A new nonprofit hit the streets Jan. 10 in its crowdfunded mobile shower trailer for the homeless.
“It has been eye-opening,” Gina Barton, the volunteer director at Fort Worth’s Cloud Covered Streets team, said. “It has been a very passionate and bittersweet thing.”
Nonprofit Cloud Covered Streets provides shower, laundry and grooming services to homeless residents on Jan. 10. (Cristian ArguetaSoto | Fort Worth Report) 
Cloud Covered Streets’ Fort Worth team crowdfunded a trailer equipped with three showers and a laundry room. The trailer is a part of an effort to provide aid to homeless residents. (Cristian ArguetaSoto | Fort Worth Report) 
A shower is available inside nonprofit Cloud Covered Streets’ trailer. (Cristian ArguetaSoto | Fort Worth Report) 
Loads of laundry wash and dry inside the organization’s trailer on Jan. 10. (Cristian ArguetaSoto | Fort Worth Report) 
Volunteers help wash laundry on Jan. 10. (Cristian ArguetaSoto | Fort Worth Report) 
Numbered bags are given to homeless residents. The residents can fill the bags with as much clothing as they can. (Cristian ArguetaSoto | Fort Worth Report) 
Cloud Covered Streets was founded by Robert Thornton in Phoenix, Arizona, in 2016. (Cristian ArguetaSoto | Fort Worth Report) 
A shower is vacant at the Cloud Covered Streets-hosted Haircuts for the Homeless event on Jan. 10. (Cristian ArguetaSoto | Fort Worth Report) 
Tables are set up for guests to sit and mingle while they wait for their turn in the showers. (Cristian ArguetaSoto | Fort Worth Report) 
Boxes of clean clothing are set out for guests to fill their bags with laundry. The nonprofit provided clothes, showers and haircuts. (Cristian ArguetaSoto | Fort Worth Report) 
A box of clothing is available for guests. (Cristian ArguetaSoto | Fort Worth Report) 
Cloud Covered Streets partnered with Community Crossroads Outreach Center for their Haircuts for the Homeless event Jan. 10. The outreach center will host the nonprofit every Monday. (Cristian ArguetaSoto | Fort Worth Report)
Cloud Covered Streets’ Fort Worth team members offered a Haircuts for the Homeless event, providing laundry, shower and grooming services to residents. Their trailer is equipped with three showers — two walk-in showers and a wheelchair-accessible shower — and a laundry room.
The nonprofit was founded by Robert Thornton in Phoenix, Arizona in 2016 to aid the homeless population.
The organization expanded its services to the greater Fort Worth area after Barton and a few others traveled to Arizona and realized the city had a population in need of the services.
Barton said their team partners with Community Crossroads Outreach Center and uses the Tarrant County Homeless Coalition and nonprofit When We Love as resources.
Cloud Covered Streets will provide services every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
The trailer will be at the Community Crossroads Outreach Center, 1516 Hemphill St., on Mondays, Grace Temple Seventh-Day Adventist Church, 4200 E. Berry St., on Wednesdays and will alternate between Broadway Baptist Church, 305 W. Broadway Ave., and working with the Grand Prairie Homeless Outreach Organization.
The team will employ two people who are experiencing homelessness to help run operations of the trailer in hopes of “acknowledging their existence” and “do whatever we can to help them get back to a more ‘normal’ life,’’ Barton said.
Operations Manager Kenneth Miller said building trust with homeless people was difficult, but through persistence, transparency and by keeping their promises, team members know residents by name.
“The crazy thing about this now that I’m seeing this and witnessing it is most of these people, made one or two bad decisions — lost their job and couldn’t find something — it’s so disheartening to know that it was just one thing,” Miller said.
Miller participated in street missions with Cloud Covered Streets’ Fort Worth team while they waited for trailer renovations to be completed in 2021. The nonprofit hopes to continue providing its services in the greater Fort Worth area and eventually expand to Austin, Houston and Nashville, Tennessee, where residents have expressed interest.
“This team right here is like a family,” Miller said. “It’s hard for them to trust each other, but, even though they’re not related, this to them is the closest family that they get.”
Cristian ArguetaSoto is the community engagement journalist at the Fort Worth Report. Contact him by email or via Twitter. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
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