Streetside Showers Brings Radical Hospitality® to Dallas Forth Worth, TX and Palm Bay, FL
November 6, 2020
The Streetside Showers backstory
One day in 2016, Lance Olinski walked into a restaurant bathroom in McKinney, Texas, and saw an unhoused man washing himself in the sink. Something clicked, and he immediately went to the store and filled a bag with soap, shampoo and other hygiene supplies to give away the next time he met someone in need. Then he thought about how to make hot showers available to anyone who needed one.
Inspired by the boom of food trucks and pet-care pop-ups, Olinski began researching mobile shower trailers. He discovered LavaMaeˣ (then called Lava Mae) and flew to San Francisco for training in March 2017. Over four days, he worked with founder Doniece Sandoval and now-CEO Kris Kepler to learn about trailer management, guest interaction and more.
“I didn’t have to invent the wheel—I brought the wheel back to North Texas,” says Olinski.
Back in McKinney, Olinski raised $25,000 and purchased a portable restroom trailer. Streetside Showers became a nonprofit that June, started service in August and provided 432 showers in its first year. Today, Streetside owns two trailers with three shower-and-toilet units each that serve up to 120 guests a week in North Texas, and a two-stall shower unit in Palm Bay, Florida. A fourth three-stall trailer is expected for Texas at the end of 2020.
How LavaMaeˣ helped
After his restroom experience, Olinski learned that many well-off communities north of Dallas, including McKinney, don’t have services for people experiencing homelessness, partly because of low awareness.
To develop trust with these communities, he worked with elected officials and educated residents. One key concept is that Streetside Showers is meeting the needs of local neighbors—not drawing unhoused people from Dallas.
“LavaMaeˣ gave me a strategy and a plan to work with municipalities and the ability to communicate with leaders,” Olinski says.
To build trust with unhoused guests, Streetside Showers—whose motto is “Shower On”—established a consistent presence on the streets, rain or shine. “LavaMaeˣ taught me how to be consistent, build trust, be the person your guests can count on,” Olinski says.
“LavaMaeˣ sets a standard for quality,” he continues. “Our trailers are well maintained like a home bathroom. Every element of the shower service is designed to provide a sense of dignity and hope to people moving through homelessness. We bring LavaMaeˣ’s Radical Hospitality—meeting people, wherever they are, with extraordinary care—to people, which helps them move on to the next step in their lives.”
Olinski has a unique affinity with Radical Hospitality, says Annie Stickel-Rice, LavaMaeˣ replication community engagement lead. “He lives and breathes it,” she says. “Radical Hospitality is the motivator for him to provide service at a high level.”
The pandemic challenged Streetside Showers, but they kept going. By the time COVID-19 hit Texas, they were providing 150 showers weekly with two full-time staff and over 200 volunteers. Shelter-in-place orders left 1,200 people in Collin County without access to water or hygiene. Fortunately, the service was deemed essential and kept operating at full capacity. They also started distributing food and clothing, obtained a new trailer and partnered with the Credit Union of Texas to provide hot showers and hygiene to the suburban unhoused. Streetside has also deployed two of the LavaMaeˣ DIY high-capacity handwashing stations to help people without access to running water stop the spread of COVID-19; another two are on the way.
Impact and success
Streetside Showers now operates two trailers, with three shower-and-toilet stalls each, in eight North Texas cities, as well as one two-unit trailer in Florida, and has served 1,600 people with nearly 10,500 showers. In addition to building on LavaMaeˣ training and mentoring, Olinski says, this progress comes from a combination of relationship building, fundraising and support from Unilever’s social enterprise, The Right to Shower, which donates profits to shower initiatives that help the unhoused, including LavaMaeˣ.
And Streetside’s impact is going beyond showers as it joins forces with local organizations to provide wraparound services. For example, during the pandemic it has partnered with Hugs Café, which employs people with Down syndrome, to prepare food for guests. That partnership in turn expanded the café’s regional presence, and now Hugs ensures that guests get two meals: lunch during shower service and dinner to go.
“Lance developed a tight relationship with the unhoused and community as a whole, and that will naturally turn you into an advocate,” says Stickel-Rice.
For instance, Streetside Showers is creating awareness about the growing unhoused population in suburban North Texas. Olinski often explains he isn’t attracting unhoused people from cities but serving local community members. “Many cities will say, ‘I don’t have a homelessness problem,’ then I show up with a shower trailer and it turns out there’s a need for it,” he says.
Streetside has also catalyzed change at the government level. The assistant chief of the city of Rowlett reached out to Olinski to build a shelter for the unhoused with a day center and showers—and the cities of Irving and Denison are following suit. Olinski plans to “work himself out of a job” by helping communities in Texas create permanent services for people moving through homelessness.
In the meantime, Streetside Showers maintains a close relationship with LavaMaeˣ and is helping other organizations provide mobile hygiene services around the world—the intended ripple effect of LavaMaeˣ’s replication program. When organizations reach out, Olinski connects them to LavaMaeˣ and shares what it takes to provide mobile hygiene, covering lessons learned from failures as well as successes.
“When people ask me, ‘Do you sleep?’ I tell them I sleep outside the box,” he says. “LavaMaeˣ taught me to adapt, adjust to change and think in a fluid environment.”
Streetside Showers profile
Home base: McKinney, Texas
Team: Two full-time staff, 7 part-time staff and 200 volunteers
Mobile units: Two trailers with three shower-and-toilet units in Texas, one ADA accessible; a two-stall shower trailer is in Florida
Services: Eight weekly shower stops in eight cities
Guests served: 1,600 people served with nearly 10,500 showers
Radical Hospitality tips and lessons
Work with local leaders to educate them about the unhoused in their community and create support for mobile hygiene services.
Consistently showing up is critical to building trust with unhoused guests and helping them move through homelessness.
Think with an abundance and growth mindset: if you serve with heart, you will succeed.