Laundry Chaplaincy for Unsheltered Souls

The San Francisco Quaker Meetinghouse sits at the crossroads of technology and outdated infrastructure, development and disinvestment, and abundance and famine. Our building is only one short block from the main thoroughfare of the city, Market Street, and in an area that triangulates with many of the survival resources needed by the poorest people in our community. 

Yet for the constant attention given to the issue of “homelessness,” the city’s methods of onboarding and outreach are remarkably outdated and lacking in cultural competency: the training manual for city-wide “standards of care” for all city-contracted shelters were last updated in 2004, over 20 years ago. These standards cover everything from training for staff to necessary materials and basic expectations of the agencies that provide direct services to the unhoused.

More than a decade ago, when I moved to San Francisco from Chicago, I lived at one of the largest shelters in the city. This first required spending many nights trying to sleep while sitting upright in a chair (not everyone in shelter necessarily receives a bed). Every day we had to queue in order to check in, praying that not too many people in front of us signed up for laundry services, since there were only so many total washes available per day. I keenly recall feeling exposed while in my bunk bed, sleeping next to people who were sometimes in the midst of mental episodes. Yet, for all the challenges, I recall some staff who were clearly gifted in managing conflict and creating rapport with shelter guests; their ability to exert influence and speak with the culture—not at the culture—was fascinating to me. I also recall the conversations with George, an elderly African American, with whom I’d often eat dinner at the common dining room. He is an ancestor, an angel whispering a Word for me to carry on in this sometimes spiritually perilous work.

I began sitting outside the San Francisco Meetinghouse—on Sundays during meeting for worship—to extend spiritual care in the form of laundry. Every other Sunday during worship, a table and chairs are set up near the meetinghouse with a sign reading “Holy Wtr We Wash Laundry.” 

For nearly two years (2022–2024), I was a live–work employee at a tiny-house shelter run by Youth Spirit Artworks (founded by a Quaker) in Oakland, California. I finished my last year of seminary at Earlham School of Religion while breathing this air. My tiny house lacked running water, private showers or bathrooms, and was only 60 square feet of living space. Contrary to most homeless shelters (which are congregate or bunk bed in style), each person occupies a tiny house with its own key. This design was in stark contrast to my earlier experience; what’s more, laundry could be washed any time that the community space was open. This experiment in simplicity significantly refined my expectations of housing. It turned out that I didn’t need many of the amenities that I might have assumed were a red line, an essential without which my world would collapse. Without realizing it, my concept of housing had been shaped by social forces. In many ways, homelessness is the concrete analogy to hell: a warning on this side of creation to adjust our internal world to fear the omnipresent punishment of “the Market” should we stop paying necessary oblation (vis-à-vis the accumulation of money) to the demigod of capitalism.

Living in a tiny house was a unique, sunrise-to-sundown perspective of the massive scaffolding of programs, support systems, and staff resiliency required to obtain any hoped-for outcomes. Housing is not a magic wand and does not reverse the hypervigilance, dissolved social networks, or embodied pain carried in our unsheltered neighbors. Intense case management, clinical services, and therapeutic interventions (whether talk therapy, medication, or a psychiatric service animal) all cost money. City governments need more state and federal investment to accelerate access to all of the above. It may come as a surprise to learn that most of the unhoused are keenly aware that they haven’t been able to bathe and so therefore have a bit of an odor: the shirking away by other people, the getting up and moving to the other end of the bus or the city train that repeats itself on a loop is a fairly obvious form of public shaming. Sadly, the same is true on Sundays; most church services are middle-class affairs with little room for the unhoused. Among Baptists, Mennonites, Quakers, and Pentecostals, I’ve yet to enter a Sunday service and see a large number of the poor. Glide Memorial Church in the Tenderloin area of San Francisco is an exception; this was the first faith space where people who slept outside on the street the night before came to Bible study. It never dawned on me that the poor might be interested in—let alone attend—a Bible study.

The churning of the nuclear Light of God in my soul challenged my self-righteous attitude about having found an outward form I enjoyed. On Sundays when I would attend Quaker worship, my conscience would be greatly disturbed at the people taking shelter in front of the meetinghouse. As is generally the case, these folks were overwhelmingly African American/Colored persons; getting to meeting for worship literally required passing them by, much as people did the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:25–37). When I would sit down in worship, my spirit would try to settle, but time and time again, Spirit spoke the same message, “The Light is needed there”. Sitting inside and waiting for a reversal of this message was first an act of folly—then of disobedience.

Faith and Practice of Pacific Yearly Meeting describes meeting for worship as follows:

Thus conducting worship under the leading of Divine Will, Friends assemble in the silence without prearranged program. Each tries to still the inward clamor of personal anxieties and ambitions, listening for the voice of the Inner Guide, endeavoring to be faithful to its instruction. Such faithfulness may require an outward silence. It may require one to rise and speak words that do not come easily, which may not be fully understood, or which may be uncomfortable. It may require action, or restraint of action, by some individual or the whole Meeting, outside the Meeting for Worship [emphasis added].

During my time at seminary, I’d discerned a “social laundromat”’ministry as my focal project; the seed remained planted and ripening for some time. On January 28, 2024, I began sitting outside the San Francisco Meetinghouse—on Sundays during meeting for worship—to extend spiritual care in the form of laundry. Every other Sunday during worship, a table and chairs are set up near the meetinghouse with a sign reading “Holy Wtr We Wash Laundry.” Our neighbors can rest, talk, or wash laundry. For laundry, we walk to a nearby laundromat, provide detergent and pay for both wash and dry cycles. Laundry is the practical incentive while listening is the deeper chaplaincy work.  I am not always alone, as volunteers have been joining the ministry.  

Still, we are reminded that neither understanding nor being comfortable are baselines for good order: the central question is whether we are being faithful.

The laundry is just the outer shell, the spiritual tortilla as it were, that hides what’s really the center of the experience: active listening and spiritual care to persons usually excluded (absent) from worship. It was critical to heed Spirit: this was not to be held under the care of any committee because it would be too controversial. Sometimes, the defense of the dominant monthly meeting culture (White and middle class) takes precedence over discernment. At first, this was an odd stop because I imagined the concern should be held under the Ministry and Care Committee, but with the passage of time, it has become painfully clear why Spirit led me in this puzzling direction.

During the course of my more than ten years as a member, San Francisco Friends have also grappled with the (disturbing) fire of what the peace testimony means in an urban context: not discussion groups but active praxis. Liberation theology is, after all, about putting practice before theory: acting in the world before musing. Over the years, we have been made uncomfortable because an unhoused person was falling asleep in their plate of food; made anxious about whether a bottle of liquor can be stored in a hallway closet so someone can come inside (e.g., spiritual harm reduction); and torn in conscience by the sight of a tent erected right under the Black Lives Matter banner painted across the front face of our meetinghouse.

Still, we are reminded that neither understanding nor being comfortable are baselines for good order: the central question is whether we are being faithful.

From March 3 through March 30, 2025, the San Francisco Meetinghouse served as the interfaith winter shelter location for the city and county of San Francisco. It was run by Episcopal Community Services, but the discernment about this form of spiritual care (and civic responsibility) took many years to unfold. There have been many discussions over the years about discomfort about “those people” inside the building (yes, that’s a direct quote and one that’s often heard).

My work with Youth Spirit Artworks and Glide Memorial Church has been apocalyptic: work that through the unhoused has boldly unveiled something new about God. The soul care of the unhoused often leaves me heavy in heart, burdened with worry, and filled with doubt. Clearness can sometimes intensify rather than erase contradictions. Even now, I grapple with the line between the sacred and profane. It is not the building, after all, but the people that are the church. The work is not without conflict; the laundry ministry heckles some in the meeting and exposes deeply ingrained class- and race-based bias among Friends. Yet, the still, small voice of the ancestors whisper: “Hold on, hold on! Keep your hand on the plow; hold on!”