Ending Homelessness: What Actually Works | Friendship Place Ep. 165

If you’ve ever thought, “Why can’t people just get back on their feet?"this episode will show you why rebuilding is rarely that simple.

That's why Friendship Place is tackling homelessness in a different way. Their person-centric approach meets people where they are and helps them secure stable housing and employment without having to jump through a million hoops before getting support.

 In this episode, President and CEO Jean-Michel Giraud shares what their programs look like in practice — from street outreach to services for veterans. You'll hear what most people misunderstand about homelessness, why shared housing is a game-changer, and why job placement matters more than job training for long-term stability.

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This episode was post produced by Podcast Boutique https://podcastboutique.com/

Transcript

The Core Question: Ending Homelessness

SPEAKER_01 0:00

What does it really take to end homelessness? Not just temporarily, but with dignity, purpose, and lasting impact. Welcome to the Truman Charities podcast. Today I speak with president and CEO of Friendship Place, Jean-Michel Giroux, who's also been named one of Washingtons magazine's 2025 Washingtonians of the Year. You're going to hear how Friendship Place transform the way communities think about housing, embracing a come as you are approach that puts people first, from street outreach to housing to job placement and veteran services, spanning the entire DC metro region. We talk about common misconceptions, why employment is often the missing link. You'll hear an unforgettable success story of a veteran who went from homelessness to becoming a leader and advocate within the very organization that helped him rebuild. If you've ever wondered what actually works in homelessness services and how compassion, accountability, and results can coexist, this is a conversation you do not want to miss. So please help me welcome Jean-Michel to Truman Charities. It has been a few years since me and you first spoke. And so I'm sure we have a lot of new things that I've noticed that you guys are doing, new programs and all of this great stuff that we're gonna go over. But for a lot of people, they didn't hear our first interview. So, Jean-Michel, tell me a little bit about kind of your background because you've been with his organization since 2006. So tell us a little bit about your background and why you felt that it was important for you to become involved in friendship places.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

Yes. Well, my uh background uh is in uh human services. I studied in the field in 1982 in a state facility in uh Massachusetts. On the night shift, I moved on then to a second shift job, the residential setting for young adults who had uh self-injurious and aggressive behaviors, and we were implementing behavioral programs with a psychologist to help decrease these behaviors so the folks could prepare for moves into the community. And in that facility is where really I felt that I had come to the right place, that the calling was there. I come from a family where there raised depression. And when you have that in your background, I think it for some of us it becomes a driving factor. So it's really at the core of what I do. And also in those early years, moving on to group homes and other community-based programming, I met people who had been institutionalized often for decades, and whose voices really had not been heard. They have been submitted to uh conditions that were subpar, really neglect, abuse, sometimes even. And as a young then, uh human service worker, I began to think that we as workers in the field ought to do a lot better for the folks we served. And that feeling has stayed with me throughout my career, moving on from one program to the next, always looking for programs where I thought the model had potential, always really looking to understand models and to see how we could grow them because models need to evolve, of course. Uh it's essential. And so then I moved to um was cross-trained in mental health, and then I was running mental health and addiction programs in Maryland for a large nonprofit when Friendship Place advertised. I uh came to the drop-in center at 4713 Wisconsin for my interview on the first day and was really moved by what I saw. The volunteers, the participants, everybody just working together and this feeling of community that was very strong just drew me in.

Founding And Growth Of Friendship Place

SPEAKER_01 4:04

So tell us a little bit about Friendship Place so everyone knows.

Housing First And Regional Expansion

SPEAKER_00 4:07

Well, Friendship Place is a community-based organization with a wide window on the community. We're very front-facing. We were founded in 1991 by volunteers who wanted to do something to serve uh the folks who were experiencing homelessness in the ward when the city was trying to open a large-scale uh man's shelter at Calvert and Wisconsin. And there was a lot of opposition, NIMBY, as we call it, not in my backyard syndrome. In other words, put that program anywhere you'd like, but not next to my house, basically. And our founders decided that, you know, the folks they were seeing were in the ward and lived in the ward and were experiencing homelessness, and that something ought to be done for them. But in an alternative way, they believed that person-centric, more targeted, more specialized programming would be better. So they bought a used van and started to go out through Upper Northwest, and we still do that in Outreach, all these years into it, and then uh offered support on the street. So we acquired the drop-in center in 1993 and grew from there. Uh, when I joined in 2006, fast forward, we were at a million-dollar budget, we had 17 staff, half the staff on the night shift, supporting three residences. And from there, the board asked me to introduce rehab-like practices. We grew when the city was looking for partners to work in housing first, the model where you know you come as you are, and there are no questions asked about mental health and addiction and the willingness to accept treatment. Rather, housing is essential. We bring you in and then give you the support to work on mental health and addiction, and that's at your own pace. This model took us to the uh city level, and then another milestone was in 2011 when we started to work with veterans mostly in rapid rehousing and prevention, and eventually that took us to the region's level. So we are now serving veterans in DC Metro, and in September, we added six counties spanning from Annapolis to the West Virginia border. VA offered us the extra territory. So we're very excited about that because we keep growing this relationship with VA, which has been an excellent one through the years. The program is called Supportive Services for Veterans Families. It's extremely well researched, it's right on target, it's person-centric, it's everything we like, everything that's important to us in terms of our values. So this expansion uh was really a welcome one in September. So Friendship Plays at Large, we now operate uh four buildings for the city. Bridge housing in Upper Northwest for 50 families who come in homelessness and exit in an average of 90 days. La Casa and Columbia Height for 40 highly vulnerable men. The Aston in the West End, short-term housing for singles, 100 singles, and families stay together, they're not separated by gender for the first time in the system at the Aston. They can rebuild together. And then we are going to reopen uh Valley Place on February 1. And uh this is in Anacostia, and we'll serve families, family style for a bridge housing, family style, meaning that it's gonna be a little bit different from the Brooks, in that families will run their own apartments and cook for themselves, and we will work on developing this new model for the families who will come our way. So we're excited about this. We also serve uh youth in a case management program called B430. It's privately funded. We studied it about uh nine years ago with five mothers who were experiencing challenges with uh youth and young adults and wanted to do something. It's uh funded by one of them anonymously, and we're deeply thankful to her, of course. And then the Welcome Center was the hub when I joined, 4713 Wisconsin, as I said earlier. People come in for services. It's a very non-threatening environment with volunteers and staff welcoming people, triaging, accessing resources throughout the city through a virtual coordinated entry system, allowing people to again see what's available without traveling to different locations. And from there, we place people in some hot housing that we have, housing with Ants Place, a nonprofit that came out of Addis Israel years ago. So it's a very active place. But also, and we created a job placement program called Aim Higher in 2011 during the aftermath of the 2008 crisis, when our population was changing from people in chronic homelessness at 99% to folks who had been displaced by the crisis. We tasked ourselves with developing this job first model on our own. And job first means that we assume employability, so we look at everybody who is able and ready to work as having a skill set that can get paid for now. And it may not be the skill set that they were using before the period of destabilization, but it's one where there's demand for in the market, and we help people connect with the employers in a period that can go from 70 to 90 days, depending on uh what is going on on the job market again. So 5,400 people served a year, a budget of over 25,000 now, a staff group of 185 and a quadrate of uh volunteers that are very important to us, of course.

SPEAKER_01 10:08

You have a lot of programs that are going on, and you have you know street outreach and housing and job placement, and you're helping veterans. What makes friendship place, what makes your approach unique?

Programs: Bridge Housing And Youth Support

SPEAKER_00 10:21

Well, I think that we are deeply ingrained in a belief that you need to honor people's humanity, and whatever you do needs to go in that direction. You need to show the person that they are valued as a person. And also the fact that we let people solve their homelessness the way they need to. We're here to provide some guidance, uh, but we let people direct their own rebuilding process, and I think that's essential. And then there is a willingness to really look at our models, as I mentioned earlier, to modify them as we go along, and maybe to give up a model that we don't think is as effective as it used to be, or not a model that people are looking for as much as they used to, and then to invest our resources in a different way. And I think that's really important. And again, this belief that you know you need to treat people with the highest level of respect and to have it so that because we do, as you know, help other groups, uh, we have a national impact through best practices and a regional impact through best practices, also helping other groups with their practices and learning from them, of course. But the idea is that wherever somebody presents for services, they should be treated with the highest level of respect and find programming that constitutes a solution to their homelessness. Because the time people invest in rebuilding is their time. And we should be careful also how we use this time. We need to produce results. We're accountable to our funders on the private and the uh public side, and we're also accountable to our participants to produce results for them.

SPEAKER_01 12:16

So, in your opinion, what are some common misconceptions about homelessness that you wish more people understood?

SPEAKER_00 12:24

Well, you know, a common one is that people in homelessness don't want to participate in society, maybe that they don't want to work, which really isn't true when you think of, you know, the way people are evicted in this area, people show up at your door, you're you're at made to exit your living situation. We know that nobody would choose to have that happen to them, right? But rather that a set of circumstances activates that makes it so that in the end the housing is lost. So what we're finding is that the people who come our way are deeply committed to uh returning to work, for instance, and that's why we work so much in that direction. Another one is that, you know, people on the street, for the most part, have psychiatric diagnoses. It's true for some people, and that's fine, and we help them with that, but it's not true for other people. And in fact, in some programs, it's not the main driver for people to come to us. So when I speak, I always and describe a group, I always say mental health and or addiction and or other needs, right? Because the and or allows people to not have some kind of thing that develops in their mind that makes it so that everybody is alike, right? And then maybe the third one is that there is somehow a look to homelessness, and that might be, you know, the folks at the corner with a sign, or the folks pushing uh shopping carts, and they are there and it's fine, and we we help them, of course, and maybe they need us um in a deeper way than some other folks, of course. But the idea is that really what people don't think about sometimes is that you can't see homelessness. Most people who are experiencing homelessness are we don't see these folks because they're like you and me, uh Jamie. They are on the bus or on the metro with us, they are going to jobs, and they simply cannot afford housing situations close enough to their jobs, for instance. So we like to talk about that and the fact that most people experiencing homelessness we are not seeing in the community because they look like us.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

So, can you tell me a story or an example of one or two people that have been positively impacted by your organization?

Employment As The Missing Link

SPEAKER_00 14:49

Yes. Well, I'd like to start with Alan, for instance. Alan is a veteran. He also worked in Federal Protective Services. He experienced homelessness twice. And uh, we met him uh at a time when he was um homeless, of course, he was experiencing homelessness, and um referred to us in a way that made us feel that he hadn't received the right services. And folks were saying that you know the placement might be difficult. We met Alan on a Monday, and on a Friday, he was in his own apartment. Alan and I have been working uh together now for years. We started by uh presenting at a conference in Chicago years ago, and then after the conference, he started to come to the office to volunteer, but not just for an hour or two every day for eight hours, and the commitment was there. He's now on the staff doing community engagement work, doing a lot of public speaking for us, and running our speakers bureau. Because for the folks out there, we do have a speakers bureau, folks who are available to come and talk to uh your friends or your co-workers about homelessness and what Friendship Place does. And we have built this relationship through the years where Alan has become an inspiration to us all at Friendship Place because he's so generous in the way he shares, and um because also he's so generous in the way he helps other people do that. So certainly somebody who has become a very important person from us at Friendship Place and who went from the services to the staff and continues to thrive with us. And I want to share the story of a couple living in their car who came to us uh for support, and the husband happened to be a veteran living in his car trying to look for work with a very strong skill set and the resume with a lot of experience, things were very difficult. He was missing opportunities, he was missing interviews, and it's really hard to get traction, obviously, from your car. In one day, the staff at AIMHIRE connected the couple to temporary housing, uh gave them gas cards, paid for a car repair that was needed, paid to reactivate cell phones, and the uh job seeker was so energized that he was able to move forward with his job search and got a high-paying job in education, which is what he loved to do, what he was qualified to do. And then the couple is now safely housed. So this story is really meaningful to me because it shows how we work at aim higher with the private funds that we're able to collect for the program. We act now when we see a need, we don't wait and tell people that we're gonna get funding from one side or another. We just do what we need to do as soon as we can. And again, this was done in a day, which I think is really great.

SPEAKER_01 17:52

So, what are some of the challenges that some of the individuals face when trying to secure housing or say employment?

Values: Dignity, Choice, Accountability

Misconceptions About Homelessness

SPEAKER_00 18:00

So, well, for housing, of course, it's the cost of housing. Housing is very expensive in DC Metro, and it's very uh difficult to find housing that people can afford. Some folks, of course, have vouchers helping them, and that's good, but when a person does not have a voucher, then there is an additional challenge, of course. And that's why we developed uh job placement work uh so much, because we realize also that, you know, through a rapid rehousing program, you might be supported with your rent for a period of a few months, but beyond that, you're going to be responsible to pay your rent. And so we are doing a lot of work in the field to convince other homeless services providers and national leaders that job placement, not just vocational training, job placement, because the job is the outcome, the training is an output. The result needs to be the job placement, doing a lot of work to move the field forward in that direction so that uh cities and counties invest more in job placement and less in vocational training, holding people in classrooms, somehow teaching them how to work when they already know how to work. You know, the median age for homelessness in DC ranges from 48 to 53, depending on the year. The folks we meet have worked, know how to work, and we feel don't need to be taught how to work. So that's an issue also helping people get jobs, jobs that pay well enough to at least, you know, join a household and be a roommate in a household. We have worked on developing a shared housing model that's very effective. We look at assembling households, uh, working with a landlord who may be having a hard time renting a larger unit, a house or a very large apartment, bringing people into these households with a lease on the bedroom and shared areas for the rest of the house. The attractive part for people is that it is more affordable, so there's an economic perk, and then there's an emotional perk also because there is commonality in homelessness. We follow these households, letting the household members run their own house, helping as we need to, looking at service cycles from a clinical perspective. Somebody may be entering the service cycle, somebody in the middle, somebody might have graduated even a couple of years ago. And we train groups in that direction. In fact, it's going to be part of a strategic plan that we're going to adopt this month for the next five years to do more work in that direction, to convince more providers that this is the way to go, because we are looking at a climate out there where the resources are more scarce at the city level and beyond that also. And we feel that this model is organic in a way and relies more on natural resources. So the resources the system does not pay for, and therefore has a greater chance to help more people. Been talking to folks at the Department of Human Services at DHS about using the model more to help people leave shelters, for instance. And there's a lot of interest in uh that kind of work. We think there's potential in it, in that it's people helping other people who are like them, have experienced homelessness and so on. And then at best, you uh when people leave us behind in these households, they become families of choice. And there is a a lot of value in that, of course, the fact that now people are connected as housemates and have this feeling that they have become a family, that's one of the goals.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Yeah, they create a community. So that's fantastic. So how are people able, you have so much going on and you and you're helping so many different people in different capacities of housing and employment and veterans. How can someone help you guys at Friendship Place? What's the best way?

Success Stories: Alan And A Veteran Couple

SPEAKER_00 22:20

In different ways. We, of course, have uh volunteering opportunities at the drop-in center. We have folks who monitor the mailroom. Uh, you can use our address when you're on the street, and that's very important. So the mail room is a very busy place where people get uh uh their letters uh then for uh birth certificates for benefits from family members who are looking for them and have a place where they can receive this mail, which is important. But beyond that, also welcoming people at the drop-in center is important. We uh need folks at the AIM Higher Job Placement Program to help people look for work, and it can be to rehearse interviews to help people apply online who may not be so well versed with uh that part of things, help people freshen up their uh resumes uh so that you know they're more confident when they go out on interviews. We have somebody who helps us with the clothing closet because we actually provide interview outfits to people. So again, they feel good going to meet their potential employers and just also being in the office to answer phones there and to support the team in different ways. And then we have a group of folks who help with homework and artwork at the Brooks on Wednesday evenings, and that's a very important program that was started by a few volunteers several years ago when we opened the Brooks. So it's connecting with children to help them at the end of their day. And of course, there's much more than working on homework and artwork, as you can imagine. There's a whole nurturing aspect to this program that's really important, and we we think it's a great program, of course. And then beyond that, you know, we're not a soup kitchen, so we don't need uh volunteers that way every day to serve meals, but we offer great volunteer opportunities that are sort of uh at a different level, and we encourage people to think about that because we know people love the connection, right, with people. But beyond that, friendship place works in a different way, right? It's sort of state of the art. And so a lot of our programs are remote. A lot of the folks we support are live throughout the city, throughout the region, as I mentioned. And so the help we need is to help us raise funds, frankly, which is a very vital function with us because the blend of private funding and public funding is essential because it helps us catch everybody on time and allows us not to leave anybody behind. An example of that is a veteran presenting for services at Veterans First, who is not eligible in accordance with VA rules, can just go down the hallway on U Street and meet the AIMHIRE team and get some help with finding a job. So things like that are essential for us at Friendship Place. We also need uh people who help us with food drives. There are programs where people don't have income and we need to help them with food uh on a regular basis. That's a very important function, especially looking at healthy foods now, fruit, vegetables, other healthy foods is very important. And then some uh fun activities. We organize a walk on the mall every spring. We set up a special website. People out there can develop their own teams. There's sometimes a bit of competition among teams to see who's gonna raise uh the highest level of funding for us, and it um culminates in this morning, a Saturday morning on the walk, which is a wonderful event, a real feel-good event. We gather with a DJ who helps us, and then we have some activities that morning. Uh, thank all the teams, go around the the mall uh rather quickly. It's not a lot of walking, it's mostly symbolic, but it feels good to be together. And then help with other events. We have a French Embassy concert uh with uh volunteers from the National Symphony that's coming up uh in February, it's every year uh anyway. We need folks to help us organize these events. We organize a gala at the French Embassy also. Uh so there is you know a lot of opportunity to help in a slightly different way than what people expect sometimes from a homeless services organization. And then for the people listening, your ideas out there, because we are always interested in new ways to do things, so please call me and so we can talk about that.

SPEAKER_01 27:08

Wow. I really love everything that you guys are doing, especially helping with the job placement, and now you're really helping with the veteran community. So it is really spectacular. But I want to ask you is there anything that we haven't covered that you think someone should know?

Barriers To Housing And Work

SPEAKER_00 27:26

Well, uh yes, the fact that you know the field continues to grow. We follow trends very carefully at Friendship Place, year after year, at the city level, at the regions level, but also at the national level, to see what the new opportunities will be and where the need is going. Because year after year the need changes. And so for people listening to really connect with homeless services organizations, of course, to come to us and connect with us and see how they can help us. The need is really there. It's growing. The resources are getting more scarce these days at the city level, as we mentioned. But in a way, you know, we are looking to that with an eye to solving the issue, to helping out, to stretching our resources. All our programming is effective and cost-effective and person-centric. And so to really look at that when you read things in the press about what's going on out there, to also have a voice yourself, you are constituents, you can approach your council members, your representatives, and talk about the kind of programming that you would like to see. You know, some programming that has supports from everybody. Uh, for instance, is uh youth programming, uh, employment veterans, and there are some priorities that need to be there, as I mentioned. I think we all can do something about the fact that the field needs to evolve more toward job placement, while, of course, you know, providing plenty of housing. But that combination is really uh key. And then to get involved with your neighboring organization and certainly again to come and see us at Friendship Place. We have a lot of possibilities for you, and we would love to talk to you.

SPEAKER_01 29:25

Well, how can people get in contact with you guys and follow you?

SPEAKER_00 29:29

So our website is friendshipplace.org. So you can open it and see what's available. Uh, we file uh information on our events, uh, annual reports are there, and also people can just contact me. If you go down there on the left uh on staff, um my name is the first one. So feel free to email me. I get a lot of uh direct uh contacts from people. I love to talk to people about what we do and uh always answer my own phone. So please call me.

Shared Housing Model And Strategy

SPEAKER_01 30:04

Well, thank you so much for coming back on. You have done a lot of changes, and you've really expanded some of the programming that you've done in just the past couple of years since when I've spoken with you first. So it really is quite impressive what you've been able to accomplish in such a small amount of time since I spoke with you last. So I want to thank you again for coming on, and I want to thank everybody again for tuning in to another episode of the Truman Charities podcast. I really enjoyed this conversation. This is the second time that I've spoken with Jean Michel, and it really is incredible, as I had mentioned in our conversation, what they've been able to accomplish within, you know, the past four years. If you like this episode and you would like to help support Truman Charities, please make sure to leave a review on their Apple or Spotify. Only takes about a minute, and I read every single one of them. If you'd like to follow us, you can follow me on Facebook at Truman Charities, Instagram, Jamie underscore Truman Charities. You can follow me on LinkedIn at Jamie Truman. And make sure to go to Trumancharities.com and sign up for our newsletter so you don't miss any of our upcoming events and also our Bethesda's best happy hours. So thank you again for tuning into the Truman Charities podcast. Until next time.