20th annual Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day Candlelight Vigil
YAKIMA, Wash.– Community members gathered Saturday night at the Millennium Plaza in Yakima for the annual Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day.
“We’re acknowledging individuals who lived in homelessness, maybe someone who is recently housed, or somebody who’s, you know was living in a shelter,” said Annette Rodriguez, an employee at the Yakima Neighborhood Health Services and is the homeless services officer.
“We hold this event annually just to bring awareness, we have lots of folks here who are interested in helping, acknowledging this is a community solvable problem,” Rodriguez said. “It’s just a good moment to get together with service providers and community and let people who are living houseless know that we are here, we care about you, we see you, and we want you to engage in our services so that we can help you, when you’re ready for that help.”
Community members were given the chance to share personal stories about friends or family who were or have experienced homelessness who passed away and also share opinions and pleas to the community.
“As a community we’re kinda just pushed away,” said an event attendee. “A few of us make it bad for all of us but it doesn’t make us all bad.”
“Take time to recognize the folks that often go unnoticed, say ‘hi’ to them, just smile at them, give them hope because frankly if we don’t do that as a society, we’re never gonna get ahead of this,” said Kyle Curtis, a Yakima County Commissioner.
Multiple times throughout the event, I heard people mention that this is a solvable issue.
“Housing needs to be, developed for these individuals, so that they can be housed,” Rodriguez said. “They’re interested in services and they want to get off the street, it’s just really hard and difficult, and you all make a difference for each individual that needs that, or whatever kind of type of service that they might need.”