INDIANAPOLIS — A brown pit bull with a white chest sits guard at the entrance to an encampment of homeless persons on the west bank of the White River off Kentucky Avenue just south of the I-70 overpass.
Scattered along the path are a dozen-or-so tents, lean-tos and makeshift shelters where several residents have their own reasons for not coming out of the cold on a night when the mercury in Indianapolis promises to dip below zero again and wind chills will likely make it feel even twenty degrees colder.
”Why? Me and my wife don’t want to split up,” Michael Burks said. “And going into a shelter, I’ll go to the Wheeler Mission, and she’ll go clear across town to the women’s mission. They don’t put women and men in the same shelter like they do in Texas.”
That’s where Burks is from — where high temps hovering around zero degrees are practically unheard of.
”It’s rough. It’s really rough,” Burks said. “I mean, we live in a tent, it’s snowing, as you can see, it’s very cold out here. Especially today it’s like in the zeroes.”
Burks was clad in all-weather coveralls and a black knit cap.
He said layers of tent and tarp contain the warmth a small propane heater throws off inside his home.
”We got a heater, and so we got the big propane tanks, and we get money sent to us from friends, so we’re able to contain, that’ll last us for four days,” he said. “So, we got heat for at least four days.”
Forecasters predict it’ll take another four days for temperatures to begin climbing back toward, but not above, freezing.
It’s been four days since Tennessee Voorheis has had reliable heat inside the small rental house she shares with her husband and two children in Irvington.
Tennessee and husband Anthony curled up on a bed in the front room with a plush purple blanket across their legs to keep warm as the temperature inside their rental has finally climbed up to 65 degrees after a gas leak shut down their furnace.
”I’m a mechanic,” Anthony said. “I’m used to working in a garage. I’m used to the cold, but having to go to work and be in the cold and then come home and be in the cold, it sucks, and then not being able to have my kids with me, thank God my mom is able to watch them.”
The couple’s five and 7-year-olds are with grandma where there’s hot food and a warm bedroom.
“That’s where they’re gonna stay until it gets fixed because it’s too cold here for them,” said Tennessee. “His mom is bringing us potato soup later, which we’ll have to heat up in the microwave.
“We got three space heaters, two in the living room, one in the bathroom, so if we go in the bathroom and the pipes don’t freeze in there. I also kept the water running in all the sinks so the pipes don’t freeze.”
On the bank above the White River, in the homeless encampment, there is no running water to freeze.
”It’s not easy,” Burks said. “It’s not easy at all. It’s very cold and people are freezing out here. Even people that’s got pets. This is no joke. It only takes one paycheck, you’re just one paycheck away from being out here like we are.”
This article was originally published by a fox59.com . Read the Original article here. .