For those hungry in Tampa, hope lies behind a red door

TAMPA — The door, for now, was closed. Still, the people came.

They arrived from bus shelters and from blankets bundled under bridges. From patches of cardboard unfurled in parking lots and from tents tucked beside overpasses. They came on foot, on bicycles, on walkers.

They came here, to the Red Door Church, as they call it. That is, St. Andrew’s Episcopal in downtown Tampa. The church with the red door. The church where, five mornings a week, the red door opens and volunteers hand out brown bags filled with food, their antidote to an epidemic of homelessness sweeping this American city and so many others.

First in line on this blustery December day was Chandra Jean, 53. She had socks on her hands and a Bible in her bag. She arrived on Tampa’s streets a year ago from Buffalo, New York.

“The Lord told me to,” she said, as two men in woolly hats joined the line. Soon, another and another.

Here, just before 9 a.m. at the corner of hope and worry, they waited for the red door to open.

Inside the church building, 130 brown paper bags had just arrived from Metropolitan Ministries in purple plastic crates. In each: an orange, a bag of chips and a cellophane-wrapped sandwich. A pouch of mustard and a pouch of mayonnaise, too.

Three volunteers added a fruit cup and a PB&J to each.

Outside, the line grew.

Here came Ron Black, 74, arriving from a shelter opened by the county the day when temperatures plunged. He wore sunglasses and his white bushy beard neat. On his cap there was a shiny pin: Veteran, it read.

“Vietnam,” Black said.

Here came a woman with a wide smile and a Walmart shopping cart, stuffed with suitcases.

Here came a man yelling: “I’m not crazy. I’m not crazy.”

The time was 9:34 a.m. and still, the line grew.

Here came a woman named Melissa, 50, who declined to give her last name. After eating, she said she would go to the library to access a computer. She is learning Samoan.

Behind her, John, 60, who also declined to share his last name, wearing a donated, bright blue sweater, the same shade as the Florida sky.

The people in line wait.

They often seem to be waiting, some say.

Waiting for the bus, often delayed. Waiting for a bed at the shelter, often full.

Waiting for the public bathroom by the river to open, locked until 7 a.m.

Waiting for a place of their own. Day-to-day, line-to-line, waiting.

And now, waiting at the street corner for the red door to open.

The time was 9:45 a.m. The windows of nearby high-rises wink in the morning light. Still, the line grew.

Then, at 9:50 a.m., a creak. Then, muffled cheers and thanks. The door opened.

“Good morning,” said volunteer MaryBeth Harris, carrying a platter of dinner rolls.

The church has been handing out food in some fashion for almost two decades. But the brown bag program has been up and running since 2021. A nearby church shuttered. St. Andrew’s Episcopal picked up the mantle.

“There was a big need downtown to fill,” said Kathy Lawless, who helps run the operation.

The city emerged from the COVID pandemic and into an affordability crisis, housing costs soaring and inflation rising faster than most other metro areas, pushing people onto sidewalks, into cars and into the line snaking this block.

At 10:03 a.m., still the line grew.

Occasionally, a business owner, resident or member of their congregation will complain of urine in the church bushes or that the service is encouraging people to sleep nearby, Lawless said.

Still, the program continues. One hundred and thirty bags are handed out, Monday through Thursday. On Fridays, 140.

At 10:16 a.m. four brown bags remained.

A man wearing a blanket as a skirt over his jeans took two. Then came another man, then a woman, wearing a blanket as a cape. Christmas socks peeked through the gaps in her sandals.

Soon it was 10:26 a.m. and the trays were bare.

The volunteers looked out at the sidewalk, now empty except for some scraps trailing in the wind, a crushed beer and a man folding his belongings into his backpack.

Soon he, too, was gone.

Until the next day, the red door closed.