by Erin Turner | Feb 19, 2015 | News Slider
As Nashville’s winter weather has hit its ultimate lows, the homeless community has been struck with even more adversity — but that’s nothing Green Street Church of Christ and Open Table Nashville can’t help diminish. “It’s really heart-wrenching to see the amount of suffering that there is in our own city — in our own backyard — when we’re so warm,” said Lindsey Krinks, Director of Street Chaplaincy and Education of Open Table Nashville. Wednesday night the temperature plummeted into the negatives, but organizations like Open Table and Green Street alleviated a lot of the suffering. But even with all of Nashville’s warm shelters, Krinks said the city has already seen six exposure-related deaths in the homeless community this winter. “In the last couple of days I’ve tended for four people with frost-bitten feet and we’re finding so many people out still,” she said. Krinks said the need is overwhelming, but as a non-profit, interfaith community, Open Table is working hard to put a dent in Nashville’s homeless community. “We help people navigate the very complex social services and housing systems,” Krinks said. “Instead of people coming in to us — like the mission [Nashville Rescue Mission] and Room In the Inn [where] people from the streets come in and receive services – we go out to where people are and we take that [services] to them.” Krinks and the Open Table team are on the lookout, especially with more snow and low temperatures on the way for Friday. “We do outreach canvasing at night, so when it gets this cold we go out on the streets and we’re driving around, and we go...
