HE’S DIALED IN
While many people ignore the homeless, others go out of their way to help. Wendell Blassingame, 67, is one of those who take it upon themselves to get involved. Here, he works the phone to find housing and help for homeless clients from his small desk in San Julian Park.
Every day in San Julian Park, Wendell Blassingame sets up a folding table and chair and sticks an oversize umbrella through an orange parking cone to create some shade for himself. The park, at the epicenter of skid row, is a hive of activity. It’s where food is distributed, drugs are sold and dominoes are played.
Blassingame descends from his home next to the park and is out there for a different reason.
He wants to help people get into housing, or help them get clothes or maybe help them replace a lost identification card. Really, he’ll help however he can.
“I’m just an individual trying to make an individual’s life better,” he says.
Blassingame tries to be an honest broker and insists to everyone that he will value their privacy above all else. For Blassingame, it’s personal. Around 2002, his wife passed away and his drinking got much worse.
For a period of time, he lived on the street and became what he calls a “WDC — We Don’t Care.”
“When people get homeless, they don’t care about the future,” Blassingame adds.
“They don’t want anything but today. Whatever exists for today — strictly today — is what matters.”
So part of Blassingame’s mission is to make people care. He hosts job fairs and movie screenings at the James Wood Community Center (several Tyler Perry movies were recently screened to the great delight of many, he says).
Early one afternoon, Brad Boyles, 64, with long strides, plops himself down at Blassingame’s table. They’ve been working together for a while, and Boyles — once stricken with prostate cancer — has Blassingame to thank for having a roof over his head.
Boyles says his lack of steady work and a lengthy criminal history made it hard for him to find a home.
“I don’t know what kind of miracles he worked, but I’m not on the streets anymore. I’m on the inside. I’m in a home,” Boyles says. “I have a great deal of gratitude for him.” Boyles says he wants to find a different apartment, where he doesn’t have to share a bathroom. Still, he’s worried that if he moves, he’ll lose his security deposit. Blassingame conveys a sense of knowing authority. He tells him to calm down — that they’ll figure it all out.
Right now, it’s important that Boyles focuses on getting to his doctor’s appointments, Blassingame says.
It’s these types of stories that Blassingame is most proud of. On his little table, there’s a battered blue notebook filled with his scrawling handwriting. In it are 159 names and 159 phone numbers of people he has placed into housing. Boyles says that having a guy like Blassingame in his corner goes a long way.
After hearing that gratitude, Blassingame has a simple response: “I’m just a person who cares.”