This story originally published online at the 9th Street Journal.
At the first light of dawn, a truck pulls into the gravel lot behind Trinity United Methodist Church and volunteers in puffy jackets rush to unload supplies, their breath rising in plumes of vapor in the crisp morning air. The truck hauls a mobile unit offering something many homeless people otherwise lack: free access to a shower.
Ibrahim Thabet, a middle-aged man with a salt-and-pepper beard and a grey cap who has long used the shower service, walks up to Mary Wilson, founder of Fresh Start Durham, and gives her a hug.
“I’m so happy to see my second family, but I’m really ready to shave,” he says with a chuckle, launching into an account of recent events in his life.
Fresh Start Durham, founded in 2018, offers shower services to the homeless on Tuesday mornings from 7:30 to 11 a.m. behind Trinity Methodist (across from Durham City Hall) and Wednesday mornings from 7 to 10 a.m. at St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church on West Main Street.
Its mobile shower trailer, equipped with five shower stalls and a 600-gallon holding tank, can provide up to 32 showers per day. The nonprofit partners with local organizations such as Trinity Methodist for access to water and electricity.
The idea behind it is simple: to provide basic services that many take for granted, but which are often out of reach for those without stable housing. The nonprofit provides free showers in a private stall along with clean socks, undergarments, shirts, and clean towels.
Mary Wilson, 54, the group’s founder, cleans the shower stalls between clients by scrubbing the floor with disinfectant.
For Wilson, providing the showers is “a basic form of love and respect.”
“If you live on the street and you’re dirty, and you don’t have a haircut or a shave, you’re marginalized in society,” she says. “The very state of being clean is expected if you want to integrate into society at all.”
For most of Fresh Start’s clients, this will be their one chance to shower this week. Homeless shelters only provide showers to residents — and local shelter wait lists are weeks, if not months, long.
Durham had about 415 people experiencing homelessness in January 2024, up 10% from the previous year. (Numbers from this January’s count have not yet been released.) Most Tuesdays the Fresh Start sign-up sheet for showers fills up before 8:30 a.m., and volunteers must turn people away.
As a crowd of 50 people gathers—some carrying backpacks, others walking dogs or pushing strollers—volunteers greet each person.
Inside a shower cubicle, the smell of soap and lotion and the sound of water splashing against plastic fill the small space. Perched on the door handles of the stalls are the name tags of the people occupying them.
Steam rises faintly from the shower units while just across from them, the barber hired by Fresh Start has laid out combs, scissors and clippers on a table in preparation for the morning.
The peaceful rhythm of the morning is shattered by a sharp cry near the sign-up tent. Two men are locked in a scuffle by the folding chairs. One, a wiry man in a tattered coat, stumbles to the ground, clutching his side.
“I think a guy just got cut with a box cutter,” shouts Joe Wilson, Mary’s husband
Mary Wilson sprints into action, running toward the injured man as she shouts for her husband to toss her a first-aid kit. The two quickly help the injured man into a folding chair to examine the wound while another man crouches nearby, urging calm.
The injured man’s partner, visibly shaken, tells Wilson what happened: the box cutter used in the attack was the man’s own, stolen from him moments earlier and used against him in the altercation.
To everyone’s relief, the cut is shallow, barely breaking the skin. Still, a member of HEART, Durham’s nonviolent response team—who sometimes stop by on Tuesdays—calls EMS as a precaution, and the man is loaded into an ambulance.
“He was in the fetal position, so I’m like ‘We’re gonna see some intestines right now,’” Wilson says. “But it was nothing. These things happen. We learn to deal with them in the moment.”
Wilson’s dedication to supporting vulnerable people began well before she founded Fresh Start Durham. She worked as a nurse for nearly two decades starting in 1993, including eight years at the Samaritan Health Center, a free clinic serving Durham’s uninsured.
During this time working in critical care, Wilson often cared for homeless individuals. She quickly came to recognize two pressing needs for people experiencing homelessness: access to showers and laundry.
After paying off student loans, Wilson turned her focus to addressing these unmet needs. She and her husband bought a building in downtown Durham in 2017, hoping to create a community day center with space for showers, laundry and kitchen facilities, along with literacy programs and an emergency night shelter.
However, the project ran into unforeseen obstacles when city regulations classified the building as a laundry facility, triggering requirements for expensive upgrades.
Wilson’s husband Joe knew of a San Francisco program, Lava Mae, which provided mobile shower services to the homeless before ceasing operations. Inspired by that example, the couple bought a mobile unit in December 2020, intending to use it to provide free showers. Then the pandemic struck.
They were finally able to get out into the Durham community in October 2021. Since then, they’ve only missed one week, and provide showers in all seasons, including the winter holidays. The work doesn’t stop with just a shower or a haircut, though. The volunteers also offer a space for people to be seen, heard, and supported.
“There are people in here that nobody will give eye contact to because they’re scared,” Mary Wilson says. “So, I think that human connection is uber important for everybody.”
Dalya Robinson, 20, a Duke University junior who volunteers with Fresh Start, agrees.
“It’s just important to hold space, and take the time to listen to what they’re going through…” Robinson says. “They’re all coming from somewhere, they all have some reason why they’re out there.”
As she speaks, five members from Open Table Ministry, another local nonprofit serving the homeless, weave through the crowd assigning people numbers they can use to access Open Table’s weekly free clothing store. Volunteers also hand out water, coffee, and homemade soup.
Sean Hardy, associate director of Open Table, says Fresh Start’s popularity has spread largely through word-of-mouth.
“I learned this early on, but the community has such a grapevine that is incredibly strong,” Hardy said.
Fresh Start Durham relies on donations and volunteer support to continue its work.
Keith Ward has been using Fresh Start’s services for two years. Wearing a dark green knit sweater, Ward sips his hot chocolate (courtesy of Open Table) and waits his turn for a shower.
“You know, if you ain’t got nothing, you can come and get a start,” he says. “Come and get your child and come. It’s a good program. I thank the Lord for it.”
Wilson says the rewards of the work are many, especially when people come back and report on good developments in their lives.
“Many times people will come before they go on a job interview and then come back and tell us they found employment so we get to celebrate alongside them,” she says.
She dreams of the day when her services won’t be needed.
“I’d love this thing to go to a landfill and never need it,” she says. “For now, hygiene is really important. It’s very, very, very important.”
Back in the trailer, the soft sound of water running fills the small space. Charlie Lemon steps out of the bathroom, his face now scrubbed clean, ready to start his day.
“[Fresh Start has] made a positive impact and a real difference,” he says.
“It’s such a blessing in my life.”
This story was published through a partnership between the INDY and 9th Street Journal, which is produced by journalism students at Duke University’s DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy. Comment on this story at [email protected].
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