My Brother’s Keeper shelter a haven for homeless in Waco_40405

Posted: 4/01/05

My Brother's Keeper shelter
a haven for homeless in Waco

By Sarah Farris

Special to the Baptist Standard

WACO–A sign in Mission Waco office says: “If you're here for an appointment, welcome. Otherwise, if you're sitting here, be ready to volunteer.”

That service-oriented, volunteer-driven philosophy led the ministry to create a haven for Waco's homeless.

Mission Waco decided to begin its shelter when two homeless men in the community died while sleeping in an abandoned home that caught fire.

“It grew out of seeing (the homeless) as friends,” said Mission Waco Executive Director Jimmy Dorrell.

With $100,00 raised by the community, along with several large donations and grants, My Brother's Keeper homeless shelter opened late last December. The 48-bed shelter serves the emergency homeless, as well as the chronically homeless–people who have been continually homeless for a year or more.

The Meyer Center offers daytime services to Waco's homeless population.

Since Dec. 21, the shelter has aided more than 150 men and women, with an average of 27 beds occupied each night, Dorrell said.

The Meyer Center, the shelter's daytime facility, is located at a former church in downtown Waco. It houses what Dorrell called “a one-stop-shop to aid homeless and the poor.” At this location, people can shower and receive mail, personal hygiene products, legal assistance and case management counseling, explained Rita Cone, social services director of the shelter.

Currently the shelter, located in a former warehouse, only has beds on a night-by-night basis. Therefore, people must attempt to get a bed each night.

The shelter already has impacted the lives of some of Waco's homeless.

“A few men are getting work because they have a stable place to sleep every night and have had enough rest to work,” Cone said. “It's hard to go to work without a safe place to sleep the night before–help had to start somewhere.”

Mission Waco also has partnered with Baylor University's graduate program in psychology to assess and diagnose homeless people with mental disabilities so they can receive government assistance. Without this partnership, the high costs of physiological consultations would be too costly for the shelter.

Thanks to a grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the shelter will make available 18 beds this summer to the transitional homeless–people who have the potential to move from homelessness and unemployment to self-sufficiency. Participants in the program will work on a transitional plan developed in consultation with shelter staff.

About 1 percent of the population of any city in the United States is homeless, Cone noted. Among homeless adults, roughly one-third have mental health problems, one-third have substance abuse problems and one-third are veterans, Cone noted. There are about 600 chronically homeless individuals in Waco, she said, but added it is difficult to determine the exact number of homeless in a city.

“Sleeping in the street is loitering, and sleeping in an abandoned building is trespassing,” she said. “If you are homeless, you have to be ingenious to find a place to sleep.”

A shelter for Waco's chronic homeless population cuts down on vandalism and the human cost of homelessness. But also, Cone said, “it takes care of community citizens, because most folks are members of the community in which they are homeless.”

Working closely with homeless people shatters stereotypes, she noted.

“Just because someone is homeless, it does not mean they are not intelligent,” she said, citing times she has met homeless people who were registered nurses and university graduates.

“We owe it to take care of everybody,” she said. “Fight for the poor. Be champions of for the homeless. Love justice; do mercy. It's a command, and (the Bible) doesn't say it's optional.”

Mission Waco is an interdenominational Christian ministry serving the poor and the local church that builds relations of empowerment to the poor and marginalized, mobilizes the local church and addresses social injustices that effect the marginalized. For more information, visit www.missionwaco.com.