[NEWS] Health-care center to be built in N. Phila.

THE CITY'S homeless-outreach organizations have a secret weapon in Sean Rafferty, particularly when it comes to surveying the individual men and women who camp out on Philadelphia's streets, transit concourses and other public spaces.

It's not often, after all, that the workers completing those surveys can swap stories about what it's like to have no place to go home.

"The best way to address the homeless problem is through people who know where they're coming from," said Rafferty, who spent 10 years living on the streets of Philadelphia.