Rick Jones stands on Washington Boulevard in downtown Detroit. Within a mile radius of St. Aloysius Church there, an estimated 1,000 people live on the streets.

Detroit – Detroit officials and residents hope to spit-shine the city's image when the Super Bowl comes to town Feb. 5.

But to make the city sing, Detroit's public has had to focus on a growing concern that screams for help – the problem of homelessness.

Depending on who's counting, there are as few as 5,000 and as many as 13,000 people living on the streets of Detroit at a given time. Still more, estimates say anywhere from 30,000 to 50,000 have no homes of their own but are taken in by friends or relatives.

A sizable portion of the homeless population resides in downtown Detroit – within blocks of where the National Football League's Super Bowl game will be played.

It's in this area that a handful of stalwart organizations have dug their trenches in the war against homelessness. Among them in the downtown area — neighborhoods where men and women routinely awaken in parks or cardboard boxes in sub-freezing temperatures – the Church works tirelessly to feed God's children.

Help for the homeless is given by Most Holy Trinity, SS. Peter and Paul (Jesuit) and St. Aloysius parishes; by Day House shelter for women and Manna Community Meals soup kitchen; and by other Christian shelters, agencies and soup kitchens as well. That's not to mention all the agencies outside the downtown area dedicated to the same mission – such as the Capuchin Soup Kitchens or the St. Vincent de Paul Headquarters.

With volunteers, financial and in-kind donations and prayer support from the area, as well as from concerned people in the suburbs, these parts of the Church take on the mission Christ charged it with: caring for needy brothers and sisters.

The obstacles • Mental illnesses can prevent some people from being able to live unassisted • Criminal records, even for urinating in public because there are no public restrooms, can keep a person from being hired • Lack of State Identification, which can take years to obtain, means a person cannot qualify for food allowance from the state • Addictions can keep people from staying sober and focusing on getting off the streets • Michigan's poor economy makes it more difficult to find entry-level jobs, even when a homeless person is prepared to work

Each by name
Rick Jones stands in front of St. Al's Center on a freezing Thursday morning. He's just lugged three heavy backpacks across the city to get to some place where he can get warm.

Within a mile of where Jones stands, the center estimates, live about 1,000 homeless men and women.

But those who serve the poor typically treat numbers as an afterthought. On a cold morning, when homeless men and women huddle inside St. Al's Center, they're known by name.

Rick. Terrence. Angela. Tony.

Each has a face. Each has acute needs.

"The issues we have at hand are hunger, clothing, being able to use a restroom and to shower," says Lynch. "The biggest, of course, is the issue of housing – getting them into an apartment or some place where they're safe from the elements."

So volunteers at the city's handful of shelters scramble to make sandwiches, hand out blankets, and open restrooms and portable toilets.

Some even have nurses tend to the feet of the homeless, who often spend their days walking in shoes that are worn or don't fit properly.

Many, such as Jones, say the shelters mean everything to them. Yet Lynch points out that not everyone understands what it means to give a homeless person life's bare necessities.

"I've had people say to me, 'You're enabling them,'" Lynch says. "And I tell them, 'You try to go 48 hours without eating, and then tell me that we're enabling them.'"

Editor's note Many Catholic establishments within walking distance of Ford Field, site of the upcoming Super Bowl XL, serve the homeless as part of the core of their mission. This population of our brothers and sisters has been frequently discussed in the city as the big game approaches. We are highlighting the Catholic facilities in the shadow of Ford Field and their ongoing ministry, which began long before the Super Bowl was announced, and will continue long after the game is but a memory.

Why it's so hard
Still, the main goal Catholics in and around Detroit have in caring for the poor is to eliminate the source of homelessness.

Those who take it on say it's even more difficult than it sounds.

Many on the streets have wound up there through addictions. For many others, mental illness and a lack of support from family leave people without homes and unable to hold jobs.

Even if the city had fully furnished apartments ready to take in each of its homeless citizens, the problem of homelessness would still be prevalent. Because of their conditions, many people on the streets are mentally unable to live on their own.

"Without constant support, they're not going to make it any amount of time in any housing facility," says Jamie Ebaugh, a program manager and caseworker at Oasis Detroit. The nonprofit that houses 15 mentally ill homeless people was founded by parishioners at St. Aloysius Parish.

Care providers estimate that 80 percent of people without homes suffer some kind of mental illness. Ebaugh works with a portion of that population, the chronic mentally ill. About 35-40 percent of people on the streets, he says, fall into the category of having "severe and persistent" mental illness that keeps them unable to live unassisted.

Further, because of red tape and a lack of government paid-for homes and services, getting just one person off the streets can take years – that is, if it can be done at all.

"It is possible sometimes, and sometimes it's not," Ebaugh says.

By the numbers • 30,000-50,000 homeless people living with friends or relatives • 5,000-13,000 people on streets in Detroit • 85 estimated percentage of homeless that are male • 85 estimated percentage of homeless with some form of mental disability • 35-40 percent of homeless with "severe and persistent" mental disability • 1 the number of sheep for which a good shepherd leaves 99 others to find and save Source: Care providers for homeless people in Detroit

There's an intricate process in getting a person off the streets. The first step, typically, is obtaining for the person what most Americans carry in their purses or back pockets each day – identification.

Michigan requires three state-sanctioned documents with a person's name on them before issuing an official state identification card. For a homeless person with no birth certificate or driver's license, this can be tedious and expensive.

"It involves getting birth certificates, running around to schools and tracking down school records that in Detroit sometimes don't exist," Ebaugh says. "What happens with that frequently is, if their mental illness is severe their memory isn't clear – you can take months just getting identification.

"We have some clients who have no income who have been waiting for more than two years."

Once identification is obtained, a person can apply for a Bridge Card – a debit-type card with the same function as food stamps – and other services. Still, Ebaugh says, providing the state with enough documentation to obtain funding for a client's mental health care is a challenge.

Also, some organizations, such as the Homeless Action Network of Detroit, have concluded that the city has far too few permanent places to house all the homeless that would qualify for aid.

A homeless man sleeps outside in Detroit's Hart Plaza.

The difficulty of the challenge, however, hasn't kept Christians in Detroit from answering their baptismal call to serve the poor, some of the city's spiritual leaders say.

"When the people see a clear connection between the announced Gospel in liturgy and an opportunity to apply it where there's a loose end in society – they want to be a part of it," says Fr. Russ Kohler, pastor of Most Holy Trinity Parish in Detroit's historic Corktown district.

Indeed, Most Holy Trinity has stretched the resources of its campus to meet the needs of the homeless – from opening its church as a place to sleep at night, to maintaining the free St. Frances Cabrini Medical Clinic, to using its school cafeteria to provide legal services to the poor.

In much the same way, church grounds in the city have been put to the service of the needy. And by no means have suburbanites been left out.

Homeless help The following downtown Detroit organizations offer year-round help for the homeless. Capuchin Soup Kitchen Address: 4390 Connor, Detroit, 48215 Phone: (313) 822-8606, Ext. 17. Services: Breakfast 8:30-9:30 Mondays through Saturdays, lunch 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays, dinner 4-6 p.m. Mondays through Fridays; children's programs. Capuchin Soup Kitchen Address: 1264 Meldrum, Detroit, 48207 Phone: (313) 579-2100, Ext. 218. Services: Breakfast 8:30-9:30 a.m. Mondays through Fridays, lunch 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Mondays through Fridays; showers, changes of clothing. Coalition onTemporary Shelter Address: 26 Peterboro, Detroit 48201 Phone: (313) 831-3777 Services: Emergency shelter to transitional housing for homeless persons. Central United Methodist Church Address: 23 E. Adams Ave., Detroit 48201 Phone: (313) 965-5422 Services: Bag lunch, 10:30-noon, Mondays and Thursdays; drop-in social services, 10:30-noon, Mondays and Thursdays, and 10:30 a.m.-2 p.m., Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Directors of each shelter or homeless center in Detroit acknowledge the help from hundreds of parishes, schools and organizations throughout the metro area. The majority of donations and scores of regular volunteers – from both Catholic and non-Catholic organizations – are vital in keeping ministry to the homeless alive in the city, they say.

"No matter where I go, people say to me, 'I heard the church is open – what can I do?'" Fr. Kohler says.

Fr. Tom Lumpkin, co-manager of Manna Community Meal, says Christ taught the Church that helping the poor is as natural as prayer.

"It is just as much a mission of the Church to be actively involved in alleviating the concerns of the poor as it is to have a good liturgy," Fr. Lumpkin says.

The Lord's words to His sheep from Matthew 25 – "For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me to drink, a stranger and you welcomed me" – have no lesser meaning in present day Detroit. Fr. Lumpkin says through caring for the needy, Christians are realizing the oneness of God's family.

"In Scriptures, that thought is expressed well in that we are the Body of Christ," he says. "We're trying to be connected. We find our true selves in reaching out to others and being connected… because out true self is an interconnected part in the whole Body of Christ."

Often in his four decades of ministry at Manna Meal, Fr. Lumpkin adds, he has seen volunteers grow to a deeper understanding of their role within Christ's body.

"One of their experiences is that they discover that the homeless person or hungry person is not all that different from themselves," he says. "Those programs and structures (to help the homeless) are ways to dispel some of those fears and discover people like you in the people that you're serving."

And though it's hard to be optimistic looking at Detroit's staggering numbers of homeless people, those who serve the needy among God's children see a lot of room for hope.

"Hope is in God," Fr. Lumpkin says. "Optimism is that things are going well.