The Bridge Is Open! May 22, 2008

 

This past Tuesday, May 20 was a momentous day for Dallas and its homeless citizens.  A new, $23 million, state-of-the-art homeless assistance center, The Bridge, opened in downtown.  Here is a letter from David Timothy of SoupMobile describing the ribbon-cutting ceremony and the facility.

 

Subject: Report from the SoupMan to SoupMobile Advisory Board

Date: May 21, 2008 3:58 PM

 

Dear Advisory Board Members:

The following information is an update of recent changes in the homeless situation in the City of Dallas.

On Tuesday May 20th, the new homeless assistance center, The Bridge opened for business. The Ribbon Cutting Ceremony was held in the main courtyard of the new center. In attendance were the Mayor Tom Leppert; the Dallas City Council; Mike Rawlings (The Homeless Czar); various dignitaries; guests and about 150 homeless people and five members of the staff/board of the SoupMobile.

The Bridge is a multipurpose facility designed to provide services to the homeless ranging from basic medical care; job training; hair cutting services; restrooms; showers; food and shelter. However it is not a true shelter in the way we would normally think. Inside the main building are approximately 100 beds that are actually small cubicles that have a bed, locker, drawers and chair. These 100 beds are called transitional beds. They are NOT for long term use. They are to be used for patients coming out of Parkland Hospital; clients transitioning into drug or alcohol rehab programs; and other clients which are transitioning into permanent housing.

[Blogger's Note:  There is even a kennel for pets of the homeless, and a playground and secured area for women and children.  KS]

In addition to the 100 transitional beds the facility has an open aired building that will house up to 300 homeless people per night who will sleep on cots. These cots are not permanent housing. Each night as the homeless enter the facility they can sign up for a cot. If more than 300 people want cots, then they will do a lottery to see who gets a cot for the evening.

The new facility is a big step up in services for the homeless. However it is not the ‘cure all’ for the homeless problem in Dallas. Its estimated that there are more than 10,000 homeless men and women in the Dallas area. Clearly The Bridge will only be able to serve a portion of these men and women. Even with The Bridge online, there will still be a massive need for additional homeless services.

… I will be personally volunteering from time to time at The Bridge. I am starting by volunteering this Friday evening to help them serve the evening meal in their cafeteria….they are in need of help and [we want] to keep our finger in the pie as we look to possibly partner up with The Bridge at some future date.

May the Lord bless you all. 

David Timothy, a.k.a. The SoupMan

SoupMobile

3017 Commerce St.

Dallas, Texas 75226

 

Blogger’s Note:

May I add that I am very optimistic about the impact this center will have on the lives of our homeless friends.  I am particularly encouraged by an article I read in the Dallas Observer, May 8, 2008.  It’s well worth reading.  Here’s the link:

http://www.dallasobserver.com/2008-05-08/news/dallas-the-bridge-homeless-center-s-progressive-approach-may-actually-make-a-difference/full

A non-punitive, non-criminalizing approach is the most workable and effective when approaching the problem of homelessness, in my opinion, and statistics bear this out.  I am heartened to see that this appears to be the philosophy which will implemented ‘top down’ at the Bridge.

True, there are concerns from the homeless advocacy community:  for example, as it appears the Pavilion will fill up quickly and people will be turned away at night as there are not enough temporary beds to provide shelter for everyone who wants it, there is concern that this will lead to ‘zero-tolerance’ from the city on the streets, arresting those who are still sleeping outdoors and once again filling the jail with homeless people.  However, it looks as though those who don’t have a bed will still be able to stay on the Bridge campus.

Nonetheless, as I sat and listened to the speeches at the ribbon-cutting, and, later, as I watched the new lounge fill up with hot, exhausted, drained, thirsty homeless individuals seeking refuge in the beauty, cleanliness, and icy cool air-conditioning of the center, I felt that the weight of the world was off my shoulders and that, for now, nothing could dim my optimism about this giant leap forward for Dallas.  The entire community has pulled together to offer the best to those who have nothing, and I call that a great day.

KS

A Middle-Class Homeless Crisis in Dallas? May 21, 2008

This blog received a comment on the post entitled “Broken” from a friend in my church, Church of the Incarnation (Episcopal) that I hope you’ll go back and check out (May 15, 2008.  Click on ‘Comments’ at the bottom of the post.)  

May I just say…I love my church, not only because it is a beautiful, old building with lovely, reverential services, but because of people like English, who care enough to ask the hard questions and to show up on Christmas Eve at the Hyatt Regency Dallas for the SoupMobile’s Christmas Angel Project — and to go to Honduras to build schools, and to New Orleans to rebuild houses, and to fight poverty in Belize, and to mentor in areas of poverty around our very blessed church property, and on and on (it requires an entire book to list all of the outreach that is done out of Church of the Incarnation, thanks to Outreach Director Martha Lang and many others).  My fellow parishioners and our priests put their love on the line constantly all over the place.

Anyway, I hope you’ll read the comments of the “Broken” post where English asked an important question:

“Do we have a middle-class homeless crisis in Dallas?”

and read the response from David Timothy, AKA SoupMan, of SoupMobile Mobile Soup Kitchen.

I would love to know what readers think.  What is your experience and what are your observations?

KS

Services Provided by The Bridge May 3, 2008

Dear Readers,

Here’s a link to the website of a group of people who have generously allowed me to work with them on Friday nights at the Day Resource Center for the last couple of years while they serve dinner and give away clothing.  They provided me with a way to give away the clothing I like collecting, which opportunity I lost when the homeless camps were razed by the city in 2005.

The post gives a list of the services to be provided by the new homeless assistance center, The Bridge, when it opens in May.

http://www.ourcalling.org/2008/04/25/the-new-center-will-provide-what/#comments

KS

 

Worthy or Unworthy…Is That the Question? April 28, 2008

Giving Freely

“…a nun once said to me, ‘Mother Teresa, you are spoiling the poor people by giving them things free.  They are losing their human dignity.’

When everyone was quiet, I said calmly, ‘No one spoils as much as God himself.  See the wonderful gifts he has given us freely.  All of you here have no glasses, yet you all can see.  If God were to take money for your sight, what would happen?  Continually we are breathing and living on oxygen that we do not pay for.  What would happen if God were to say, ‘If you work four hours, you will get sunshine for two hours?’  How many of us would survive then?’

Then I also told them, ‘There are many congregations that spoil the rich;  it is good to have one congregation in the name of the poor, to spoil the poor.’

There was profound silence;  nobody said a word after that.”

                                                                                ~~Mother Teresa, In the Heart of the World

Journal Archives

Monday, 5/9/05

When the subject of  the homeless comes up in general conversation, people frequently want to discuss ‘Unworthy Homeless Persons I Have Encountered.’  Often that single, and sometimes unpleasant, experience with a street person becomes a certain knowledge of the ‘ubiquitous homeless.’  The shiftless mother who, babe in arms, asks for money for formula and takes it straight into a liquor store somehow becomes every woman out on the street who has a child and asks for help.  The stories may well be true, but they miss a couple of points.

Helping the homeless is not about their worthiness.  It is about our giving.  If receiving blessings were dependent upon worthiness, would you and I have all that we have?

If you see someone misusing a resource they’ve been given, that’s not a reason to refrain from helping the person in need that comes along.  What if she’s in earnest?  If you give aid to five women in a row who buy liquor with the money and meet a sixth who’s on the level, would you deprive that sixth hungry child of the help she’d receive from you?  Or, if you want to be sure of how what you give is used, you could go and buy formula for the child yourself.

This is one of the reasons I have liked working with mobile soup kitchens, who go to feed the homeless where they live.  There are no questions asked, as Jesus asked no questions when he helped the poor and the sick.  The worthiness of the recipients is not at stake.  The work is about compassion.  There are no qualifications required except that a person be hungry, thirsty, cold, in need of solace.  “Ask, and ye shall receive.”

There is no single profile for a homeless person.  There are hustlers, manipulators and thieves on the street, yes.  Ditto drug addicts and alcoholics.  There are also veterans:  about 40% — people broken by war in body, mind and spirit, the same people who were heroes when they went off to war.  There are families who lost their jobs and missed a few house payments, finding themselves on the street.  There are mothers with children who ran from an abusive husband in the middle of the night and didn’t know how to seek out a shelter or couldn’t get in.  Do I want to feed and clothe these people if I have the opportunity?  Yes.  Do I want the woman who lives under a bridge because her ex-husband tied her up in their basement for a long period of time and she can’t bear confinement to get treatment for her trauma?  Yes.  If she doesn’t or is unable get it, do I want to offer her a sandwich?  Yes again.

Do I want to interview each of these people when I encounter them to determine whether they fit someone’s profile of worthiness?  Definitely, no.

KS

 

The Stewpot Calls for Volunteers, Donations at The Bridge April 22, 2008

Here is an excerpt from the current newsletter of The Stewpot, “In As Much”:

“Dear Friends,

Many of you have stepped forward in the fight against hunger. We ask that you go another round….
No knockout punch will be thrown in this ring. This fight is about endurance. It’s about compassion.

The Stewpot will continue to offer a wide range of social services at its current location. But in the next month we will move our meal service to the city’s new homeless assistance center (The Bridge), allowing us to expand from five meals a week to 21.

We ask that you consider adopting a day or a meal to assist our downtown neighbors. The Stewpot will underwrite 20 percent of the cost not covered by city funding. That means a $1000 donation will adopt a day for your congregation or group. A gift of $400 will cover lunch or dinner, and a gift of $200 will cover breakfast for the estimated meals that will be served each day. [Any amount will be appreciated!]

There are volunteer opportunities as well. Your congregation or group can adopt breakfast or dinner any day of the week at no cost. Lunch is available for volunteer groups to serve on the weekend.

Sincerely,
Rev. Dr. Bruce Buchanan
Director”

To donate:
1. On-line credit card at: www.thestewpot.org/loavesandfishes.asp
2. Mail payment to: The Stewpot, 408 Park Avenue, Dallas, TX 75201
3. Call: (214) 746-2785, ext. 236, or E-mail Lee Hutchins at leeh@thestewpot.org
[A percentage of every dollar donated between 3/1/08 and 4/30/08 will be matched by the Feinstein Foundation.]

To volunteer:
Contact Bobbie Taylor at: bobbiet@thestewpot.org
Indicate day of the week, Monday through Sunday, and preferred meal times: Breakfasts from 6
– 7:30 a.m., Dinners from 6 — 7:30 p.m., Lunches from 11:30 a.m. — 1:00 p.m. (weekday lunches are already taken)
Please provide: contact person for church group; email and phone of contact person; organization name; address of church, city, state, zip; # volunteers available.

Little Ones April 2, 2008

BLOGGER’S NOTE: Regarding the children in this story, I am glad to report that I have rarely seen children on the street in about the last three years. This is purely subjective, but our city seems to be doing a better job of getting them into shelters. I am printing this story to show what children sometimes go through.  KS

Journal Archives
Thursday, 2/19/04

Employed!

I went to help crew the mobile soup kitchen truck at the last minute today, as some volunteers had cancelled. I didn’t need to buy the prenatal vitamins for Robin after all, as she and her husband, Sean, had left for the Gulf Coast last night. I didn’t meet Sean last week, but the director told me he is movie-star handsome and is in fact an actor. He was in a soap opera in Los Angeles, then came out to Dallas for an acting job that fell through, which is how he and Robin ended up on the street. He just procured a job on an oil rig at the coast, so they’re headed south.

I worked ‘on the ground’ for the first time tonight, which means standing outside the truck receiving the food from the passthrough at the rear of the truck and handing it to people — sort of crowd control, although there’s nothing to control — our customers are usually very polite. There are most often male volunteers out front, but it was a ‘girl group’ of workers this time. I like the closer contact with people that being on the ground provides, getting to reach out and touch them and talk to them for a minute.

We gave away all the socks I’d bought at the dollar store at the first stop. There was one young man at the City Hall Plaza, dressed in a single light shirt, who asked for a blanket, but we didn’t have any. Blankets will be my focus this week at thrift stores.

One of the people that touched my heart especially tonight was a young man who couldn’t speak — though he could make sounds, I couldn’t understand him, and I hated that I couldn’t. He was asking for something and pointing, perhaps another sandwich, but we had run out.

Little Ones

It was a pretty upbeat run because it wasn’t too cold, and at most stops we had enough food for people to go through the line several times. Then at the third stop came a stomach punch. A mother and two daughters, ages about eight and ten, came through the line and got their food. The director made a special effort to get off the truck and visit with the little girls, giving them some extra cookies.

When we’d finished handing out food, I noticed the family of three sitting together under a tree across the park. I walked over to talk to them and saw that they’d made a bed on the ground out of one thin sleeping bag, so I asked if they had a place to stay for the night. The mother said they’d been kicked out of two shelters. I asked her why, but couldn’t understand her answer; then she told me the shelter said she didn’t do her chores. Privately, I questioned her story, but didn’t confront her about it. I have not known the shelters to kick out children.

For the first time since I’ve been doing this, I thought I was going to start sobbing: those beautiful, trusting little girls with their brilliant smiles were looking up at me from the ground. I asked the mother what she needed. ‘Blankets,’ she said, but we didn’t have any, so I went back to the truck and got a heavy plastic bag for them to put under their sleeping bag and also gave them two thick sweaters I had brought along. ‘Will you be safe here?’ I asked her. She said she hoped so.

The director and I wondered aloud if in fact the shelter did kick out this mother with kids, but just before we left the stop, the mother told me she might be able to get into Austin Street Centre tonight after all.

I continue to be really shaken up by this experience, finding it devastating, and I’m haunted by the thought that I should have done something more to help them. But what? Call 911? Would that have made their situation better or worse? Bring them home to stay at my house? Although the latter may be the answer in my heart, it’s almost certainly not realistic and brings up all sorts of questions. But don’t radical problems require radical solutions?

In retrospect, I believe I made a mistake in not calling 911. I had never encountered such a situation before, and we left the scene before I could think it through. One thing I know: little girls sleeping under a tree in the cold in a park in downtown Dallas is not acceptable.

KS

Fellow Countrychildren March 24, 2008

This link is from the Co-Grandmother of our three grandchildren, Nancy (married to Steve.)

http://www.photovoice.org/html/galleryandshop/photogalleries/

I hope you’ll look at all the screens, but then go to Screen 3 and click on ‘Street Vision’. These are our youngest grandchild’s fellow ‘countrychildren’ in Vietnam.

When my daughter and son-in-law went to Vietnam a year and a half ago to bring our granddaughter back to her new home in the United States, they fell in love with her first home and country of birth and its beautiful, gracious, loving, peaceful people.

These pictures touch me to the core. Our granddaughter, now three years old, is an angel beyond what we could have ever hoped for or dreamed of, and so are the children in the pictures.

KS

Children, Stuffed Animals, Hot Cocoa and Grace February 15, 2008

Journal Archives
Monday, 12/29/03

When the rear door of the mobile soup kitchen slides up and I see the faces of the people lined up outside waiting for food, it’s as if a powerful energy and grace flow from them into me.

Tonight, my daughter, Mandy, sent along two new plush stuffed animals in case there were children in the food lines of the mobile soup kitchen, and at City Hall Plaza, the first two people in line were children. The soup kitchen director asked if she could be the one to give them the toys. A girl, about seven, chose the lion, and her brother, who looked to be around four, embraced the gray monkey and held it tight. Someone in the crowd around him said, “Look, he doesn’t even care about food! He just wants the monkey!” And the homeless people surrounding him laughed in a carefree way and shared for a moment in his joy.

We had enough food so that at the last stop, some people were able to come through the line three or four times. Some of the cookies had gotten wet, and, when the crisp cookies were gone, I scooped up the soggy bits in my plastic-gloved hands to throw them away, but people stopped me, asking for what was now ‘goo,’ so I opened my hands and they scooped it out, eating it eagerly.

Then, as we were closing up the back of the truck — all the sandwiches, soup, bananas, and nearly every cookie crumb having been given away — a man hurried up to the truck, looking as if he’d come from a distance. “Am I too late?” he said. “We’re so sorry, everything’s gone,” we told him. He was very lean and weathered and obviously hungry. He struggled to hide his disappointment, and succeeded. “Well, I just got here too late, it’s OK,” he said, as we apologized again. It was heartbreaking.

It occurred to me while driving to the bookstore for my ritual hot cocoa, a metaphorical foot still in the ‘street’ world but edging back into the reality of north Dallas, that it is dangerous to look out at the faces of the people lined up outside our mobile feeding truck and think that their being homeless is an acceptable and inevitable reality. One must, I think, keep sharp in one’s mind that solutions must always be sought to homelessness and hunger, even if they’re never found. One cannot acquiesce.

Am tired, drained, going home. I am so grateful that I have one.

KS