City With Dweillings

This is the Truth Network. And you would think that this would be Robbie Dilmore and you would be wrong. This is Bill Mixon.

Robbie is in Spain. And sometimes when he heads out of town, I had the great pleasure to come in and fill in for him. And today I had the opportunity to be with three of the people I respect the most. They're here to talk about homelessness in our community and what can be done. We've got our House of Representative member Jeff Zinger, who represents the 74th District and the rest of the state too, but the 74th votes for him. And we've got Senator Dana Jones, District 31, and Lee Thursberry, who is the heart and soul and assistant director of the Winston-Salem City with Dwellings. Why don't you tell folks what City with Dwellings does, please? Yeah, well, we're primarily a street outreach organization, though we try to serve anyone who's experiencing health disparities, homelessness.

If you don't have housing, it's going to be tough for you to receive the other things because you're just not healthy enough to get there. So we try to resource navigate. We want to know everything that's out there. And not every resource is tailored well for every person. So we try very hard to have some sort of relationship and community with the folks we serve to make sure that we are walking along beside them to get the correct resource. We do have a plethora of resources. They're not being accessed appropriately, and we want to help change that.

Be good neighbors. Yeah, understanding homelessness went up in the state of North Carolina last year? Eighteen percent. Well, 18 percent nationally over.

And that's on the point in time count, so which we know is a wonderful snapshot of one night, but it doesn't address what's really going on. So, you know, we see on the local level different bits of data. We feel like there are different populations. The elderly and families are some of our highest, which has not always been the case. I've only been in this type of work seriously for about 12 years, but I have seen a big jump in those particular populations of our neighbors. What does the state do funding-wise for homelessness?

How does North Carolina currently try to address that problem? Well, there's all kinds. As she said, there's a plethora of different programs, and so we're always funding different programs and things to try to help with that. It seems like it's a, you know, it's a constant... Kaleidoscope.

Yeah, well, it's almost like the carrot, you know, out in front of you as you push towards it, and then it gets further away. One of the things that I think is going to be instrumental, and we've really started to push hard on this, is mental health. And so we funded a tremendous amount of money in the mental health in the last budget. I mean, it was a huge amount of money.

I don't know the exact figure off my head, and I apologize for that. But we've got to do that. You know, we've all seen, you know, there's some folks that, that's not the issue, but we've all seen folks out there that we know mental health is a problem.

The other problem with the state, when people look to the state to do things, and I think, Denise, you really nailed it. There's a plethora of things out there, but it's not tailored necessarily to each person. You know, one of the struggles for us is, you know, it's not one size fits all. But unfortunately for us, we have to kind of do one size fits all.

And so anyway, if that, so that's kind of the struggle that we have. And so then we fund it, and then we have to try to make sure the funding is used well, which is having folks like this to be involved to do or to manage those resources is so important and so helpful. Are there state funds set up for facilities that work with the homeless directly or is that just going through the medical aspect? What, what, how are those funds dispersed?

I would have to research that and find out how it is. We have a tremendous amount in the budget, but I don't know exactly how it's the details. Now, Dana was on our school board, she was the chairperson of our school board, and everybody loved her so much, she ended up going to the Senate for us. And I'm wondering, what do you know about homelessness and the school system and how difficult it is? I know it's tough to deal with kids when there's not a two parents in the home. Well, of course, and we see that a large number of our homes do not have two parents to support the kids. But imagine trying to, we talk about public education, we talk about the poor performance in the classroom many times for some of our students. And, but many times they are coming from living in their car, or they're what they call doubling up with another family.

So they're sleeping in sleeping bags on the floor, really don't have a bed. So there are some things that are going on here in Forsyth County that a lot of people don't know about if you haven't been really involved, probably in public education in a while you don't have a you haven't had a child in public education or you haven't had a grandchild there. Our classrooms look different.

And the needs of the students are different. And Forsyth County, a title one student, so a student that's 61%. So that means that those families are well below the poverty line, they're receiving free and reduced lunch.

As a matter of fact, they're probably only seven or eight schools in out of the 81 schools in Forsyth County that the students are still still have to buy breakfast or lunch, the other schools are all free. And so a lot of people when I first came on the school board, that title one number was probably around 48%. And now it's well over 61%. So that's a huge thing.

Yeah, yeah. And one of the things that's really changed over the years is how much the we just had a conversation about this this week, how much of what the school system needs to do that doesn't have anything to do with education. And it's just exploded over the years, but you're trying to, to meet the needs.

Sometimes the the safest place and the most comfortable place that a kid is, is when he's at the school. And that's that's becoming more and more common. I saw it I did urban ministry for years in Baltimore City, and we saw it that was 30 years ago. And we saw it then and it's only been it's only gotten exasperated over the years. And I would say we need to try to that's one of the problems I think when we look at the education system is that we're asking them to do so much. And again, from dental checkups to vision checkups to just having clinics there on site of some of our schools for medical needs. It's it's a lot that's that's going on. And it's hard for that to be all encompassing. You know, taking care of those needs, just just one thing and urban districts are a little different than rural districts.

And so I have the privilege of serving Forsyth County and Stokes County. And I reached out to the superintendent rice and he said that in Stokes County, they have 20 students who are homeless. Now that district is less than 10,000 students. So eight families total. Three of those students are living in a hotel permanently, that's that's their home. And then 17 of those students are doubled up with other other families, relatives, friends, that sort of thing.

Those are they seem small. But when you think about a school district that that size, that's still significant. In Winston Salem, Forsyth County, that number is much larger. They, when I reached out and talk talk to their coordinator, they said to one of their biggest things is that if you are a family struggling, transportation is a huge issue. So if you live in kernels for Walker town or limb Clemens or Lewisville, rural hall, there's no public transportation.

It's it's very, very hard. And then inside of the city where they are, we do have a transit system, they provide, you know, tons of free bus passes to families and to students. And then we have a lot of what they call unaccompanied students. So those are students who do not have parents or guardians looking after them. And so mainly their only places to, you know, live with a friend or if they're over 18, then they can go live in a couple of the shelters. But that's that's not a place for a student. I know. Unfortunately, my mother had a son that got in trouble in school, and she'd have to come down and talk to a teacher or principal.

And she had a car that could do that. Well, you got a lot of parents that can't just hop in a car and come to the school and try and figure out why the child's got a problem. It's not simple. We come back. I want Lee to talk to us what she thinks some of the solutions are and how we should address this problem. Please keep us in your prayers. Please keep Robbie in your prayers and come back. We will be back in just a moment.

You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. Good morning, this is Kingdom Pursuit. Robbie is having a wonderful time. And I've been lucky enough to be asked to come in and host today. I've got three people that I respect greatly here. We've got a state senator. Dana Jones used to be on our school board. We've got Jeff Zinger, who's one of our House of Representative members who's heading up some of the more influential committees we've got. And Lee Thursberry, who is the heart and soul of city with dwellings that works with our homeless and trying to work with folks that might be homeless next week if they don't get a little bit of help, and working with folks that would be homeless if somebody wasn't checking on them on a regular basis. Lee, I've heard you say you really think the whole system should be taken apart and put back together again, that that might be the only way to fix it.

I know. I joke about burning it all down and giving everybody six weeks of pay and redesigning it and saying, we'd love for you to stay. We're going to be trauma informed.

We're going to be motivational interviewing. We are going to try to fix this from the root instead of put a Band-Aid on. But nobody seems to be really excited about that. And I do know that people will suffer with that kind of stuff. And people are suffering now. So I don't guess I really believe it down in my bones. But sometimes I think, boy.

But you're not wrong. You know, the way this stuff happens is there starts to be a need and so something is created. And then you go a little bit further. So we just slap something else on that. And then it goes a little further. And oh, we slapped something else on it because we found this need.

And then we slap something. And it'd be kind of like if you have a car from 50 years ago and you just keep adding stuff to it as you go down. Well, it's 50 years old and it's got carrying way more than it can carry. It's overloaded.

And so you're not wrong. What really comes down to is how could you actually do something like that. That's how you get a big rule book. That's how you get a 26-page rule book. And page 42 doesn't take page 62 into consideration. It does not.

That's exactly right. So if your rule book is respect yourself, respect your neighbor, and respect the place you're in, it's pretty broad. It covers it. And you don't need, because we know rules are a lot of times reactionary. Laws are reactionary.

And if we could not be as, if we could do, flip that on its head and not be as reactionary, that'd be great. In my mind, my understanding, my uneducated view of history, in the 1960s, the Supreme Court had some cases brought before it that said, you know, the states aren't doing a very good job looking after their mental institutions. Now, I don't think all of them were, but certainly some of them were doing a very poor job. And the ACLU won some court cases that said, if you are mentally ill and if you're in a healthcare situation, if you want to leave, you should be relieved. And basically, if you're not a threat to yourself and you're not a threat to others, you get to walk right on out the door. Well, if you go back and look, when they did that, 80 percent of the mental institutions emptied out, and the jails filled up, and our parks filled up, and our healthcare facilities filled up, life got very, very, very complicated.

We became that country in the world that arrests and keeps more people in prison than any other place. But in my opinion, that has an awful lot to do with people that should be loved and cared for in a mental institution. Well, those folks are wandering around amongst us. You hear people talk about, they should just get a job.

Well, I'm here to tell you there's some, if you had two people standing on either side of them, supervising, they could not accomplish anything anybody would want to pay them to do. City with Dwellings does a wonderful job loving on that type person and helping those people get that awful voice out of their head and open them up to the possibility of a better life, making better decisions, and then helping the rest of the world deal with them. Just a post office box, that costs money, and you've got to stand in a line with a bunch of people that may or may not want to stand next to you. Then you've got to deal with a government official that probably doesn't want to have anything to do with you. And then you've got to explain what it is that City with Dwellings has a post office with loving and caring people that will stand there and talk to them and explain what needs to be explained.

You've got some ideas. One of them is to have a community where those folks that really need a mental institution, and there isn't one, could come and be taken care of and spend the night and have a place that they can hang their hat on. You know how to describe that? Yeah, so basically housing is a lack of housing, but a lack of targeted housing as well. So I need maybe a different thing, a different type of housing than my next door neighbor does, or a family member. And that comes in lots of forms. But supportive housing, you know, we are a housing first community here in Forsyth County. Permanent supportive housing, just get someone housed. But if that doesn't come with the big S in the middle, with the specialized type of support, we think at City with Dwellings this will save so much money, taxpayer money, if we do some targeted housing.

So not everybody can go from street to a sweet apartment because if the light bulbs are telling you that the CIA is going to come and kill you, you're not going to stay in that room. And so that's real. And so imagine a place where you were able to have that transition. Many people would transition quickly.

We believe some people it might take a little bit longer. But bottom line, you would have that place that you were not banned from, that you were not denied care and support. We like to build that, you know. Imagine a community center for 100 tiny homes and transitional housing homes where everyone ate together. We utilize, have utilized in the overflow shelter in the past 11 years, hundreds and hundreds and thousands of volunteers. So when the city, when all the shelters are full, the city, the community of care, formerly the homeless council, in their charter says, I guess it's charter, their rules say that we have to have a way in the winter for people to have overflow shelter. That's done by two different organizations, the Dwelling and St. Timothy's Episcopal Church this year.

So the people living behind people's homes and between garbage cans and out in the woods don't have a place to stay, the overflow shelter is where they can go. During the winter. During the winter. It can only be permitted for a certain amount of days. That's a North Carolina rule.

But it doesn't matter what those days are. So if you decided you wanted to do 30 days in August you could do it, but there's just a limited amount of time that can be done. So you know, imagine taking that 24-7, that kind of care, where if you were, if your mental health had degraded to the point or your substance use disorder that you were a disturbance to your neighbors in say downtown Winston-Salem, the police have a place for you to go instead of arresting or possibly dropping off at the hospital. And really with involuntary commitment, to go to the magistrate for that, you have to have a reason for that. The person needs to be a harm to themselves or others. Some people who are, you know, don't qualify or classified as that, still need support. I do believe that if people are showed enough care and compassion that folks will eventually decide, I don't think I want to live this way anymore. I really don't think anyone at four years old ever says I want to be a fireman. I want to be a ballerina. I want to be a homeless person.

I don't believe anyone ever says that. But homelessness is a housing issue and targeting housing is just as important as building homes for, this is old data, but 16,000 units in Forsyth County. These are units, so that represents a lot more. People are living, paying 70% or more of their monthly income and that's why they get behind because something happens and then they get behind and then they get depressed and it's just a horrible circle. Well, I've got a question. It's an unfair question and it might not be reasonable to ask the two of you, but if somebody decides that they're so cold that they're just going to call the ambulance and they get in the ambulance and that huge $2,000 bill comes and they go to the emergency room and the emergency room's sort of warm and the people aren't throwing things at them and they spend most of the night in the emergency room and then they get checked into the hospital for a day. That great big $10,000 medical bill, does that come out of North Carolina's budget or does that come out of the federal budget? Well, so that's kind of part of the issue right now in Raleigh, so two years ago they passed an expansion for Medicaid and the way it was set up was that 90% would be covered by the federal government and the state was going to have to cover 10%. The medical community came along and said, we'll cover the 10%, so the state was kind of off the hook. Well, the problem was when you look at the numbers, there's no way those rules are going to stay that way, so the president comes into office, he's a businessman and he looks at the numbers and says, this doesn't work, which those of us that are in business knew that at the time.

I didn't vote for that expansion because I knew it wasn't going to work and so he came in and said, well, we're going to need the states to pick up 40%. Well, now that's a huge hit and so that's part of the problem is everybody's trying to pass this around and how do we pay for that, but if I could back up for just one second, when you talked about what happened in the 60s, let's go back even further. Who was it that was taking care of not just our mental institutions, but also healthcare? It was the church. If you go back and you look, all of these churches. We're coming to one of those hard ends and we're going to have this discussion after we get back and I've got to tell you, in your community, wherever you are, I'd encourage you to find a way for your church group, your Bible study, your family to figure out a way to work with the homeless.

Giving them a couple bucks when they're standing on the side of the road is not the answer. You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. This is Bill Nixon hosting Kingdom Pursuits. I've got two wonderful guests with me now. Sometimes the conversation during the break is so fascinating, I'm sorry that we're not on air, yet a lot of us don't remember or recognize except that we've got family members that have mental problems. I've got family members that have mental problems. Most of us have family members that have mental problems and then when we start talking about why do those people just stand on the side of the road or why don't they just don't get a job.

Most of us, if we think about it, we've got no people in our family and can answer that question quite easily. I've had the opportunity to do a little bit in the jail and the prison and I'll tell you, I'm convinced there are a whole lot of folks out there that didn't grow up in a family that demonstrated love or acceptance. They don't understand what most of this audience understands what love is. The voice in their mind is a voice that beats them up and tears them down and makes them feel bad and makes them think that things are not going to get any better. This is a Christian audience. This Christian audience understands that we're supposed to be helping people discover that wonderful Christian voice in us and part of, in my opinion, part of the homeless problem is that there are an awful lot of people that don't hear that loving and caring voice in them and they cost a lot of money.

If we can get that loving voice in them, then maybe they can cost a whole lot less money. We've got a whole lot of resources in our community that are being destroyed in the hospitals and in the ambulances because we're taking people places that they really don't need to be going and we really don't want to lock them up. It costs a lot of money to lock them up. I tell you that the officers don't want to lock them up. The justice doesn't want to see them.

The people in the prison, I promise you that the officers in the prison would really rather not show up. But what do we do to try and cut that number down? What I love about City with Dwellings is they work really hard to find a way to keep those people from ending up in those situations that they start learning how to make good decisions, that they start having a control over that voice. Lee, talk a little bit about what City of Dwellings does on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. We call that our open hours. I realize it's only two hours a day and we do get a lot of questions about that. But we try to make it a restorative space, a space where you feel like you're wanted.

It doesn't matter how you smell. You feel like you're wanted. That's just one example. We feel like if you can care for people and love people, then eventually and break down those barriers. We try to be folks that break down barriers. So if transportation is your barrier, let's break that down. If you can't get an appointment for six weeks, let's break that barrier down.

Let's find another provider. Let's find a clinic instead of the ER because the ER has to take you. So let's find a clinic where we can get you established and we'll walk alongside you.

It doesn't mean that you have to do that forever. But also it's very important for people to have healthy community. So if it starts with City with Dwellings or another organization, then one of our goals is to get you connected with other healthy community.

And this is where the private citizens can come into play, is offering that community. We feel like we give the opportunity in a safe space. We've always felt that. Is it sometimes loud? It is. Does it sometimes seem a little chaotic?

It does. But at the end of the day, when everybody, the volunteers and the staff and the guests and the neighbors we serve leave, everybody feels like, okay, it was a good day. You know, that's progress.

That's a seed. You've opened up some other things. You've got a foot clinic.

You've got an eye clinic. What are some of the other programs that City with Dwellings works with? Yes, recognizing that the population we serve is a little different in that you may have been banned from the bus station and or possibly even from a brick and mortar shelter or the library. And because of your behavior, we don't seem to have those behavioral problems as much at City with Dwellings. But there again, we're not asking for your ID. We're not poking you with a stick. We're not asking, we do, if we're going to talk to you, it's knee to knee with no desk in between over a cup of coffee.

It's not, it's not an interview process, things like that. But we have noticed that sometimes you do need to bring the resources to the person. And the Deak students at Wake Forest Health have done a beautiful job in organizing and bringing to us two clinics, which is a vision clinic, very important. Dr. Giggengack comes once a month. So they even have a phoropter. So you can get glasses and it can be sent right to our meal room. You can have glasses within a week.

It's wonderful. And then also we have a foot clinic. Feet are very important. So our folks stay in the same socks for days and days and days, stay in, you know, don't take their shoes off because they might get stolen. So, you know, their feet are very important. The military thinks feet are very important, too. You mentioned who provides all those shoes.

Yes. So Fleet Feet is a local seller of shoes and running shoes and other shoes. And they are very generous. The Deak students got in touch with them themselves.

They do all of that work. And then we have about four or five podiatrists that come. It's a wonderful experience. It's one of the most popular for the students sign up. Sometimes we get 20, 25 med students. And so that's almost one on one to what we see at the vision clinic. We just had literally dropped in our lap Footbridge, which is a dental, a mobile dental clinic, all volunteers. We had our first dental clinic Saturday, last Saturday, 50 people were seen. They do amazing things, extractions.

It was quite the thing to watch to come in. So if we can bring some of those resources to the folks, it really does help. And all of this time we're talking about follow up appointments. Let's let's you know, this was very successful for you today.

So going forward, what's the next success and how can we break down the barrier and walk alongside you to access that? So you've got a post office system in the facility. They've got an access to computers to get on the Internet. They've got access to phones. It's a big deal when you got to you'd be on the phone for an hour trying to figure out how to accomplish something simple. You need help trying to come up with that tax form or the W two.

You've got bingo. There are all kinds of programs that you put together and then you're hooked up with the church, the dwelling church, and the dwelling church helps people get food. They serve food before and after their Sunday service. I know there's a lot of concern about the federal funding and how it's going to get turned off and how it's going to get turned back on. And I want to tell the community we really should be working with an organization in our community that helps our homeless neighbors. And I'd ask you to be praying that whatever turmoil goes through with getting the budget fixed, that we're all in out of our own pocket contributing money to help our less fortunate friends and neighbors.

And I want you to remember you probably have somebody in your family, you might not visit them very often, you might not invite them to Christmas. But I bet you've got some folks in your family that are in need of some help like this in their own communities. And we should be given more out of our own pocket.

And we should be given more of our own time. What should what do you think our state government should be doing to help the homeless problem and the school systems homeless problem? So I think as Representative Zinger said earlier, in the last budget, there was an enormous amount of dollars that went for mental health. I think it's trying to, and the state cannot go into each individual organization and figure out okay, this is what this is the right niche. So in my mind, resources and funding from the state would go down into each community, and then those particular organizations within the community and one organization cannot meet everyone's needs as is very specific to the the people that are being served here in a very specific way.

And that may not work, or may not be the right path for someone who's 14 or 16. And so again, how the cow can the school district support mental health and not be ashamed to talk about mental health. Thank you for tuning in. We're going to keep having this wonderful discussion right after this. You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. Thank you for tuning in to Kingdom Pursuits.

We once again had a wonderful conversation while the rest of you were listening to our commercials. One thing that we're doing right now in our area is the overflow shelter. So folks get to come into city with dwellings or the dwelling church and say I really need a place to stay.

My core cardboard box is just not warm enough. And then they have a place for the ladies to go. And then the men don't get to sleep, they get chairs. But they get hot soup. So if there's a group that would like to provide soup, I think it's five gallons of soup. And then the facility where the ladies go get soup to point being your small group, your friends, your business, their ways for you to do something once or something twice and get to know a program around you. I really would prefer to give money to an organization, I've actually met the people that if I found something out about them that made me upset that I could actually go see them and say, you know that check I gave you twice? I'm sort of concerned.

I want you to explain what the heck's going on here. We have a responsibility to be Christ in our neighborhood, to be a light on the hill, a time of refreshing. What God gave us, we're supposed to share the way that Jesus would say, yeah, I don't see any reason why you shouldn't give a few dollars to that particular organization.

And that one you should give some time to. In your community, there's some organizations that work with the homeless. And I encourage you to go down there and visit them and say, I just want to find out more about you. I'd like to talk about you with my Sunday school group. I want to see if there's a place that I might fit in here.

I want to know if you're worthy of a few dollars from me. But most important to put them on your prayer list, and to call up and ask how they're doing. When COVID shut down everything else, and I couldn't help it Samaritan soup kitchen, I heard about this group of fearless people that decided to stay at work through COVID working with the homeless. And there was a group of people in town that were very worried about health wise, and they got a grant to put them up in a hotel. You want to tell the audience a little bit about what happened?

Yeah, so that winter, you know, the churches weren't allowed, my church wasn't allowed by our bishop to have anybody there. And, and so working with the city city with dwellings, managed to procure hotel rooms, and we put up, we had 40 hotel rooms, we had 52 people in them over the course of a winter, you know, three, four months. And it was amazing what happened. That's why we know that targeted housing and supportive housing really will work, but it needs to be 24 seven, we were able to, to have a daymark recovery services come in and do assessments for mental health and substance use disorder at the hotel. And then we were able to get people that, that we saw almost every day back for an appointment, amazing things. We know that when you when you were, it is life saving when it's 19 degrees, which this winter has been weird for North Carolina, but it's life saving when you could be off the street.

But you at six o'clock in the morning, it's you got 12 more hours that you have to figure that out. And, and, and 24 seven support is is crucial, we think, you know, for that, now, you knew that the grant was going to go away that the hotel rooms were going to disappear. What What then did the community do? churches were able to step back up, you know, luckily, it timing, so churches were able to step back up.

And we opened that went that following all the following winters with, with back at the churches with volunteers, very, very little staff involved that got paid. The one church the dwelling found some real estate managers that had apartment units that were so unbelievably don't want to use the word disgusting, unbelievably awful that they weren't ever going to use them again. And they brought in volunteers and materials and they fix those apartments up with the promise that the donors of those apartments would set them aside just for homeless people. And they got a whole bunch of those 59 people in those apartments.

How did that go? I know you've got staff, you've got one staff person that sort of lives in one community, sort of keep people from having 52 pet cats, right, a peer support specialist. Honestly, we've talked to real estate agents across the city about, you know, if we had an apartment, if you give us an apartment in your large complex, this is a person that is right now. We have a person over at Magnolia now we aren't gifted that apartment, we have to pay for it. But he is there five nights a week, he does have his own home. And he has a family, but he's there five nights a week.

And he. So if in the middle of the night, instead of getting arrested, or having something else unhealthy happen to you, if you can knock on Carlos's door, and Carlos can give you a little bit of love, it makes a huge difference to feel like you have some people supporting you. And we have seen behaviors change. We've seen people wanting to do different things and have changed talk of their lives.

It's amazing all the different staff people that do different really interesting things through City with Dwellings. We'll talk about that a little bit more when we come back from this break. Thank you for listening. Keep all these programs in your prayer. And we'll talk just a little bit more on the other side of this commercial.