> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.richmonder.org/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Downtown’s new homeless outreach workers have been there themselves - URL: https://www.richmonder.org/downtowns-new-homeless-outreach-workers-have-been-there-themselves/ - Published: 2026-09-10T10:00:31.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-10T10:00:31.000Z - Description: Dangerfield sees his job as rebuilding trust, however long it takes. - Author: Ned Oliver - Tags: Features, #hide-cta, #lead [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/99/06/99067822-fdfd-42b1-ab19-555c33eefb89/content/images/2026/09/vcu-Richmonder-0312-0319-032625-900x150px.jpg)](https://news.vcu.edu/article/how-vcu-and-the-community-work-together-to-bring-about-positive-change) ****Our "Regional Issues" series is sponsored by** [****Virginia Commonwealth University**](https://www.richmonder.org/r/f8d509a6?m=0c149afe-bb55-4252-ae98-1e2c36cb2cfd)****.** As a top 20% global university, Virginia Commonwealth University is an unparalleled powerhouse of innovation and creative problem solving. VCU attacks challenges as opportunities. It's truly a university unlike any you’ve ever seen. The man starts trembling as Leon Dangerfield walks up. He’s sitting on a stack of blankets in the back corner of a small, empty parking garage downtown. It’s dark and smells strongly of urine. Dangerfield assures the man, a 20-something with long hair, that he’s not in trouble but he is going to need to clear out. The building is for sale and the owner has been complaining about people living here. And by the way, has he been connected to any homeless services in Richmond? It used to be that a business owner’s primary recourse when a person was sleeping on their property, blocking the door or otherwise impeding the flow of commerce downtown would be to call the police. These days, Dangerfield — who was once homeless himself — is far more likely to get the call. He’s Venture Richmond’s social services outreach coordinator, tasked with connecting homeless people who find themselves downtown to whatever services might be available to help them off the street. Sometimes that looks like getting them registered with the local shelter system, pointing them to the nearest church serving a free meal, or buying them a bus ticket to get them back to a family member’s house. Today, it looks like handing a man two cigarettes and giving him a day to pack up his stuff in hopes that it leads to a longer conversation about getting help tomorrow. Dangerfield has been working for Venture Richmond for two years now as part of the nonprofit’s Clean and Safe Program, which is funded by a special tax assessment on downtown properties that pays for extra trash collection, landscaping and other services aimed at generally keeping the district tidy. The program expanded into social services after Venture Richmond hired a new contractor to operate it, New York-based Streetplus. “One of the programs they educated us on was a social outreach effort that they had worked with other cities to institute, and the more we learned about it, the more we thought it was worth trying here,” said Anedra Wiseman-Bourne, Venture Richmond’s deputy director. The downtown area had seen a sharp increase in people living on the street since the pandemic, and the issue had grown as a concern among downtown businesses, Wiseman-Bourne said. She immediately thought of Dangerfield, whom she had met through the police department, where he was working as a peer recovery specialist, responding to overdose calls alongside police as part of an initiative called Project Recover. --- For Dangerfield, it was a long road to his current job. He grew up in Richmond, the son of two parents he describes as drug-addicted and often absent. “The lights kept getting cut off,” he said. “My mom was stuck in, I don’t want to say a Section 8 mindset, but that’s where we were at.” Work felt out of reach, and he was selling cocaine and heroin by age 19, he said. Soon, he was addicted, too. Things went on like that until he was arrested at age 26 and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Incarcerated, he got clean and embraced work training programs. When he was released at age 40, he had certifications in welding, plumbing, boiler maintenance, business software, and technical drafting. Despite all that preparation, his post-release life went haywire almost immediately, he said. He had found work with a painting crew, but the hours were irregular and a lull in work left him unable to pay rent at the halfway house where he was staying. Three months after getting out of prison, he was homeless. He bounced around between friends’ couches and slept on the street. He said he sought help from the various resources and programs offered around the city, but found them bureaucratic and difficult to navigate. One, he said, was willing to give him bus passes, which he needed, but only if he took classes to write a résumé, which he already had. One day, he was in the Wawa off Chamberlayne Avenue, thinking about trying to steal a cup of coffee, when he said he heard one man encouraging another to apply for a job. It involved pouring epoxy floors and required lots of travel, so hotel stays and a daily stipend for food were included. And the owner was willing to work with people who had served time. When he overheard the business’s location, he beelined out the door and started walking across the city to apply. It was a four-hour walk to Old Warwick Road, he said, but he got there, and he left with a job. --- People who work in homeless services often observe that by the time someone is sleeping on the street, dozens of systems have already failed them. That experience can make it hard to accept help, they say. Dangerfield sees his job as rebuilding trust, however long it takes. "The main reason why I do what I do is because in my situation, nobody showed up for me. Nobody,” he said. “And it made me distrust a lot of the way the system worked." In practice, that looks like walking around downtown, greeting people on the street, asking them if they need anything, offering them a cigarette if they smoke, or buying them a coffee if they’ll accept it. If someone does want help, Dangerfield connects them with whatever services best fit their needs. He can help get people phones, connect them to a caseworker for drug treatment or mental health treatment. He has a small budget he can use to buy people bus tickets if they have family elsewhere who can take them in. If they don't want help, he said being in the neighborhood daily allows him to build trust the slow way. “When they see somebody showing up every day, checking on them,” he said, “it allows them to know that this person is here to help and doesn't want anything at all.” He told the story of a woman named Brenda, whom he greeted every morning for two months. “She would never speak back,” he said — until one morning last month he asked her if she was hungry. Yes, she said. He got her a sandwich and some water and they talked for an hour. “Just getting that little foot in the door,” he said, “it makes a big difference.” --- Dangerfield also gets calls from businesses, responding to help defuse conflicts between unhoused people and shops, restaurants and offices. Svetlana Green said that when she opened her flower shop, Rushing Blooms Floral Studio, on Broad Street four years ago, she was unprepared for the chaotic scenes that would unfold outside her door. Her business was in front of the Maggie Walker statue, where the surrounding plaza had become a hangout for homeless people. “I was like, ‘I’m going to sell flowers, this is great,’” she said. “And then there are people overdosing outside or somebody having a mental breakdown or psychosis, screaming, needing help.” She’d call 911 when there was a clear medical emergency. But beyond that, she said, she felt lost. It didn’t feel right, for example, to call the police every time she couldn’t wake up someone who had fallen asleep in her doorway. “They don’t need to be arrested, they need help, but there were no resources — no one to tell a new business owner like me, here’s who you can call.” After Dangerfield was hired, she said, she suddenly had someone to call. “He’s like a magician. He appears and talks to people. He knows most of them by name, knows their situations and helps a lot of them get housing, if they’re willing,” she said. --- One of the people Dangerfield helped navigate out of homelessness is now a coworker. Lena Suffal arrived at Richmond International Airport in January 2025 with “absolutely nothing and looking for a fresh start,” she said. She had flown from Phoenix, escaping an abusive relationship. She wanted distance from her ex, and, at $140, the flight to Richmond was the cheapest fare available. After spending three nights at the airport, she ventured downtown, where she stayed at the city’s emergency cold-weather shelter. Because the shelter closes during the day if temperatures are above 40 degrees, she wasn’t sure where to go. “So I Googled, what do you do when you’re in the city and you don’t know where to go. The response was, find a police officer,” she said. The first officer she saw was standing on a corner talking to Dangerfield. The two men immediately took her to enroll in health coverage and get set up with a caseworker at Daily Planet Health Services. The relationship snowballed from there. “I would see Leon, and he would just be this happy face I was glad to see.” Soon, Suffal found more permanent housing. And as she found her footing, she took to helping other homeless women she encountered. Dangerfield noticed. And when Venture Richmond’s social services program decided to add a second part-time outreach worker, he urged the organization to consider Suffal, arguing her personal experience outweighed her lack of formal training. “She understands the needs people have now,” he said. “It’s a beautiful thing when people see her, people who were sleeping in the shelter next to her, and it makes them ask the question, how did you do this?” --- Back in the parking garage, Dangerfield’s light touch pays off. Dangerfield suspects the man seemed so nervous at first because he had drugs on him, and by the end of their encounter, the man admitted he is addicted to fentanyl and that it has gotten bad. He said he can barely sleep anymore. Dangerfield gently broaches the possibility of entering a recovery program. Medicaid will pay for it, he says. “Listen, I’ve been where you’re at,” Dangerfield tells him. “Trust me, it’s a lot better on the other side.” The man, who says he is a welder but hasn’t worked since he was released from jail six months ago in Rockingham County, isn’t sure. Dangerfield doesn’t press it. He reminds the man he has until tomorrow to clear out and tells him he’ll be back in the morning to check on him. The next morning, Dangerfield arrives. The man tells him he’s ready to try rehab, and Dangerfield has him enrolled in a detox program by lunchtime. *Contact Reporter Ned Oliver at* [*noliver@richmonder.org*](mailto:noliver@richmonder.org)*.* --- ### Series sponsor: [![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/99/06/99067822-fdfd-42b1-ab19-555c33eefb89/content/images/2026/09/210513_595_aj900.jpg)](https://news.vcu.edu/article/how-vcu-and-the-community-work-together-to-bring-about-positive-change) ### **How VCU and the community work together to bring about positive change** “Community engagement is the pathway through which we connect the work that we do at an academic institution to real community impact, to making a difference,” said Maghboeba Mosavel, Ph.D., VCU vice provost, [community engagement](https://community.vcu.edu/). “We do this through engagement with our partners and communities and through the relationships embedded in that engagement.” “VCU brings research, students, expertise and resources into our partnerships,” she said. “Our communities also bring tremendous knowledge, strengths, resources and opportunities that benefit VCU and our students.” [Read more](https://news.vcu.edu/article/how-vcu-and-the-community-work-together-to-bring-about-positive-change). --- *VCU is sponsoring this series, but not its content. 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