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Does anyone have a successful program in your city that helps the homeless? We are researching these to create and present a proposal to our city council to help these poor people. Can anyone offer any direction on what is working in your city. Any links of contact information would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
My take on the homeless is that there are two groups of homeless. One group is people who have fallen on hard times and lost their home or apartment and have no place to go. The kind of help these people need are a temporary place to stay and some help getting a job, leading to getting them back on their feet.
The other group often has mental illness and is much more difficult to help, except to offer food and a safe place to stay during inclement weather.
When seeking to help the homeless, I think you may need to choose how you want to help and who you want to help, then look for the organizations that target the group you want to help.
Mike
Very astute observation, Mike.
For the last time, I'm not homeless.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike Henderson
There is a group known as the "hidden homeless". People that are living out of their vehicles, but usually have jobs, but don't make enough to get ahead easily. It is a group that is largely ignored, but their plight can be made much better simply by giving them a safe place to park at night to sleep.
Mike put a pretty good handle on the situation. When I worked in San Francisco there were a lot of what would be considered homeless around the downtown area where I worked. Many of them were actually a step up from homeless as they would stay in a residence hotel. Some did live and sleep on the streets.
There is a different dynamic in a large city downtown. For one there isn't a place for people living in a vehicle to park. Across the bay from SF there were a few places where it was somewhat an encampment of people in vehicles from cars to motor homes. Usually the cities would put up parking limit signs to get them to move along. There were even some who lived on house boats or other water craft.
In San Francisco, some would actually run errands for a few of the local businesses or individuals they knew and sell a newspaper called "The Street Sheet" to eek out a living. Some were willing to run errands but would often get lost on the way and would take a couple hours to do a twenty minute errand. Some had absolutely no desire to do anything but get blind drunk or stoned on some other drub.
A few of them were actually happy with the life they were living and were not interested much in help. Some would be happy to accept help, but often the help required them to stay sober or give up part of the life they had grown accustomed to living.
The difficult part is finding the ones who actually want help and will respond to help.
jtk
Back to the OP's question. Habitat for Humanity. Builds houses for the homeless, future owner contributes sweat equity.
I would say that a place that offers meals and a place to sleep. I'm thinking a dormitory style place with cafeteria style food service, 1 or 2 meals per day.
There are two types of organizations that I can think of. One that provides core services and money (habitat, rehabilitation centers, etc), and then there charity groups that take in homeless people and help them find who is most appropriate to help them (and I think those groups don't get that much credit, but they provide a critical service).
One we have here called North Hills Community Outreach is probably more of the latter, but they are very skilled and while everyone who needs help isn't always willing to do what it takes to accept it, they have a track record here of helping the people who do need it, especially when there are kids and families involved.
In Phoenix we have MANA House. They make use of an old YWCA building it offers food and housing for veterans that are having a hard time . They get a place to sleep, meals and help getting a job, or counseling. Its all run by former veterans who had problems themselves. All food, money, clothing and volunteers, are donated.
Look here mabe this will give you other ideas also.
http://madisonstreetveterans.org/mana-house/
There's a shelter here called Philadelphia House. I'm not sure how success would be measured but its been around at least 25 years because one of my high school teachers managed it for a while so from the point of being sustainable its working. Contact information on this page: http://www.co.monroe.mi.us/governmen...ssistance.html There are some others there I'm even less familiar with.
Various churches in our area sponsor a soup kitchen program called God Works! (http://gwsoupkitchen.com/) that provide a hot dinner every night of the week at a rotating location within about a 2 mile radius plus others in outlying parts of the county on various nights. Its 100% volunteer/donation driven and is going on 10 years so they too are doing something right in terms of sustainability.
I volunteer teach at a workshop that takes "troubled youth" (for lack of better terms) and teaches them a skill, keeping them off the streets. It has been very successful. We have a full woodworking shop. I am teaching boatbuilding, as boating is a huge industry here. It is called "My Brother's Workshop" (MBW). There is now in the making a coffee shop that will be teaching service skills as well as baking/restaurant skills which has sprouted from MBW. It should be opening late March. This program benchmarks off a program started in LA called "Homeboy Industries." It has been very successful in LA. http://homeboyindustries.org/ Here is a little video about My Brother's Workshop. Scott, the guy narrating the video, is a great guy who started this project literally out of the back of his truck. Now we have a huge workshop and regular program.
Additionally the Salvation Army is active here and focus on feeding, clothing, and ministry to the homeless as well as assisting underpriveledged youth, drug/alcohol addicts, and other community needs. You may want to go by your local SA to get input on what they are doing.
Here in the Virgin Islands we have a very high homeless rate. Part of that is because of lack of local facilities, and part is due to the large number of immigrants we get from Haiti and the Dominican Republic, due to our proximity to Hispaniola. As already stated by others, you have to address different situations in different ways. Some are mentally ill, some undocumented and cannot get legal work, and some are just in hard times and trying to find work.
MBW is mostly focused on keeping people from becoming homeless or gang members by redirecting them before they get too far down the wrong road. Other organizations address those that are already homeless. There is no single approach. I just joined the advisory board for our local Salvation Army and we are looking at many different programs that address specific problems. One is helping reintroduce people into society after incarceration. After you get out of jail, getting a job is nearly impossible without help.
There is also a program that is called "Celebrate Recovery" which is a drug and alcohol recovery program that is very effective. We are implementing it here through a church and through the Salvation Army. It is a faith-based program, but the outreach is focused on helping people recover addiction. I guess what I am saying is you don't have to be a Christian to participate, but it is Christian based, and does include God. AA, by comparison, has a very similar program, but it is religion neutral. Whichever you go with, my point is there needs to be a program to address drug/alcohol addiction, which is in many cases the driving factor behind the homelessness. My church currently has a program through AA, and another church I am working with is starting the Celebrate Recovery. Both are good programs.
The one that is hard to address is the mental health issues. This is more difficult, and requires a more structured approach. What I mean is you can't just start a mental health clinic and put a sign out and expect patients to walk in for treatment. Usually patients must be sent by the court. These facilities are very costly to maintain, and very hard to fund.
Keep us posted because as you see this is something I am very involved in myself, and I like to benchmark from others, so I will be interested to hear what your city decides to do.
As Mike pointed out thee are two types of homeless and we have both in our city. My wife and I have been in contact with an organizer for a homeless program that she runs and we have talked to people involved with city council. There are reasons why we are taking this approach and we need to find a successful structure that is working in other areas and put forth an initiative here gain support for funding. There have been prior proposals looking for support and they have failed. We are hoping that what we are trying to organize will succeed where others have failed.
Thank all of you that have offered tips and links. I will follow up with them. I am glad to hear that there are success stories to help these people.
Also check out the Pine Street Inn in Boston. Been around for at least 40 years and seems to have a good success record.
Interfaith Hospitality Network. My wife and I have volunteered here. Basically rotates homeless families through a series of houses of worship so they can save funds for housing. Food is also provided. Each church houses them for a week. After a set number of weeks I think 13 they have had the opportunity to save money to get on their feet. Donated furniture and housewares are also provided. It doesn't address the chronically homeless but most families involved have kids. The success rate is pretty good. This mainly addresses people who have fallen on hard times and keeps them from falling into the chronic group. Check out the website.