Churches recruited for battle against homelessness

Charles Pitts, a retired Lake Mary executive, was attending service at his Longwood church late last year when his pastor launched a recruiting mission for foot soldiers in the battle against homelessness.

“I knew immediately I wanted to join,” said Pitts, 72, who has lived at both ends of the rags to riches spectrum. “I knew from my own experience there are all kinds of reasons people become homeless. … Maybe it’s a young girl who is kicked out of the house because she’s pregnant. Maybe it’s somebody who lost a job or became mentally ill. It’s everything you can think of — and nothing anyone asks for.”

He enrolled in a training program through Northland, a Longwood mega-church, to become one of the first 100 volunteers in a major faith-based initiative some are calling the “missing link” in addressing homelessness, particularly for families and young adults. It’s also a key part of a larger campaign to enlist the aid of the region’s churches, synagogues and mosques.

Within the past year, the Cen-

tral Florida Commission on Homelessness has tapped two faith leaders to head its board: Northland’s nationally known senior pastor, Joel Hunter, is now chairman, and David Swanson, senior pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Orlando, is vice-chairman.

In January, Northland led the creation of the Community Resource Network, calling on houses of worship from all faiths to join. The network would coordinate volunteer training so that people with no social work background — like Pitts — could learn how best to help. So far, 14 churches have signed up, and the group has partnered with Catholic Charities of Central Florida to allow volunteers to serve a sort of internship, job-shadowing the charity’s professional case workers.

“Every month, more houses of faith and organizations join,” Hunter said. “I’m so excited for the amazing work that’s being done … In the coming weeks, over 50 families who have experienced homelessness will start being connected to the support that they deserve” through the network.

Certainly it’s not the first time the faith community has rolled up its sleeves on the issue of homelessness. Sixteen years ago, First Presbyterian launched a small downtown Orlando ministry called Compassion Corner, where the homeless could go for coffee, spiritual inspiration, the use of a telephone and computer, and a reprieve from the elements. More recently, the center has added social workers.

In 2011, worshipers at First Baptist Church of Orlando, inspired by a national news report on homeless children in Central Florida, took up a historic $5 million offering in a single weekend that spring. Church leaders then invested the money in a range of programs, including the Love Pantry, run by the Christian Service Center, which feeds homeless and impoverished public school kids and their families.

Jewish Family Services, Catholic Charities, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the American Muslim Community Center — among others — have all worked to varying degrees to help the homeless or those at risk of becoming so.But what’s different about the recent push is the relationship between those helping and those being helped.

“The whole philosophy is not just about giving someone a sandwich or a pair of socks and walking away,” said Shelley Lauten, the homeless commission’s CEO. “It’s about getting to know them as a fellow human being and finding out how to move them towards self-sufficiency. Our [professional] case managers are just absolutely strapped, so the idea that the faith community is now able to walk alongside the homeless and build a relationship with them — well, I think that’s the missing link.”

Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs agrees. She led a partnership between the county and the Phoenixbased nonprofit Open Table, which recruits members of local congregations to act as a sort of adviser network/substitute family for homeless people who often have no one else in their lives to lean on. In the past year, eight churches have enlisted, each signing up 10 to 12 church members with a variety of expertise and life experiences.

The church members — called brothers and sisters — meet at least once a week with a single homeless individual or family for a year. In that time, they try to tackle the barriers to stable housing, whether that’s a lack of education, joblessness, legal issues, health problems or financial counseling.

There are no handouts, but occasionally there are loans.

“I’m really excited about this, especially for homeless families,” Jacobs said. “I don’t think we can begin to understand the toll it takes on a young child’s psyche and selfesteem to be homeless, and I believe this program can ultimately change the course of a life. Churches can do things that government simply can’t.”

Swanson, of First Presbyterian, said he has witnessed the transformation than can happen when the homeless are embraced by the church.

“We want a homeless person not only to be housed but to recapture their sense of dignity and worth as human beings,” he said. “And it’s very difficult to have that unless you’re in a relationship with other people, unless you know that other people value you.”

Though it’s too soon to claim that either the Open Table or the Community Resource Network is a success, some advocates for the homeless contend the faith community is the only way forward. Government programs have been better positioned to help homeless veterans and individuals with mental illness, the thinking goes, because that population isn’t expected to become selfsufficient down the road.

For homeless families and young people, though, homelessness is more likely to be a temporary result of bad luck or bad decisions.

“Faith leaders have the moral authority to be the voice on this issue,” said Andrae Bailey, the homeless commission’s former CEO. “When they express outrage that children are living in hotel rooms or families are living in their cars, that carries more weight.”

For Pitts, once a top executive at Honda Motor Co. and the former Martin Marietta Corp., it’s also a chance to satisfy his own soul. A messy and unexpected divorce two years ago, he said, left his bank accounts empty or frozen and forced him to sell his home. He learned how quickly things can deteriorate.

“Like a lot of people, when I thought about the homeless, I pictured the guy on the street corner with a squeegee, spitting on my windshield, wiping it off and wanting a dollar. Then I ended up almost homeless myself,” Pitts said. “Now I’ve learned never to judge anyone, and I’ve learned there’s a good reason to get up every day — because maybe that’s the day I help someone change their life.”