, new owner of the venerable Vine laundromat if he welcomed the people hauling in sacks of filthy clothing, full bicycle trailers of sleeping bags, coats, etc.: "Of course," he says, as if turning them away would be unthinkable.

Lowery estimates it costs $17.50 for four loads, the typical amount needed for an unhoused person or a family in need. She welcomes anyone, housed or unhoused, "no questions asked."

Her volunteers were armed with quarters inside the laundromat. The people served had to do their own laundry -- Lowery thinks she could find volunteers to do it, but that wouldn't add any of the necessary dignity to the job.

Fran Dwightudy Lowery signs up people for Soap and Hope. "To do your own laundry, to have clean clothes -- that's the biggest thing for a lot of people that are unhoused, that it's so nice to have fresh, clean-smelling clothing, you know," Lowery says. "And that's what I'm trying to always emphasize, is dignity and compassion."


Mushrooms growing in a tent

People who are unhoused do attempt to do laundry, regularly, on their own, Lowery says. Some do their washing in buckets, or other sources of water. A surprising request she hears is for the old-fashioned washboard.

Getting clothes dry is another matter. Drying on a line outside in the summertime works, but in the winter, damp clothes stay damp or simply freeze.

Lowery, who also heads the effort to get used bikes to people in need, Dignity In Motion, says Soap and Hope began in May. She wanted to provide laundry help to the unhoused, as well the newly unhoused who'd been hit by the Portage tornadoes that month.

People suffered storm damage, including a lot of wet clothing and bedding.  "When people's clothes get wet, they get moldy," she says.

This is something that unhoused people know well. 

Lowery says that, in addition to rain, flooding, and all outside weather conditions, inside tents people face condensation. When temperatures drop, people tend to seal up their tents to keep warmth in, but that causes a constant inside drip. "When they wake up, it's all wet. It's all damp," she says.

Fran DwightWashing mahines stand ready for laundry day offered through Kalamazoo Together for the Unhoused."It's the condensation, the humidity, the mold," a woman who gave her name as Lorrol Tyler says in the laundromat. "We had mushrooms growing in our tent!"

People tend to accumulate clothing, old sleeping bags, mattresses they find on curbs, Tyler says. When items get filthy beyond use, they're abandoned, part of the refuse around encampments. 

"That's why you see a lot of this waste in the camps," Lowery says. "It's because the clothes, everything's wet."

Lowery says one motivating factor behind Soap and Hope is a wish to cut back on waste and reduce the environmental impact of homelessness. 

There are a lot of free sources, all well-intentioned, for clothing for the unhoused. And it's understandable that people will get into hoarding situations where they end up with a mass of damp, molding clothing that they can't afford to clean.

Fran Dwight She has a home with her children, and "I have a lot of clothes!" Sometimes she has to choose between food and laundry. "I've hand-washed some clothes!"Her group cut back on clothing donations, and tries to hand out only the essentials. "It's unrealistic to hand a bunch of stuff to an unhoused person who has no place to store it," she says.

"And this is no shade (cast at other housing advocates)... You can cause harm by giving too much. If I let somebody walk away with a trash bag full of clothing, knowing full well that tomorrow morning all of those clothes are going to be wet, and by the end of the day or the next day they're going to be moldy, am I helping or am I hurting?

"So as environmentalists, we try to be as conscious as possible about what we distribute and how we can have the greatest impact. And laundry is one of them."

Fitting laundry day into daily survival

Before the pandemic, "I was a general manager at Denny's," Tyler says. "But then I lost everything, it seemed like -- family, relationships, ended up without a job."

Tyler has had some fast food jobs while living in camps, but the realities of a life unhoused made those hard to keep.

"You learn a lot of lessons real fast that you didn't know. And I'm still learning them....  Possessions are just possessions, and the real matter in life is each other, and kindness. That was a hard one."

Fran DwightLorrol Tyler used to be a restaurant manager, before the pandemic. She says she's seen fungus growing in tents, because of rain and condensation. She's also seen how "the kindness of others is just awesome."Another woman in line behind Tyler says, "My job got downsized, and I have a family of four. And I've just been down on my luck a little, trying to find a job." She and her kids are living with family, but they don't have a washer and dryer.

A woman in a purple hat says she has her own place in the Vine. "I appreciate this program because it's helping me in the sense that I have children and, like, I have a lot of clothes! And we don't have a washer and dryer right now. I just appreciate the help."

Sometimes, for her, it's a choice between food and laundry. What does she decide?

"Eat! So, I've hand-washed some clothes," the woman in the hat says in a tone implying that that's a regular part of her life. "I just really appreciate this today."

A man calling himself "G" says he's going through a divorce. "She's trying to keep everything. Left me nothing."

Fran DwightAiden Aldrige volunteer at laundry day for the unhoused at the laundromat in the Vine neighborhood.He's hoping to move to stay with his daughters who live "in a warm climate." But today, he has to get his laundry done. "I've been trying to get out to the Ministry to do laundry for three days. And it's always full, so I can't never do laundry."

The only other Kalamazoo source of free laundry for the unhoused is Ministry with Community. G and others we spoke to say that it's best to get there early mornings, and it's likely one would have to wait most of the day for an open machine.

Does G have a place to go for the night? "Not of my own. I have about four or five places I can go."

He continues, "This is my life. It's a culture shock. It ain't fun. It ain't as easy as people think." 

G had a job but became disabled. He'd like to find a job, but basic survival comes first. "I'm spending all day trying to figure out where I'm going to be (for the night), I can't get nothing else done."

But this day is laundry day for G.

Fran Dwight"G" eats pizza as he waits to do his laundry. "You waste so much energy trying to get the basic stuff done, you can't get nothing else done," G says about not having a secure place to live.
Photos by Fran Dwight. See more of her work here.