On Sunday in Norfolk, about 30 people met near City Hall and carried electronic candles as they walked several blocks through downtown to Freemason Street Baptist Church for a vigil.
Before they set off, Natalie Jackson, the continuum of care manager for the nonprofit Planning Council, told the crowd they were remembering people from Chesapeake, Franklin, Isle of Wight, Norfolk, Southampton and Suffolk.
“We’ve lost 33 lives this year that we know of, as well as the lives of two dedicated staff members with the Norfolk Community Services Board,” Jackson said. “Each name represents a story, and we’re here to honor them all today. Their absence reminds us not only about the fragility of life, but of our shared responsibility to one another as a community.”
The event coincided with Homeless Persons' Memorial Day, held each year on the first day of winter in more than 150 communities around the U.S.
Larry Sivells, who was formerly homeless, wrote a poem for the event and read it near City Hall.
“I do declare homelessness is a sad affair,” he said. “I was there with so many others, 3 ½ years. Only God seen my tears.”
In Virginia Beach, the city’s Housing Resource Center hosted a memorial service on Dec. 17. It featured the reading of names for those lost while homeless. People placed seven new memorial stones around a tree in the center of a courtyard.
Dr. Rudy Agustin, a family nurse practitioner with Old Dominion University’s Community Care Clinic, was among the speakers who discussed the need to recognize the needs of people experiencing homelessness and provide help and compassion.
“Tonight we are honored to be here to remember those who passed while experiencing homelessness,” Agustin said. “Individuals whose lives mattered deeply and whose absence we feel in the community. … Remember, these individuals were mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and friends, people who loved, people who hoped, people who dreamed and people who tried.”
Agustin urged people to view those who are unhoused “not through the lens of their circumstance but through their full humanity.”