Sam Nagy says for people experiencing homelessness, a shower and a haircut can change everything. Nagy would know — he was the Tucson operations manager for Cloud Covered Streets, an organization that provides the unhoused with a place to shower, get a haircut, and do laundry in a mobile trailer that travels across the city.

After this story was first published, Nagy was “unexpectedly let go” the day after the group’s first Tucson event, he told the Sentinel. Cloud Covered Streets management did not respond to requests for comment.

The group canceled upcoming events and is “making some critical changes to be the best service to the community we can be,” Executive Director Robert Thornton posted on Facebook.

Nagy spent several years living unhoused himself in the midst of an addiction in the early 2000s. A place to shower would have made a profound difference in his life then, he said at the group’s first Tucson event.

“It would have been just completely different to have a place to regularly shower and clean up, and then be able to be presentable to an employer and work,” Nagy said. “I was in and out of different shelters, a lot of the time dealing with different types of drug addiction and things like that. But it was really difficult to remain clean. You know, hygienically clean.”

Cloud Covered Streets is already operating in Phoenix and Fort Worth, Texas. The Tucson shower trailer was supposed to have its inaugural run on Monday, but a bureaucratic struggle over a permit delayed the launch. City officials stalled operations over concerns about the dumping of gray water, Nagy said, which is legal on private property.

After a meeting with the Department of Transportation and Mobility and a last-minute inspection at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, the blue Cloud Covered Streets trailer finally opened its doors.

“We had a pretty big hiccup that could have derailed us,” Nagy told the Sentinel at the roll-out of the trailer on Wednesday, “but today we got the green light.”

At its first event, the trailer, parked outside Hope City Church, 5729 East 22nd St., offered multiple showers, as well as a washer and dryer and clean shirts and socks. In the future, Nagy says, they plan to have licensed cosmetologists giving haircuts. Representatives from the nonprofit VoteRiders helped unhoused people get identification to apply for jobs. Medical volunteers offered free COVID-19 testing and first aid, and outreach from the Primavera Foundation helped place people in shelters.

Anna Bennett brought her yellow food truck, Anna’s Abundant Blessings, serving burritos and chili dogs. Volunteers from Bennett’s food truck gathered together in a prayer circle with Mike Pethe, who has been sleeping outdoors since he lost his housing weeks ago. At the event, Pethe was able to secure a bed in a Primavera men’s shelter for 21 days.

“I don’t want to be out there in the dirt,” Pethe said.

The number Tucson residents experiencing homelessness has risen 52 percent since 2018, according to a January point-in-time count. The percentage of residents experiencing unsheltered homelessness — sleeping on the street or in a car as opposed to in a shelter — has risen 253 percent since 2018.

Sue Walley and KJ Robles, who were both volunteering at the event Wednesday morning, said they were excited to finally see it open. Walley, a nurse, met Robles, who is unhoused, while doing her own outreach work.

Robles recently moved into a camper, and said hooking it up to water so she can shower can often be difficult. She contacted Nagy about working as a volunteer after finding out about the program.

“This means a lot to me,” Robles said. She said she wished the trailer would head out further into the desert where many people experiencing homelessness live.

Finding alternative places to shower while unhoused is almost impossible, said Walley, who works through the group Yellow Brick Roads on the app Nextdoor to provide aid to people and pets experiencing homelessness.

“Pilot charges $18 to take a shower,” Walley said. “It may take three days for some of these people to get $18.”

Lisa Holly, another volunteer, took off work to come spend the day with Cloud Covered Streets. Holly has a family member who struggles with addiction and homelessness, and since she can’t help him, she said, she helps others.

And, Holly said, she hopes one day he may show up to the blue trailer.

Planned locations for the trailer, which moves several times per week, are available on the Cloud Covered Streets website and Instagram.

Friday, that site still displayed an event that had been announced for that morning at The River church on North Flowing Wells Road, near West Miracle Mile.

But that event was called off the day before.

“We learned a lot of valuable lessons on the needs that CCS Tucson still has to address to run smooth and helpful services to our neighbors experiencing homelessness,” Thornton posted online on Thursday. “We are regrouping, gathering resources, and making some critical changes to be the best service to the community we can be. As such, the CCS board has decided to cancel tomorrow’s event while we use this time to gather needed items and personnel and be back in action as quickly as possible!”

The church posted that “we’re not sure what’s to come in the future” and noted that comments were turned off on the post by Thornton. “It saddens me that no call was made to us” by the group’s executive director, the church representative wrote.

Nagy declined to provide any details, just saying “I was unexpectedly let go today from CCS Tucson” via a text message. He said he wasn’t provided a reason for being terminated.