Inside a small, one-story building, teens and young adults are milling around. Some are socializing. One is on a desktop computer checking Facebook. Outside, some are relaxing on the patio, smoking and chatting, their bags in tow.
Most are gathering their possessions.
The underfurnished old building is Tumbleweed Center for Youth Development‘s downtown Phoenix drop-in center. Located on Fifth and Garfield streets, near popular ASU student hangout Jobot, the center houses homeless and runaway youth ages 11 to 22 in Maricopa County and helps them to work through their problems by offering them access to case managers, three meals a day, showers, clothing and shoes.
However, the reason these youths have packed their bags is bittersweet: bitter because the center is closing on Tuesday for a week, but sweet because it is moving to a new, larger facility in December on 16th and McDowell streets.
“Very few people provide for the youths’ needs like we do,” said Paul Jones, an employee at Tumbleweed. “Once everyone sees the new place, they’ll want to go.”
The current downtown facility sees about 35 kids a day, Jones said. The new facility, less than two miles away on the opposite side of Interstate 10, is nearly twice the size.
The larger building will allow everyone to get more attention, and there will be less chance of conflicts, said Ryan Block, a case manager at Tumbleweed and an ASU social work graduate student.
The new center will also be a first for its youth-driven enterprise TumbleTees, Jones said. The business, where the center’s clients screen-print and sell T-shirts, will now have a storefront window.
Tumbleweed has been a fixture in Phoenix since the center’s establishment in 1972, and its history in downtown is long and varied.
Originally, Tumbleweed had five houses on Fifth Street, program director Gail Loose said. However, little by little, it lost the buildings as the area became a “hip place to go to rent for galleries.”
The center has also seen opposition from local clients, but Loose emphasized that these obstacles are not the reason it is moving.
Even though the downtown drop-in center is leaving behind its old neighborhood, its footprint on the area is still there. The nonprofit’s administrative agencies are headquartered downtown, and Tumbleweed is offering a van to help transport the youths to the new facility and to look for new kids to bring to the center.
“Ultimately, we want to get them into housing. They are afraid to trust people, afraid to get out of street life,” Loose said.
Many Tumbleweed clients have been traumatized and some re-traumatized, Loose said, leaving them with a world of hurt that can manifest as other problems and difficulties.
“Every youth that comes through here has a story, and they wouldn’t be here if they didn’t,” Loose said.
Jesse Hamryszak, 24, once relied on Tumbleweed’s services. Now, he is self-sufficient, and he said he hopes for the other kids to get squared away.
He credits the Tumbleweed Center for helping him get his life together.
“The center is a great place. It changed my life,” Hamryszak said. “They gave me a job, but it was more than that. It was the personal aspect, too. It is a bond you can’t break.”
Contact the reporter at samantha.k.davis@asu.edu
