Tuesday was a big day for Richard Tillmon, who has been bouncing from shelter to shelter and living on the streets for the last decades.
Each step he took, pushing a cart of his stuff was a step towards a new journey.
“Today is the beginning of the end of my homelessness,” he told ABC15.
Tillmon was the first resident to move into his own private room, part of what’s called the XWing Shelter.
As Tillmon put in the code to his new room and walked in, he said “Praise God. Yes, home. My home.”
Residents were supposed to move in about a week and a half ago, but shelter operator St. Vincent de Paul said they had some tech issues with the key code locks.
The operator is working with the City of Phoenix, which purchased the shipping container shelters from Steel and Spark, a company converting the containers into shelter units.
Four 40-foot steel containers are put in an X shape at a parking lot outside of St. Vincent de Paul’s Washington Relief Center near 28th and Washington streets.
The units are run by solar power and have central air conditioning. However, there’s no running water with them. The people staying there will have to walk a few feet to the Washington Relief Center to access bathrooms and other amenities as well as services to help get them out of homelessness.
“From living on the canal in a tent with no water, no toiletries, going from there to here, it's fabulous. Absolutely wonderful,” Tillmon said.
The units will house 20 people the organization chooses. Marisol Saldivar, a spokesperson for St. Vincent de Paul, said their case managers help identify who can move into them, looking for people who show reliability and have an established job or are progressing towards finding permanent housing.
“I just say to people out there who say that it’s only 20 beds. There’s… people still out there. Well, it's 20 more than we had yesterday. It means that there are 20 people now that are on a path to housing,” Saldivar said. “I think every step forward, we have to celebrate as a community and keep the hope alive.”
People staying in the XWing shelter can stay for as long as they need, and Tillmon is more than excited and grateful for the opportunity from St. Vincent de Paul.
“This is the beginning of my journey out of the place that I was mentally and physically,” he said.
The City of Phoenix said it purchased three more X-Wing shelter units and they are currently reviewing options for ideal locations to put them down.
