Transformation, not just transition

We held a strategic planning retreat last Saturday. I always get some gem from the experience and this one was no exception.

I realized that the core of Community LINC is not transitional housing for homeless families. At our core is transformation. Everything we do goes far beyond striving just to end homelessness.

We equip the parents not only to find and keep a permanent home, but to be less dependent on public assistance, and more dependent on themselves. If they have enough capacity for change, we equip them to begin the rise out of poverty. We equip them to transform their lives and that of their children.

How's it going?

Better really. Given the news that people are more pessimistic about the economy, I wanted to share some encouraging signs for our residents in 2010. For the first time since 2007, more than 1 in 5 residents were earning more than the poverty level for a family of three when they exited the program. The real low point for our families was 2009, when less than one in 10 had income over the poverty level when they left. Even though most graduates in 2010 remained among the working poor, almost 70% had jobs when they left. In 2009, only 36% had jobs when they exited the program.

For our families, there is a strong correlation between how long they stay in the program and whether they have a job. The average length of stay for unemployed people is usually 5-6 months less than for those who find jobs. Residents who experience a long period of unemployment show signs of depression far longer than those who find job, so we believe they leave because they get discouraged.

As more jobs become available, more of our residents will not only leave for permanent homes, but will rise out of poverty. The high point for our families was 2007, when 90% were employed when they exited and 41% were above the poverty level. It may be a slow process, but our families are slowly working back to a better place. I hope we all are.

Benefits and barriers

We’ve been preparing for a “Meet and Greet” with our local, state and federal legislators. In thinking about the issues we want to bring to their attention - barriers our families face in their path to self-sufficiency- we got another real time example. The mom in one of our client families – homeless until the family came to live in our housing – has a new job. She was stunned to find out that she also lost food stamps and has to come up with $70 per month to keep Medicaid for her baby. No time to accumulate some money. No tapering off. It’s just cut off. It’s ironic that a step toward self-sufficiency caused her to question whether her family could afford for her to work.

Our economy is really complex, and we have to be grateful that our government has created safety nets for people at the lowest end of the economic scale. Unfortunately, you can lose some of those safety net benefits even if you’re the working poor. Nobody intentionally designs government programs to discourage marriage for people who need childcare assistance or make it so that someone is better off economically if they turn down a raise to keep their food stamps. But, that’s what happens.

A heart for homeless children

The picture makes me think of the MasterCard commercials. Cost of a wellness clinic $XXX. Difference it will make – priceless.

About two years ago, pediatrician Dr. Raymond Cataneo (cutting the ribbon) came to us with an offer for our children. He had volunteered at Community LINC and could tell by observing our kids, that they showed signs of health problems common to homeless children – asthma, diabetes, overweight due to poor nutrition, etc. He offered to create a free clinic to give our children a medical home while they are residents and after they leave.

For most of our kids, the only medical care they receive is at the emergency room. They are covered by Medicaid, but their parents have no insurance at all. That, and the instability of homelessness, doesn’t lead to good medical care.

So we wrote a grant and made the case for creating a wellness clinic and other things that would dramatically improve things for our kids.

We thought our funder would be a church or a civic group, but we were turned down by two. Our eternally optimistic Associate Executive Director Teresa McClain kept searching until we finally found our funding partner in an unexpected place - a corporation with a heart for homeless children – Humana.

Humana provided the funding to build and stock the clinic, to refurbish our children’s centers, build an indoor play area in the basement of one of our buildings, and pay a part time staffer for the Children’s Program.

Shortly afterward, a second funding partner stepped forward to let us know that, at the end of 2011, they would provide the funding to keep the clinic and the Children’s Program going. This time it was the generous and caring congregation of Second Presbyterian Church. They earmarked a percentage of their capital campaign to go their missions work in the community.

We’re very grateful to all of these caring people and to all of you who have a heart for these children.

Happy New Year.

Jobs are fundamental

We've been watching the number of families who have left the transitional housing program for permanent homes decline over the last two years. To figure out why, Senior Director of Programs and Operations Jeannine Short compared the characteristics of the people who succeeded in transitioning to permanent homes to those who didn't, including their self-sufficiency assessment scores. Not surprisingly, she pinpointed unemployment as the most important factor in the decline.

We knew that unemployment was keeping people from "working the program" and it goes without saying that unemployed people aren't likely to get permanent housing.

Jeannine's study revealed that 100% of the families who exited successfully to permanent homes in 2009 and year-to-date in 2010 had jobs. Only 20% of the families who left without a permanent home had jobs. Their stays were also much shorter –13 months for those who exited successfully compared to less than 5 months for those who did not. Our residents don't always have marketable skills and they are competing for jobs with many others who do. Those who give up without a job, pay a high price for getting discouraged.

Jobs aren't the only factor that permanently ends homelessness. Financial education (budgeting), new life skills, coaching and mental health counseling all contribute to building the skills needed to stay living independently. But, jobs, like affordable housing, are fundamental.

In response, we've beefed up our job placement program by creating a computer lab where our clients can access the Internet, write resumes and get coaching (and the kids can have supervised access at night). And, we've been extremely fortunate to find that one of our interns, Norma, is skilled in job placement. In the few weeks since she took over the lab, she's found jobs for three residents we didn't think had a snowball's chance of being hired. Demand is so high, she's having to set up a schedule to accommodate both our outreach clients and our transitional housing residents. There is light at the end of this tunnel.

The federal strategy to end homelessness

The federal plan to end homelessness: Opening Doors: Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness is available on the first page of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness website at http://www.usich.gov.

The key goals are to end chronic homelessness in 5 years, homelessness for veterans in 5 years, homelessness for families in 10 years and to set a course of action that will end all types of homelessness.

Locally in Kansas City the Homelessness Task Force is creating comparable strategies for ending homelessness. We’ve just drafted an outline of the plan. I’ll keep you posted when the final version is available here.

Why do you care?

It’s sometimes as moving to hear why a donor or volunteer cares about our mission as it is to hear about the lives of the families who have become homeless.

A first time visitor asked both the Associate Executive Director and me why we had become involved. He then shared a group exercise in a seminar he attended years ago that awakened an awareness in him. The exercise (some call it the diversity shuffle) describes a number of experiences you may or may not have had growing up. If you had the experience, you take a step forward. If you didn’t, you step back.

He looked around the room at a group of people he worked with every day and knew well. He was stunned to see that he ended up way out front.

Some of his co-workers never went to a library as a child. They didn’t have a set of encyclopedias (I’m old enough to remember an old set of Funk & Wagnalls we had in our house). In his family, everyone went to college. Even his grandparents graduated from college in 1917.

The experience opened his eyes to the advantages he had that others didn’t. More than that, he understood what others had never learned. He’s given it a lot of thought over the years and the understanding has grown into desire to offer a hand up to people who have had less.

Another donor told me that he was stunned when his first job paid him more than his single working mother made in her whole life. And, she is a smart, hard working woman.

Not everyone is smart, or educated. Not every kid was read to as a child. And, it shapes our lives.

We’re very grateful for every one of you who sees that and cares.