As cooler temperatures set in, Gainesville residents are helping the homeless combat the weather to stay comfortable and healthy.
Pat Fitzpatrick, a homeless advocate, is giving away emergency blankets.
“It’s going to get cold tonight,” Fitzpatrick said Sunday as he stood on Bo Diddley Community Plaza. “So it’s not going to be a comfortable evening.”
The shiny silver Mylar blanket retains up to 90 percent of a user’s body heat. He said being exposed to the elements is one problem inherent to being homeless.
“Homelessness is not a very complicated thing,” Fitzpatrick said. “You and I live here, and we ... have a place where we can go with good heat, but those folks out in the woods don’t.”
Rosalie Sherman, a recipient, said she has been homeless for about two years. She finds stuffed animals in dumpsters to hang along her tree-side tent located in “Tent City,” an encampment south of the Guerry-Hawthorne Connection Trail.
“I put my animals up because here you gotta be creative,” Sherman said. “You can’t hang family pictures up, so these are why my animals are up.”
Sherman said how good her day is depends on what the weather is like.
“You got your good days, and you got your bad days out here,” Sherman said.
Fitzpatrick said he will be giving out blankets to help people like Sherman until the supply runs out.
A version of this story ran on page 3 on 12/3/2013 under the headline "Resident helps ward off cold nights for homeless"
