Hohohobos spread Christmas’ cheer -- and share its wealth
It’s an unusually balmy Saturday afternoon in December, and Rob Wylder stands in front of the espresso filling station at the corner Fourth Avenue and Plum Street wearing a Santa hat and a black Johnny Cash T-shirt.
Next to him, an assortment of eclectic Christmas wreaths hangs over a large wooden A-frame, and some more wreaths are slung over a nearby traffic light’s electrical box.
Wylder looks like a DIY Salvation Army Santa, minus the bell and with a decidedly more mellow approach to marketing.
Just down the street from Wylder, Christmas shoppers are migrating away from Olympia City Hall, where groups of protesters are starting to disperse as police push them down Fourth Avenue.
At first the commotion was hampering sales, but some of the fleeing holiday shoppers stop, and one man buys a wreath. A few minutes later, Wylder asks a group of four teenagers dressed in all black if they want to buy a wreath made by the local homeless community.
“I appreciate it, but I don’t have my wallet on me,” one teen says.
Wylder is not raising money for “charity.” It’s true that, as he explains to customers, all the sales proceeds go to unhoused wreath-makers, but unlike a nonprofit, there’s no management or bureaucracy that’s managing those funds.
The idea is threefold: create “low-barrier employment,” organize in a “horizontal” (egalitarian) way, and have fun doing it — which helps explain the project’s playful name.
“Our whole thing is trying to create as many jobs as we can — making wreaths, selling wreaths,” said Walker Stephens, who started Hohohobos, which he calls a “seasonal outreach project,” in 2015.
‘Low-barrier’ employment
It works like this: a suggested donation is $20 for a wreath. Anyone can stop by, make a wreath, and get paid $5 for it on the spot.
The next level up for involvement is “sales crew,” Wylder’s perch: These are the people who attend planning meetings every Monday, and decide things like where to get brush and where to sell the wreaths. If you show up to one sales meeting, you can do a shift selling wreaths where you make half the proceeds, about $10 from each wreath, with the remaining $5 going back into the “community pot.”
Wreath-makers also can keep the wreath and sell it themselves. Stephens encourages customers to buy directly from the wreath maker, who can then keep 100% of the proceeds.
“So it’s like, strip away the barriers and then still give people opportunities to find their own level of engagement, their own level of participation,” he said.
Stephens describes himself as the “most stably housed” person on the organizing committee (he lives in a van), the body that makes decisions about sales strategy, how many wreaths to make, and how to distribute or spend any profits.
“Walker likes to call us ‘sales associates,’” Wylder says. “He says it sounds better on a resume.”
Wylder boasts that he has the second-most sales of anyone in Hohohobos history, not that it’s a competition. One woman sold more than him last year, but he hasn’t heard from her this year.
This year, a few other housed people began helping out with the website, but overall Hohohobos is a “by and for” organization, Stephens says, meaning it is managed by homeless people and exists for their benefit. That’s not an official designation, because Hohohobos is not an official 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, and it’s not a business, either. Rather, it’s an “organizational model,” Stephens says, meant to foster a sense of agency and ownership in people who rarely have the chance to exercise either.
Or, put more simply: solidarity, not charity.
“People have a strong feeling that this isn’t something being done for them, it’s something we are doing together,” Stephens said.
Elf collective
On a recent Friday afternoon, Stephens set up his workshop at a covered area along the Percival Landing boardwalk. Like everything else, they’re doing it guerrilla style, without a permit.
Stephens brought supplies: wires, tinsel, decorations, and lots of tree garland, which he cut down by hand from a tree farm in Rochester. He has an arrangement with a tree farmer down there, but other times he just drives into the woods and cuts branches himself.
“We have our own made-up titles, and the position that I’m doing today is called ‘elfing,’” Stephens explains. “Elf is the person that has money in their pocket and is paying people and teaching them how to make wreaths.”
Rochelle Lambert and her husband, Elvis, are some of the first people to come by. They’ve been involved for a couple years, have both elfed before, and are a regular presence at organizing meetings.
Lambert also designed the tags that go on each wreath.
“I love this project,” Lambert said. “It gives me something to do. Before we became homeless, we were always doing something for Christmas or Thanksgiving, and now it’s difficult to say the least.”
Lambert enjoys woodworking, but tools are expensive and there’s the ever-present worry of them getting stolen. Hobbies are a luxury when survival requires all your energy.
Wreath-making also can be therapeutic for that reason, Stephens says. Last year, when indoor gatherings were possible, they started painting ornaments, too.
“If we get a dozen people making wreaths, it’s very chaotic. It’s fun, but people are grabbing brushes, cutting things,” he said. “But when people are painting, 12 people at a time, it’s so quiet, it’s such a meditative thing. People would come in flailing or tweaking or having these rough days and just sit down for a while and paint.”
How it started and how it’s going
Stephens started Hohohobos in 2015. It began with a wooden shack he put up in a parking lot next to Old School pizzeria.
The city wouldn’t give him a permit, so he made his own. He took his homemade permit around to many downtown business owners, who agreed to sign it. He asked the city for a permit again this year to set up at Percival Landing, but was turned down again.
“We just operate without permission,” Stephens said. “More than that, I think we operate with the permission and blessing of the neighborhood and those people that we serve.”
In the past, he’s sold the wreaths out of a lumber rack attached to the back of his truck, otherwise known as the “hohohobomobile.”
“That’s our pop-up location,” Stephens said.
This year, they have a website, hohohobos.com, and Stephens is hoping that selling wreaths online will help them expand. “Sales has always been our limiting factor,” Stephens said. “There’s no limit to how many wreaths we could make if we could sell all of them.”
Stephens says he’s gotten positive feedback even from people who typically have less kind things to say about the homeless community.
As the workshop continues tinkering, an older couple comes by and buys a wreath. The suggested donation is $20, but the man gives Stephens $40.
“That’s eight more people that can make a wreath,” says Stephens.
This story was originally published December 22, 2020 at 5:45 AM.
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