I have become wary of anyone that declares that one solution exists to solve homelessness. Many of these make intuitive sense. Make more housing, get people housed first. That makes a great deal of sense. I am sure that if I worked at a center that never had contact with the actual homeless, I would easily subscribe to that concept. However, I work with these men and women. Homelessness is an individual problem and a structures problem. For the individual we need to get to know them. There are those folks who just need help getting a roof over their heads. That roof will provide the structure to reboot. There are some (VERY FEW) who will need to stay at that level for the rest of their lives. Most of those should be in group homes of some sort.
Most of the people I see in my facility have been housed in what is often termed “permanent housing”. However, these men and women never dealt with their addiction or their mental illness, so some incident took place that got them evicted. Not so permanent huh? Some of them lived in facilities that got a new owner and they could not afford the adjusted rent or a handful had disasters like a fire started by someone else in “permanent” housing.
“When I was a desperate, suicidal alcoholic and I came to your home and you made me a strong drink, you were pleasing me. If, instead, you took me to a Twelve-Step meeting you were serving me. There’s a big difference between pleasing and serving.”
Steve Chandler
The challenge is that we have made it a habit of pleasing those that are homeless and in poverty instead of serving them. We don’t spend the time to get to know them and figure out what they really need first. This is not a simple process. After their first two weeks at the Gospel Rescue Mission, we do an assessment on them and learn as much as they will tell us. We then develop a personalized plan to help them move toward self-reliance. After two months we do a follow up assessment. Now we have gotten to know them and they have learned to trust us. It is at this time we get the first real assessment. From there progress can be made. However, most don’t stick with it that long because they have found a way to stay in their addiction, or not deal with their mental illness and still be housed.
My friends it is critical that we help them see themselves as valuable to society and when we just keep pleasing them, they become their own little gods. They reject any kind of society standard of right and wrong. When we do that, we have failed them. Let us get away from the escape valves and help them move from being a society liability to an asset.
