A Christmas Day blizzard pummeled Arkansas in 2012, dumping more than 9 inches of snow on Little Rock — the most in the city’s history. The record-breaking ice, snow and wind contributed to the deaths of a dozen people as the storm traveled across the country and left more than 200,000 in the state without power. People seeking warmth and shelter jammed the city’s hotel rooms or doubled up on relatives’ sofas.
Jimmy Treece didn’t have that luxury. When the freezing temperatures and whiteout conditions hit, he was sleeping in a tent in the woods right outside the city. His bedroom for nearly five months held only a few blankets, some sheets and a slim wardrobe—the staples of a life untethered.
Treece, 61, was among hundreds of homeless people in the Little Rock woods that night. When a two-year prison sentence for drug possession ended the previous summer, he had no place to go. Little Rock’s official homeless population was reported to be between 1,200 and 2,000 in 2013, according to the advocacy group Central Arkansas Team Care for the Homeless, but experts say there could be hundreds more taking cover in the woods to avoid being detected by police. They have good reason to hide: Though Little Rock’s homeless numbers pale in comparison to cities like New York and San Francisco, the National Coalition for the Homeless named Little Rock America’s “meanest city” toward the homeless in 2012 — police harassment and the city-led sweeps are notorious here.
The homeless in the woods rarely “group up,” says Treece, to avoid attracting attention. On Christmas night he was alone in his flooded tent. By daybreak, it had collapsed. The sun rose on December 26 into a cloudless sky, and Treece dug himself out. He was broke and freezing.
But later that morning, he saw a vehicle pull up on a dirt trail not far away. At the wheel was Aaron Reddin, a stocky, goateed 31-year-old whose long hair was tied back with a camouflage bandana.
The Van, as his primary vehicle is known, has become an almost Pavlovian signal of relief to Little Rock’s homeless. Reddin has been driving around the city and into the surrounding woods for the past two years, delivering supplies. To Treece, the sight of Reddin was a lifeline. “I heard the vehicle pull up. I peeked out my tent, and I didn’t think anything, but then once I heard his voice, I knew who it was,” Treece says. “I had nowhere to go. [Reddin] came right on time.” Continue reading “A Van That Tweets to Help the Homeless”