Homeless No More: A Solution for Families, Veterans and Shelters

homeless.

INTRODUCTION

WE ALL HAVE A STORY

Tell me your story.

As the Executive Director of Dallas LIFE — a beacon that has been reaching out to homeless men, women and children with food, clothing, shelter, education and long-term rehabilitation programs founded on spiritual principles and the teachings of Jesus Christ for the past sixty years — I have the opportunity to hear my fair share of stories.

It’s the first thing I ask of my residents when I meet them.

Tell me about the best day of your life.

Tell me about the worst day of your life.

And everything in between.

And boy, do they tell me.

Drugs. Alcohol. A multitude of addictions; multiple visits to rehabilitation centers.

Anger. Stories of prison sentences and brushes with the law.

Relationship issues. Separation. Failed marriages. Divorce.

Physical and mental health issues.

And money, always money: an eviction; a layoff; a demotion; a history of financial struggles.

Hang-ups with sex. Pornography. Stories I won’t tell.

They all have one thing in common: hopelessness. They don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. They don’t know how they are going to make it until tomorrow. They have question after question, and they don’t have any answers.

We live in an age of seeming hopelessness.

We live in a time of brokenness.

We live in an age — at least as perception has it — of despair.

Broken homes. Shattered dreams. Things that just don’t work out. Wars and rumors of wars. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Civil unrest. Economic inequality. The homeless population is not getting any smaller. Drugs — from street to prescription — and alcohol consumption are on the rise.

Violence — both domestic and otherwise — is an epidemic.

While it may seem that we live in a hopeless state of affairs, hope springs eternal.

There are many stories of lives who have been changed, thanks to the miraculous power of a Carpenter going about His Father’s business.

There are many stories of people who — despite seemingly hopeless odds — face life with an almost unspeakable joy.

You may not hear about it on the news — faith, hope and charity don’t command high advertising dollars — but there is a sea change coming.

There are those who refuse to quit.

There are those who refuse to give up.

There are those who refuse to continue in a cycle of heartache and despair.

If you ask them for details of their miraculous recovery from a seemingly hopeless state of living, they’ll tell you that it wasn’t possible.

But with GOD, all things are possible.

The Homeopathic Approach Isn’t Working

Allergy sufferers know all too well the periods of coughing, wheezing, stuffiness, lethargy and misery that accompany the change in seasons or a freshly-mowed lawn or a deep breath of pet dander. We also know the relief that comes with a shot of a miniscule amount of those very same allergens at the allergy doctor and the kind of peace and tranquility that it brings.

More and more people in our society are in severe need of help. While each year well-intentioned donors are more and more generous, the issues of society — particularly the issues of homelessness and addiction — are not close to eradication. Why is this so? I propose that we have been throwing money at some issues with the hope that they will take care of themselves. As the Executive Director of one of the largest homeless shelters in America with over 30 years of ministry experience behind me, I believe I have an answer: homelessness is not the problem; drug and alcohol abuse is not the problem — they are but symptoms to the problem.

We cannot think that pouring money on the problem is going to fix it. We cannot move the homeless — while they are untreated — into housing and expect that things are going to get better. We cannot take away the drugs and alcohol — like keeping candy away from a child — without getting to the root of the real problem first.

Unfortunately, the solution to homelessness is not as easy as driving to the allergy doctor. It is not as easy as throwing money at it. It is not as easy as separating the individual from their old haunts and their old crowds. It is not as easy as helping them with their bills and getting them on their feet.

But there is a solution.

There needs to be a total and complete change.

And the person who is homeless is not the only one in severe need of change. The person who is homeless is not the only one who needs to hold themselves accountable.

The kind of change we need is change that happens within the home. We need to hold our children accountable for their behavior. We need to know what they are doing. How about teaching them values beyond what they soak up in the many different forms of media they are exposed to on a daily basis? We need to teach them responsibility, encouraging them to learn from their mistakes.

The kind of change we need is change that happens in the workplace. On more than one occasion I have had a group of business people visit the shelter to ask how they might be able to move the homeless away from their place of business, since the eyesore detracts from their daily affairs. While I completely understand their dilemma, and say what I can to help, I cannot understand why they are not interested in a permanent solution. How might the homeless recover and thereby not need to beg for money? We want the problem gone, not fixed.

The kind of change we need is change that happens in the Church. Churches contact me all the time to ask how they might acquire a building near their fellowship to house homeless people, when many of their buildings are quite capable of housing them right now. What about cots in the fellowship hall? What about designing bathrooms with stainless steel fixtures which can really take a beating? There is no doubt that many church members do their part in volunteering at shelters serving meals to the hungry and giving clothes to the downtrodden, but what are our churches here for if we are trying to funnel crowds away from them because we just remodeled and the landscaping was expensive? Churches have become more like museums and less like hospitals. Needy people are attracted to places of healing just like sick people are drawn to the local hospital. We shouldn’t be concerned that the pew we are sitting on might have been occupied by a homeless person the night before. That should be the standard!

The kind of change we need is change that happens in the government. While I do not think that a handout is the answer, when a person is in need of a safety net, it shouldn’t be taken away when they start to get on their feet. Shouldn’t they be given a little more time to actually put some money in savings so they can get off of government aid altogether?

The other side of that same coin is throwing money at a problem that is getting bigger and not smaller, instead of funding what truly works and cutting what doesn’t, and becoming a crutch instead of a helping hand. There is plenty to be said about accountability and our government.

The kind of change we need is change that happens in our society at large.

It is a BIG problem in need of a BIG solution.

Despair is a Useful State

Hope is a team sport.

Despair is a one person venture.

Your typical alcoholic — homeless or otherwise — has a ton of secrets, things that they plan to take with them to their grave. And sadly, many of them do.

The ones who are lucky — the ones who find recovery one day at a time — echo the same sentiment: they thought they were alone in their problems. One thing that convinces alcoholics and addicts of all kinds that there may be a solution to their problem is when they hear their own story. They are sitting in a meeting and someone shares a virtually identical story. And the alcoholic, the addict and the downtrodden suddenly realizes that she isn’t alone.

While that isn’t to say you can’t feel alone in a room full of people, despair isn’t likely to thrive in an environment of people who share similar problems — and more importantly — simultaneously sharing the same solution.

Hope and despair rarely share the same space. It is next to impossible.

That’s why providing hope is so vital.

You introduce just a sliver of hope and that is all it takes. Once hope is there — and the troubled individual continues to do what they did to introduce hope — despair is an endangered species; it is on the way out.

But not every alcoholic makes it into a Christ-centered program of recovery. Not every addict finds a solution. Not every homeless person finds their way into a new life.

Often, people in despair don’t know where to turn.

Why do some people get it and some people don’t?

We can’t worry ourselves with that; our mission is to spread hope. Period.

Our mission is to drive out despair.

And driving out despair can only be done by those who have hope; they carry the message of hope that lives within them.

Go ye into all the world.

That is our calling.

It is as simple as starting in our home, our place of employment, our church and our school, and letting our hope spread into the far corners of the earth.

How many of us have no idea why we’re here? A fair share, for sure. Many people live their whole lives not knowing — and more sadly, not realizing — their true calling.

But now you know it; your calling — plain and simple — is carrying the message of hope to a world filled with despair. While it may be plain and simple, it is perhaps not as easy as it sounds.

Like any journey worth taking, it comes with sacrifice.

There are things you have to give up; you have to give up your old ideas, your prejudice, your comfort zones and your old way of thinking. Your judgment.

We don’t always know what is best for us.

That’s why we don’t depend on self-knowledge.

Self-knowledge avails us nothing.

But we don’t have to know what is best for us. We just have to know that we don’t know, but He does.

There are a lot of folks out there who seemingly have it all together. They may not be living under a bridge, but their lives are in tatters.

They are juggling the balls of life and are dangerously close to dropping them all at the same time.

They are a paycheck away from becoming destitute — the credit cards maxed to their absolute limit — and things clearly aren’t going their way: their marriage is in trouble; their kids are not speaking to them; and things are rough at work.

They’re thinking to themselves, If everybody else would just do things right, I would be okay. If he would have paid me on time, we wouldn’t be in the situation we’re in. If I wouldn’t have gotten fired for something that everybody else has been doing for as long as they’ve worked here. If she would just give me a break. If he would just work with me.

If only this, if only that.

As they are reaching the end of their rope, as they come to the roadblock of despair, hope is just around the corner.

They come to the understanding that THEY are not in charge. They come to the understanding that THEY are the reason they are in the mess they are in. THEY are the one common denominator in the whole equation.

It doesn’t matter what political persuasion you happen to lean toward — our government doesn’t have the solution. If hope came bundled as a benefit, we would all have our fair share.

But as much as the government — both State and Federal — may have it all together (without a hint of sarcasm), they are sorely lacking in the hope department.

The Criminal Justice System — with its mass numbers of incarceration and its astronomical recidivism rates — does not seem to have much hope in their treasure chest.

Corporate America can no doubt continue giving back to the communities in which they serve.

Entrepreneurs can continue to create services and products that will make our lives easier.

The world can continue to spin on its axis.

But hope remains elusive — until the Church steps in.

Until individuals — both young and old — come together in one accord, and actually start doing what we know to do.

Regardless of the fact that it isn’t happening on the news, God’s children are mobilizing in droves.

Each day — without expecting a write-up in the daily newspaper — men, women, and children across the globe are giving selflessly of their time, energy and finances to make the world a better place.

Despite the pundits’ warnings that the Church is drying up and there has been a mass exodus from the pews, God’s work is being accomplished one person at a time, one kind deed at a time, one kind word at a time and one thoughtful prayer at a time.

But it’s going to take more than that.

A massive lack of hope requires a massive dose of Christian generosity.

A massive lack of hope requires a massive dose of faith, hope and charity.

A massive lack of hope requires a massive show of force.

We Should Be Proactive

We live in a very reactive — as opposed to proactive — society. For the most part — whether it is the government, corporations, the Church, foundations, the community, the family, or the individual — we don’t get down to the problem of solving a problem until it becomes a problem.

We wait until our annual physical exam — and the doctor tells us we need to shed some serious pounds or we are going to die a gruesome death — before we start watching what we eat.

Corporations spend without a second thought — until it’s time to report their earnings — so they resort to layoffs in order to meet their projections.

The Church waits until they’ve lost a good part of their congregation before they decide maybe they need to examine the practices and ideologies that have crept into their sanctuaries, especially those that happen to be more man-made than God mandated.

Foundations wait until they’ve chased off a good part of their donors before they stop focusing on just raising money, as opposed to focusing on using the money they have to produce long-term results; as opposed to short-term results that end up placing them back where they were when they first began asking for the money.

The community waits until there is a tragedy or a rise in crime before they decide to pull together as a community, as opposed to a group of individuals concerned mostly about their self-interests and individual accomplishments.

The family waits until one of the kids is arrested for shoplifting before they decide to teach them the value of honesty and the importance of hard work and dedication.

The individual waits until his marriage is falling apart before he decides perhaps he should spend a little more time at home nurturing his relationships; as opposed to spending all of his time at work because it is easier to ignore the problem, as opposed to facing it head on.

And the government waits.

While fixing the problem later is better than not at all, why must we wait until things have gotten out of hand before we decide to do something about it?

Why can’t we wrap our heads around the simple fact that it is far easier, in the long run, to do the hard work up front, rather than sitting on our laurels until the problem is out of control, before we decide to take some serious action?

When it comes to solving the addiction epidemic in this country, doesn’t it make sense to explore the root of the problem, as opposed to putting a tourniquet on it?

When it comes to the divorce rate in this country, doesn’t it make sense that we would instill family values, good Godly instruction and practice what we preach in front of our children, before they enter relationships of their own?

When it comes to mental illness in this country, doesn’t it make more sense to respond to it before it becomes a major crisis by providing people, who show signs of mental illness, with the right tools, education, therapy and medical assistance they need to thrive to the best of their ability?

When it comes to poverty in this country, doesn’t it make more sense to provide all children with an excellent education, excellent knowledge, skills, abilities and a variety of opportunities, instead of waiting until they fall through the cracks? This only results in them ending up on government assistance or at the doorstep of a homeless shelter as an adult.

There is no doubt that we must serve those who are in need of our service. We must give food to the hungry. We must give shelter to the homeless. We must be a beacon of light to those in darkness!

But that is not enough!

That is a temporary solution to a permanent problem.

We should be proactive! We should examine the symptoms and follow them back to their root cause. We should be forward thinkers and look at the opportunities in front of us to lift up, encourage, motivate, strengthen, teach, admonish and most of all — LOVE, before it become a problem at all.

Now how is that for a solution to a problem before it becomes a problem!

Action IS Required

In case you are wondering, this book wasn’t written for the Church. This book wasn’t written for the Government. This book wasn’t written for the Corporation