Welcome Home. Here, Us, Now.
A space for all of us seeking what's real and sacred in a world that rushes past the soul.
Welcome Home. Here, Us, Now.
Families and Housing Challenges
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More than one third of the 700,000 homeless in the United States are parts of families. Domestic violence is a big contributor. Union Gospel Mission in Tarrant County is monitoring the need, reserving beds for families, and partnering with the City of Fort Worth and nonprofits to minister to the need.
Welcome home. Hear us now. A space for all of us, seeking what's real and sacred in a world that rushes past the soul. I'm Eric Engelman, co-host at the Union Gospel Mission Terrent County. With me is my co-host and CEO, Dr. Charles Wolford. Morning.
SPEAKER_02:Good morning, Eric, my friend. It's so good to see you. It's good to be heard. It's good to be seen, and it's good to be here right now with you. Amen.
SPEAKER_01:Don Schisler. I'm glad to be here. Glad to be home. We've been out of town for a while, and nothing like home. Nothing like home, Don.
SPEAKER_02:Don and I had a chance to be in Chicago last week. Eric, we participate in a Citigate network that's made up 300 plus missions, very similar to UGM, and it is a collaborative work where CEOs and leaders of other missions get a chance to get together. And Chicago was a great host to us, and we learned a lot more about our unsheltered neighbors. So it was a great time.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and they talked about us a little bit. They had a a session with that uh Steve Woodman on CEOs. Yeah, good good session on succession planning.
SPEAKER_00:Well, we're in the middle of the finishing touches of a succession plan here.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's going well. You know, we've been in succession here at UGM for two years, and Don and I have been cruising like Sunday morning over here.
SPEAKER_00:It's been a good ride. Yeah, it's been great. Well, I noticed that you guys are kind of joined at the hip sometimes.
SPEAKER_02:Well, the only difference is I'm just a tad bit taller than Don. Otherwise, you couldn't tell us apart. Did you see us out? You just couldn't you would not be able to tell Charles or or Don shall you couldn't tell us about it.
SPEAKER_01:I can talk about that a little bit. It's a little difficult for me to keep up. I'm running.
SPEAKER_00:I think I could tell the difference, but I'm I'm not gonna go too deep into that. We've got in our hands some notes that we can kind of look at just about homelessness in general and families, I guess usually single-parent families, mostly women.
SPEAKER_02:The family dynamic, as unique as it is, is directly s similarly represented in society as it relates to those who are unsheltered. So you have certainly an individual, but you would have a single man or single woman parenting their child and still experiencing homelessness. You will have a mother, a father, and the children collectively as a nuclear family unit experiencing homelessness. And to add that to the family dynamics, it is not out of the realm of possibility, Eric, that we would have mother, father, children, and maybe other family members, a grandparent and uncles or aunts that collectively make up a unit, a family unit, they will be experiencing homelessness as well. Staggering as this may sound, of the 700 plus thousand people that are experiencing homelessness today, 37% of those are families. So you just have to let that sink in. The amount of families that are experiencing homelessness in America is quite staggering. We oftentimes the portrait of homelessness as an individual, a one person singular, a man or a woman on the corner, but we know by data points that families by and large are experiencing as well.
SPEAKER_01:And I'll mention on top of that, Charles, is uh that's grown exponentially in the last 10 years. And here at Union Gospel Mission Tarrant County, we always try to stay ahead of the data and build appropriately, you know, so we have enough rooms and space to minister to people in need properly. And thank God we have that now.
SPEAKER_02:When you when you do some baseline studies of what we see with regards to why a family would be experiencing homelessness, it's consistent with the data points that we're seeing. You typically are seeing those who are uh financially struggling. So the a family of four, the poverty guideline in the United States, a family of four that would hit that poverty line, those who make$32,000 or less would be in that's the poverty guideline for a family of four.$32,000, that's hard to live off of. And so when you began to think of why families would be experiencing it, to try to survive off of$32,000 a year with a family of four, that's a daunting task. So some of the reasons why we see family, it's a lack of appropriate housing. It would be hard to house a family of four on that type of a resource. So then you exasperate the problem, just poverty in and itself, as far as how that makes individuals more vulnerable, of those individuals who are in a state of poverty, they will find themselves unsheltered. And then one of the other third reasons why we see individuals who are part of a family unit where they may be unsheltered is due to domestic violence. That is unfortunately a narrative that we see all too often where an individual in the family that may uh be perpetrator of violence, those who are trying to flee that will oftentimes go out, live in their cars, or come to a shelter. So domestic violence is one of those issues that we see time and time again that may lead to someone experiencing homelessness. The one is affordable housing because you can be what's considered the working poor. You can be working, your mate could be working, you can have multiple people in the family working, but if you're living in an area that does not provide adequate affordable housing, then you are just trying to scratch and claw to be able to find a roof. When you look at the average rental rate in the communities, a one bedroom can uh run you almost$1,400 just for one bedroom.
SPEAKER_00:That's high.
SPEAKER_01:It's very high. If you don't have a voucher, I mean that's just unachievable. And I can't imagine living off$32,000 a year with a family.
SPEAKER_02:We see families who will come to us. We are in partnership with the city of Fort Worth through the Department of Housing and Homelessness here. We are a location that if a family is identified as unsheltered because they are living in their car, and we have a space here, we call it an overflow, that those families can come and reside with us, and we have 24 beds dedicated specifically for that. It is not uncommon that a family that's in transition, let's say there's been a domestic violence altercation, and the persons who may have been the victims are they will choose to reside in their vehicles because it's a safe place.
SPEAKER_01:It's a trust issue as well, them coming in. We've been doing that for the last two years in conjunction with the city. And I think, Charles, it started out with um possibility of sixty cars out there that needed shelter, and uh, you know, it's up past eighty now. Yeah. And uh and they don't necessarily all come in. You know, it just depends on how they're approached and what they're dealing with. We'd love them all to come in, but uh they're welcome. But uh you know, you're dealing with a person and that's the only choice they have if they're that they're gonna be a part of something or not. Yeah. And they'll exercise that to the end degree. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:To Don's point, those sixty cars are now what or eighty, they find themselves finding refuge in their vehicle.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And the city of Fort Worth, uh the Fort Worth PD, and um all of the partners that we have collaborative work with, they will identify those families and uh the street teams, the hope team that does a phenomenal job will then try to encourage them to come and stay. But to Don's point, uh they may feel safer in their vehicle because of maybe experiences or things that they've heard about actually staying at a shelter. And we we really want to uh help encourage individuals if someone's listening and they are experiencing homelessness and they're living in their car or living in an encampment. Uh, we want to encourage them to, you know, give us a chance, let us uh partner with you and find a housing solution for you that um you would be able to come and be a part of a community that we can work together together collaborately collaboratively to find a space for you.
SPEAKER_01:Well that that's what I've always seen, you know, after they actually come here and blend with our staff and other uh residents that we have. It's it's just pretty short period of time and they they blend in well and you know they get with their case managers and they map it all out, you know what what they need to address along with their uh housing and uh you know get the appropriate services and training here while they're in the spiritual part of it as well. I mean that's that's very uplifting to people that don't have that opportunity.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And and and we see this, Eric, with families that are coming in. Uh the the mother or the father, whoever's that caretaker, they are doing their very best to try to make things as normal as they can. Yeah. To give a sense of of normalcy is is a daunting task. Because again, the consequences of experiencing um homelessness for the the parent and the children is certainly they're gonna experience some trauma because of the anxiety and the uncertainty of what's happening. So you have that emotional consequence behaviorally where they're trying to figure out the world because their world has been turned upside down. They do not have a door or a place in the space to call their own. We uh the tagline that we have as our podcast, hear us now, the belonging space is so important. And so welcoming someone home is so vital to helping an individual uh feel comfort. That anxiety one. Number two is the educational loss. Many of the experiences with someone who's been unsheltered, they're not going to school. There's families here that work hard to try to keep that normalcy, but others can go weeks, months, and years because they're trying to navigate the world. And those the consequences of that is those children uh may not have been in school. And and and part of that, consequently, is if uh an educator uh sees a kid coming in and they're disheveled, their clothes may not be clean, uh, educators are the number one reporters of abuse, but also secondly, they're the number one reporters of incidents of unsheltered because they're seeing that kid every day. And they begin to see something's off, that their clothes are not clean, that they're not ironed. And so that brings attention to this family that's unsheltered. And so families that are experiencing that will keep their kids with them because they don't want to bring attention to that matter. And so as soon as that happens, then now you have a domino effect of this family that's unsheltered, but they want to protect their children because the moment that it's identified that they're unsheltered, now someone may be calling child protective services. And that then, with health and human services, they're doing their job, they want to make sure that the kids are safe. But now that may uh include a removal because CPS are exposed. And so now that issues uh an alarming experience. But then the third thing that we experience also with when we know that consequently is the health issues, that they're not living in safe environments, so they may not be eating healthy, and due to the trauma and effects of that, that individuals will will start experiencing some health challenges as well.
SPEAKER_01:But you know, in a very short time, if they come in, I mean they start, they get the clothes they need, uh, they get groomed properly, and you know, one of the one of the things I smile about when I walk in this facility early in the morning, the kids are getting ready to go to school is how groomed these kids are. I mean, their hair, uh, their clothes, I mean, they're just perfect. You know, their mothers are doting on them and and spending time and uh they can blend in with anybody. You wouldn't know they were homeless at all after a while.
SPEAKER_02:Uh but let me engage just this conversation about what we can do uh as far as some solutions uh that we believe that can help move the needle is one. We believe that ways that we can impact and reduce family and individuals experiencing homelessness would be improving systems of care for individuals and families experiencing homelessness. So there's systems of care that need to be engaged much more intensively. Those systems of care, uh, as we are in partnership with Partnership Home that's here, that's our COC, their continuum of care. So continuously partnering with uh individuals like Presbyterians. So the systems of care are very vitally important. Uh we all collectively have to work together to do this uh from our hospitals uh to our uh substance abuse and addiction recovery programs. So having these systems of care is going to be vital to be able to do that. Second, I would say there's policy, uh some new policy development that has to happen within the city in partnership with the city and and with organizations to not criminalize homelessness, but work in conjunction with city officials to develop policies and procedures that's going to help us all work together so that our neighbors uh can find a place that they can call home. Also deal with the misconceptions about why an individual is homeless. The misconceptions that they're lazy, that we have to develop a sense of compassion and understanding our individuals and neighbors because, but by the grace of God, they're go I. Some of the things that we can start doing is looking at predictions and indicators through our research of why an individual has experienced being unsheltered for as long as they have.
SPEAKER_01:They have several issues they're dealing with simultaneously, easily. And that's what these wraparound services do. You know, we dissect what they are and treat them individually.
SPEAKER_02:Why has homelessness become normal? Why, in certain pockets, in certain areas of our humanity we are okay with the normalcy of stepping over a person who's living on the street? Why there's levels of our conscious in the context where we're finding individuals who are sleeping on the street that it's become normal, that, oh, that's this person, they're just this is just who they are, they've made a bad decision. And so I I think the compassion space that we have to hear the voice of God speaking to us is this is not okay. And that there be a movement of compassion upon each and every one of us uh to hear the voice of God and the clarion call that we say, if one of us are homeless, we all are homeless, and begin to to shift the needle that we're we're not okay with by no means 700,000 people in America being homeless, but we're not okay with just one. And we work through compassion work to say, what can we do to help this individual where they're no longer experiencing them? That's a conviction that we have to come out of saying, I I I need to do something about this. I I'm not okay with walking and just stepping over somebody who's laying on the street. And we started our dialogue this morning. I was showing you Eric Dons in on my photos that uh as I memorialize and document the experiences that I have when I'm walking in in my devotions in the morning, I see our neighbors living on the street, on benches, in corners. And I think it's the thing that causes God to weep every morning. And it's tough to go through it every day to see it. And what we we're limited in resources. We know that we can't do everything for everybody. But I'm convicted in that space every morning that I don't ever want this to become normal, that I can just move and not say a prayer, not whisper something that says, God, please, if there's something that we can do and something that we can do, we just we want to be able to help you.
SPEAKER_01:You know, when I first came here, Charles, uh, you know, I was looking for a scripture or God's direction, you know, how we should look at the homeless and how we should minister to the homeless. And, you know, God revealed uh a scripture, you know, it's Deuteronomy 15, 11. Yeah. You know, where the poor and needy will always be with us when we need to be open-handed to those in need. That's right. And it's as simple as that, but we can all do it. We can do it we don't have to wait on the government. You know, we can do it through our uh individually, we could do it through our churches. That's right. Or we can support these good organizations that have been around like ours, Union Gospel Mission Terry County. That's right. Been here for 137 years. That's right. Have ministered to up to thousands of people to mainstream them back in society. And uh as far as I'm concerned, the only way to get there whole is to receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.
SPEAKER_00:You and I have done a previous interview where you pointed out that uh it does take some humility on the part of the recipient of the services to really have have a change. Yeah. Amen. And may uh may the Lord supply both services and humility in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_02:If there's some takeaways, one uh the first would be to be able to help us raise awareness. And raising awareness is how do we combat stereotypes of why individuals are experiencing homelessness, specifically families? Why is that? So we have to bring some awareness, and that's just as Don has said, there's organizations like UGM that's been around for a while. Bring awareness that there are services available. Second is uh increase affordable housing. That's gonna be the challenge that we all are gonna be confronted with as the rising cost of inflation, uh, the increased uh rental rates around community will continue to push people out, and we have to do something to make life affordable for those individuals who are in the in that space of right at the poverty line. I just can't wrap my head around$35,000 for a family of four and more shelter and supportive services.
SPEAKER_01:My thing is just pray and get involved. And uh, you know, we need your time, we need your treasure, and uh we'd love for you to come down and be a part of what what we do here at Union Gospel Mission Terrane County.
SPEAKER_00:Would you close us in prayer?
SPEAKER_01:Be glad to. Lord Jesus, uh, we just uh another day here, and we're just uh humbled to be here, part of uh your ministry at Union Gospel. We just lift it up to you, Lord, and we look to you for all the answers and direction on homelessness on a daily basis, all the support, and we're just thankful for our staff and volunteers that we have here, and all the uh supplies and things that come in to help us feed and minister to the need. And we welcome the community to to pray for us daily and to be a part of our ministry here with us in the Lord Jesus Christ's name. Amen.
unknown:Amen.
