‘Whenever I call, Ben picks up’: A friendship born from loneliness
Ben Hughes and Roger Collins had little in common at first. Mr. Hughes is an Orioles fan, while Mr. Collins backs the Giants. One moved to San Francisco to work in a health care startup; the other came for the city’s health care services. Mr. Hughes was living in an apartment. Mr. Collins was living in a homeless shelter.
The two became unlikely friends. They bonded over sharing dispatches from two very different walks of life, seen from the same San Francisco sidewalks.
They met through Miracle Messages, a Bay Area nonprofit that helps people rebuild relationships – and form new ones. Its phone-buddy program pairs volunteers with people experiencing homelessness in an effort to alleviate social isolation.
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In San Francisco, an approach that gifts cellphones to homeless people – with someone on the other end – helps to forge human connection.
“I learn a lot more from Roger’s perspective about San Francisco’s issues than I do from the media,” says Mr. Hughes in an interview at the San Francisco Public Library. “He’s actually living with it and seeing it every day.”
Beside him, Mr. Collins maneuvers his red mobility chair to face Mr. Hughes. “A lot of people don’t understand what being homeless means. Some people don’t even want to be around you. But whenever I call, Ben picks up,” he shares. “He’s always been there for me.”
Combating relational poverty
California’s homeless population of nearly 200,000 needs housing and help finding it, but “More than anything, they need a human connection and recognition that they are worthy of support,” says Howard Koh, chair of the Initiative on Health and Homelessness at Harvard University’s Chan School of Public Health. “Efforts like Miracle Messages give all of us hope that there’s a way forward instead of just feeling overwhelmed by the challenge.”
Miracle Messages began as an experiment in 2014 using “social media for social good.” Something changed for founder Kevin Adler, after learning his uncle had spent 30 years homeless. Mr. Adler had just finished his graduate degree in sociology at the University of Cambridge in England, when he started to look at homelessness differently and wanted to do something.
Living in San Francisco, he began befriending the city’s homeless residents and learning their stories. With people’s permission, he used Facebook and Instagram to reconnect them with their families, who, in many cases, had spent years searching for them.
Miracle Messages set out to combat what Mr. Adler calls relational poverty – the idea that poverty occurs when people lack meaningful connections and support from others. Research consistently shows that social isolation and a distrust in asking for help are primary contributors to homelessness.
Progress connecting people
By the end of 2024, about 1,000 people had been reunited with loved ones via Miracle Messages. Dedicated volunteers operate as digital detectives and outreach workers, posting videos online and coordinating family reunions or reintroductions when appropriate.
Miracle Friends, established in 2020, currently has more than 300 pairs within the phone-buddy program. It provides homeless buddies cellphones, if needed. It has also pioneered a guaranteed basic income program. Homeless participants in the program received $750 per month for one year, as part of a $2.1 million study led by researchers at the University of Southern California.
Mr. Collins was part of the guaranteed-income study from March 2023 to March 2024. He used the money to pay for food and bills. When he had extra, he sent it to his retired mother, who lives in an assisted living facility in Oregon.
“Fundamentally, by having housed individuals help unhoused individuals, we create closer proximity and understanding between people,” says Mr. Adler, who is also the author of “When We Walk By: Forgotten Humanity, Broken Systems, and the Role We Can Each Play in Ending Homelessness in America.” “We’re also prompting people to understand and empathize with why people are experiencing homelessness.”
Forging friendship over dinner
Most Miracle Friends pairs rarely meet in person, since volunteers can live worldwide. But Mr. Hughes and Mr. Collins have found multiple ways to connect. Weeks after being matched, they began checking in regularly. Eventually, they started meeting weekly for dinner. Together, they’ve built a foundation that’s held firm for two years.
Their first in-person meeting was on a cold February afternoon in the courtyard of the San Francisco Medical Respite & Sobering Center, where Mr. Collins was staying. Mr. Hughes brought sandwiches. He shared his life travels from Bethesda, Maryland, to Boston, and eventually to San Francisco.
Mr. Collins talked about his upbringing in the Pacific Northwest, where he grew to love hiking and the outdoors. He dropped out of 10th grade and became homeless at age 21. For the next 32 years, he wandered, drifting between cities along the West Coast. At different times, he collected scrap metal for money.
For the most part, he had been alone. He stopped asking others for assistance entirely, explaining, “Whenever you needed help, people would turn you down or be rude to you, and that would break my heart.”
In August 2024, Mr. Collins was able to secure a studio apartment in an assisted living complex for formerly homeless people in the Tenderloin, a neighborhood here. “I don’t have to feel so lonely anymore. And I’m no longer homeless,” he says.
When he was previously confined to a hospital bed for weeks, Mr. Hughes would visit and sneak Mr. Collins’ favorite snacks past the nurse. “It can’t be fun to sit in a hospital room forever and not have visitors,” says Mr. Hughes. “The nurse would get mad at me for bringing the wrong snacks,” he says while Mr. Collins chuckles.
“If more people viewed homelessness more through that lens, it would help a lot because you would treat him like you would a friend,” says Mr. Hughes. “I think a lot more would get done.”
