Most conversations about homelessness begin with a debate.

People argue over housing costs, addiction, mental illness, law enforcement, government spending or whether enough is being done to address the problem. Statistics are cited, policies are proposed and opinions are firmly held. Yet after spending years working alongside people experiencing homelessness, Heather Hans believes those conversations often overlook the most important part of the issue. People.

During a conversation with Utah Stories, Hans, a board member of the Second & Second Coalition and Unsheltered Utah, reflected on years spent volunteering with emergency shelters and serving Utah’s homeless community. While public discussions often focus on systems and solutions, she has come to believe that meaningful change usually begins much closer to home. It starts with a conversation, a warm meal, a safe place to sleep and the willingness to recognize another person’s humanity.

Her perspective came from countless evenings greeting people at the doors of temporary shelters, checking them in, offering food and helping them find refuge from the cold.

One night in particular has stayed with her.

After several days of freezing temperatures, people had once again begun arriving at one of the coalition’s emergency shelters. Before guests entered the building, volunteers completed a brief safety check of bags and clothing. It was not a law enforcement, but simply an effort to create a safe environment for both volunteers and guests. Hans often took that opportunity to greet people by name, welcome them inside and reassure them that warmth and a meal were waiting just beyond the door.

Among those waiting in line was a man she knew. He looked exhausted. “I said, ‘Boy, you look tired,’” Hans recalled. His response was simple. “I am tired.” When she asked if he was alright, he didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he began to cry. Hans asked if he needed a hug. “He put his head on my shoulder,” she said, “and he just started kind of weeping.” Then he explained why. “I’ve just been too cold for too long.” For Hans, that moment captures the reality of homelessness far better than any statistic ever could.

People often speak about homelessness in broad terms. They call it an economic issue, a public safety concern or a political talking point. Yet standing at that shelter door, the ontly thing that mattered was that another human being had reached a point where weeks of sleeping in the cold had broken him emotionally. That, she said, is why emergency shelters matter. People need refuge. They need to know someone is waiting for them. “They need to know that the world is waiting for them to come back,” she said. “That the world will accept them.”

The man eventually told her she reminded him of his mother. He said the last person who had hugged him was his mom.

Those are the moments Hans remembers because they reveal something many people never see. Behind every tent, every sleeping bag and every person asking for help is someone carrying a lifetime of experiences, losses and relationships.

Those experiences have also shaped the way Hans thinks about volunteering. “I am as blessed and as lucky to have those experiences as I am lucky to be able to provide help,” she said. “That’s how I see it.”

That perspective challenges one of the most common assumptions about service—that volunteers are simply giving something to people in need. Hans believes the exchange often runs both directions.

Volunteering changes the volunteer. It introduces people to lives they might never otherwise encounter and offers perspective that can be difficult to find in everyday routines.

Modern life, Hans observed, often becomes repetitive. People go to work, return home, stream television shows, spend time on their phones and repeat the same schedule day after day. In many ways, those routines are signs of stability, but they can also leave people feeling disconnected from the deeper experiences that give life meaning.

“If you want a life of texture,” she said, “if you want to feel the texture of life and have the beauty that is in life, the joy and the passion and the sorrow and the touching moments… you have to go where life lives.” That phrase—“meet life where it lives”—has become something of a personal philosophy.

It does not necessarily mean working with people experiencing homelessness. Hans is quick to point out that everyone serves differently. Some people volunteer at schools. Others work with animals, elderly neighbors or community organizations. The important thing is stepping outside one’s own routine long enough to connect with someone else’s reality.

She also rejects the idea that homelessness can be explained by one simple cause. Over the years she has met people whose lives were shaped by addiction, generational trauma, family breakdown, untreated mental illness and circumstances entirely outside their control. Others simply lost contact with family because they no longer had a phone, a vehicle or the resources needed to reconnect. Every story is different, which is why broad assumptions rarely fit individual lives.

That complexity is one reason Hans avoids debating who deserves help. Her organization’s mission is far more immediate. “Our focus,” she explained, “is emergency services. How do I keep people alive tonight… so that tomorrow they have the opportunity to make another choice?”

People who survive another night may choose to seek treatment, reconnect with family, find housing or engage with community services. None of those possibilities exist if they freeze to death before morning. The work, therefore, begins with the basics such as warm socks, a meal, medical attention, a safe place to sleep, and dignity. “They need to not die,” Hans said simply.

More importantly, she believes they need to be seen not as problems to solve, but as people whose lives still hold value.

One experience, however, convinced Hans that compassion can do more than provide temporary comfort. It can change the direction of a person’s life.

Several years ago, a man who regularly stayed at one of the coalition’s emergency shelters told Hans about his lifelong fascination with space. During one of their conversations, she noticed that his backpack was falling apart. By coincidence, a friend had an extra backpack decorated with a space theme that her son no longer needed. Hans picked it up, tucked five dollars inside, a tradition she had learned that says luggage should never be given away empty, and brought it to the shelter the following evening. This seemed like a small gesture to her but the man was surprised that someone had remembered something as personal as his interest in space. He accepted the backpack gratefully, and Hans went home believing she had simply helped someone replace a worn-out bag.

Years passed. Then one evening she saw him again but not as a guest seeking shelter, but sitting in volunteer training. He had come back to help others. The first thing he asked her about was the backpack. “He said, ‘Do you remember that backpack?’” Hans recalled. “For me, that was the beginning.” The gift itself wasn’t what changed him. What mattered was the realization that someone had seen him as a person rather than simply another homeless man standing in line. “He said it reminded me that the world was waiting for me,” Hans said. “That people would love me again.”

Stories like that are why Hans resists reducing homelessness to debates about accountability or personal responsibility. She does not dismiss those conversations, but she believes they often miss the human moments that can quietly redirect a life.

“Compassion is not a feeling,” she said. “Compassion is an action.” That distinction has become central to the way she approaches service. Feeling sorry for someone costs very little. Taking the time to prepare a meal, distribute blankets, organize volunteers or simply stop and listen requires effort.

“If it costs you nothing,” she said, “it’s probably just a sentiment.”

Hans believes many people genuinely care about those who are struggling, but modern life often creates distance between people who might otherwise know one another. Neighbors become strangers. Communities become collections of individual households, each occupied with its own responsibilities. That loss of connection extends far beyond homelessness. “I think we’re also failing at creating community and knowing our neighbors,” she said.

She understands how easy it is for families to become consumed by work, school schedules and everyday obligations. Yet she believes there is a cost to that busyness. “The price of having a village is being a villager.” It is one of the simplest ideas she shared during the conversation, yet perhaps the most challenging.

People often talk about wanting stronger communities, better neighborhoods and more support for families. Hans argues those things do not happen automatically. They require people willing to invest time in others, even when it is inconvenient. That might mean checking on an elderly neighbor who lives alone. Walking a neighbor’s dog instead of complaining about it barking. Teaching a child to read. Volunteering at an animal shelter. Preparing meals for people experiencing homelessness.The specific act matters less than the willingness to engage. “If homeless isn’t your thing,” Hans said, “go walk the dogs at the Humane Society. Go teach kids how to read. Be kind to your neighbor.”

For Hans, kindness is not limited to one cause. Communities become healthier whenever people choose to participate rather than observe. That same philosophy shapes how she thinks about people experiencing homelessness.”There is no us and them,” she said. “That is a lie that we perpetuate over and over again.”

It is easy, she acknowledged, to fear people from a distance. It is much harder to maintain stereotypes once conversations begin. She remembers feeling apprehensive when she first started volunteering. Like many people, she wondered whether homeless shelters would be dangerous places. Experience changed that perception. “The dominant story is not danger,” she said. “The dominant story is need.”

Most evenings, she explained, people simply want to be warm, eat dinner and sleep safely through the night. That realization has reinforced another phrase she often repeats.

“Meet life where it lives.”

To Hans, proximity changes people. Fear grows at a distance, but compassion grows through relationships. The closer people come to experiences different from their own, the more difficult it becomes to reduce others to stereotypes or political talking points. “You can’t hug someone and keep them as an abstract,” she said.

It is a lesson she hopes more Utahns will experience for themselves.

Not necessarily by volunteering at a homeless shelter, although organizations such as the Second & Second Coalition and Unsheltered Utah always welcome additional help, but by finding any opportunity to step outside the routines of daily life and invest in another person.

Service, she believes, does not always require grand gestures. Sometimes it begins with a conversation. Sometimes it begins with remembering that someone loves astronomy. Sometimes it begins with a warm meal or a pair of dry socks. And sometimes it begins with something as simple as a hug offered to a man who has been cold for far too long.

For Hans, those moments reveal a truth that statistics, policy debates and headlines often fail to capture. The greatest need is not simply housing or food, important as those are. It is the reminder that every person still possesses dignity, still has the capacity to change and still belongs to the larger community.

That is why, after years of welcoming strangers through the doors of temporary shelters, Hans continues to believe the greatest transformation often occurs not only in the lives of those receiving help, but also in the lives of those who choose to offer it.