HOPE FOR THE HOMELESS
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A CHANGE OF HEART
SPRING 2020
Arturo Rivera, a resident of St. Augustine Terrace in the Bronx, where counseling and mental-health support services are provided by Catholic Charities of New York. // Photographs by Gerri Hernandez.ALL OVER THE UNITED STATES, the number of people living without a fixed residence is growing, driven by low wages, scarcity of affordable housing and a culture that celebrates the wealthy and marginalizes the poor. Throughout the 10 counties of the Archdiocese of New York, the numbers have risen steadily in recent years. In New York City alone, there were more than 62,000 people living in shelters in December 2019 – 67% more than a decade ago. And that doesn’t count the many adults and families living on the streets or “doubled up” in the homes of friends or relatives.
In the face of such a large-scale tragedy, it’s tempting to blame it all on the politicians and the plutocrats – and the homeless people themselves – and wash our hands of the matter. We need to resist this temptation, says Msgr. Kevin Sullivan, director of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York. “As a society we need to commit to policies that reduce homelessness; as Catholics we need to do our part to help individuals and families,” he says. “When we pass people on the street we can do at least a little – even a smile. We can also volunteer or donate to help organizations like Catholic Charities and the agencies it sponsors to alleviate the problem.”
Catholic Charities is a key component of a social justice coalition offering our homeless sisters and brothers secure housing, life skills training, and a pathway out of trauma and into new lives as functioning members of the community. At the heart of these transformational efforts is the Education Outreach Program, launched 30 years ago by Catholic Charities and the Interfaith Assembly on Homelessness and Housing, and now replicated in similar programs offered by an array of religious and community groups throughout the region. In the following pages, we’ll introduce you to some people who turned their lives around with the help of the program. The first step: remembering to see Jesus in all our fellow humans.
THE POWER OF STORIESThirty years ago, George Horton of New York Catholic Charities and Marc Greenberg of the Interfaith Assembly on Homelessness and Housing, inspired by a movement of homeless people that coalesced around Manhattan’s City Hall Park in the late 1980s, came up with the idea for a program to help unlock the gifts and talents they had witnessed in the members of the park movement. In collaboration with Joan Minieri, Sr. Ann Murray SHCJ, Sr. Agnes O’Grady RSM and others, they launched the Education Outreach Program (EOP), a 12-week curriculum consisting of life skills workshops, mentoring sessions and a storytelling process in which homeless participants write their life stories and present them to their peers.
In the decades since, hundreds of homeless people in and around New York have graduated from EOP and the other life skills programs that were modeled after it, and gone on to lives of stability, self-sufficiency and community engagement, each according to her or his own abilities. The success of the EOP is “entirely due to what they – the homeless participants – have put into it,” Horton says. The narratives of their lives sit at the center of the program, a deep well of lived experience that enables the storytellers to share the pain and celebrate the triumph of their journeys.
In 2019, Empire State Editions, an imprint of Fordham University Press, published several of these narratives in Sacred Shelter: 13 Journeys of Homelessness and Healing, sensitively edited and introduced by Fordham English professor Susan Celia Greenfield. The three brief excerpts included here (further edited and shortened to fit the space and themes of this story) are taken from this compelling volume – a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the human tragedy of homelessness and the courage of those who transcend it.
To read the full interview with George Horton, please visit "Making Connections."
CHILDREN OF GOD
As a boy, James Addison (EOP graduate 1993) experienced domestic violence at the hands of a stepfather. As a teen, he fell into the South Bronx drug scene of the 1960s. He was further traumatized by the suicide of his mother. “My 20s and 30s are a blur,” he says in Sacred Shelter. He drifted between relationships, fathered a son and a daughter. By his late 30s, he was living in shelters and regularly hit- ting up his father for drug money. Then God stepped in.
Things really started to change for me one day when I went to see my father at his job to get some money to get high. I went with a scheme. But my father said, “Arthur, I have something to tell you. You’re going to be a grandfather.”
That knocked me off my feet. He was talking about Tara, my oldest daughter. I thought, “Oh, my God!” It just did something to me. I took the money from my father for drugs, but I was changed a little bit. I wanted to get my life together. I was saying to myself, “I’m 39 years old, I’m about to be a grandfather, I don’t know where my son is, I don’t know who my daughter is. Something has to give.”
This time, when I went back to Fort Washington Men’s Shelter, I did something different. There were two nuns, Sr. Dorothy [Gallant, SC] and Sr. Teresa [Skehan, RSM], who came to the shelter every Tuesday evening. Sr. Teresa was very short, with gray hair. We thought she was crazy at first. Here was this very little white lady in a shelter with a thousand men. We would look and say, “What’s wrong with her?” Both she and Sr. Dorothy would try to get us to go into these groups called Life Experience and Faith Sharing Associates (LEFSA, sponsored by the Sisters of Charity) where we could talk about our experiences. Usually I would avoid the sisters.
But that Tuesday, when Sr. Teresa said, “Would you like to join us for our meeting?” I said, “Yes, I’m going to join.”
Right away I liked LEFSA. The meeting felt equal. Sr. Dorothy and Sr. Teresa didn’t call themselves leaders. This was our group. Everybody who wanted to could share. I found it fascinating that people in the shelter I never heard talk be- fore – people who I thought couldn’t even talk – were sharing in this group. I liked it that everybody was heard – that made us feel like we were important. If Sr. Dorothy and Sr. Teresa had preached at us, it would have turned me off. I met Ernesto and Jesse in that group, and we’ve become lifelong friends.
From my early years, I’ve always felt a closeness to God. Even during my times of homelessness, even during the times of the abuse, I would talk to God, and pray, and ask God to help me, to help my mother, to help us. When I look back today, I believe that I was led to LEFSA. I believe that a force much greater than myself led me there. Pretty soon I started working part time for LEFSA, and by 1995 I was working there full time. Twenty-one years later, I’m still here. Now I’m the Operations Manager.
One day Sr Teresa said, “There’s a life skills empowerment program, and I would like to recommend you for it – you and your friend Ernesto. It would be perfect for you, James. It’s a three-month program where you can grow and set some goals for your life.” ...
So my friend Ernesto and I said, “Let’s just do it.” Now all of a sudden, we were getting this wide range of different supports. I had LEFSA, I had an outpatient drug program, I had Narcotics Anonymous, and I had the life skills empowerment program, which was a fabulous program for me. Imagine you have an old car, and it has a hard time cranking up, so you have to give it a boost. Then all of a sudden it cranks up. That’s what the program did for me. It got me going again.
I met people in the life skills empowerment program that I’m still friends with today. And I got to share my story in the group in a way that I never did before. I could feel myself being put back together a little bit. I could feel the bones coming together and the sinews coming together. The program was really a liberating experience for me. All this darkness that I had inside me became light. And that’s where God is – in the light. ...
I cannot walk past any person, especially a homeless person who may be laid out on the street, without acknowledging him or her as a child of God. I can’t do it. I try to love every person I come in contact with, because love was so freely given to me. I know there are a lot of people like me that are still out there. People are grieving. I want them to know that it doesn’t matter how far you’ve gone – God can bring you back. And most of the time, God works through people, through a loving and healing community.
LEARNING TO TRUST
To be homeless is to experience a great trauma, and it often comes atop previous traumas in the homeless person’s life. Recovering from it is a long process that requires much work on the part of the individual and support from the community.
Each person’s path is unique, but in general the journey can be divided into three phases: stabilization, during which an individual gets into shelter and begins to address underlying issues like addiction or mental illness; empowerment, attained through training in life skills and self-knowledge; and finally, freedom and responsibility – the move to a residence of one’s own, usually with a job or volunteer role, and an appropriate level of support.
To start the first phase of recovery, the homeless individual has to believe that it’s worth the effort. “People who are homeless feel that they have no hope. They are disconnected from society,” says Allison Kelsick, outreach program director for Catholic Charities of New York. “Trust is a big issue. If we are able to instill trust, through the work that we do, people begin to get hope. That’s the beginning.”
Often it is formerly homeless volunteers or staff members who are able to create trust in others and show them that there is indeed cause for hope. “Groups like the Life Experience Faith Sharing Association, whose members have experienced homelessness, are uniquely able to reach out and help people who are on the street,” George Horton says.
Once an individual has been placed in a Safe Harbor shelter – which offers security, dignity and access to services to address his or her underlying issues – they can work toward qualifying for an empowerment program like the EOP. For the first time in years, they are methodically working toward a goal.
“The trauma in the homeless person’s life freezes them,” Kelsick says. “We try to help them to unfreeze themselves.”
Not that Kelsick is taking the credit. “It’s not us,” she says. “It’s them, their own gifts and their own hard work. Because they trusted us, they felt that they had somebody on their side. And that’s what it is. We are on their side.”
BREAKING GOOD
A bright student and exceptional athlete, Michelle Riddle (EOP graduate 2003) became homeless at 9 or 10 when her alcoholic parents separated after a house fire. Eventually, her mother found an apartment – with a boyfriend who sexually abused Michelle. By the age of 16 she had left school. In her mid-20s, addicted to crack, she found stable homes with relatives for her three children as her own life spiraled into homelessness. At 36, HIV-positive, she went to prison for selling drugs.
When I went to prison in 1998, I was considered the world’s smallest drug dealer. I weighed all of 88 pounds. My hair was so matted that they had to cut it all off, because we couldn’t even comb it. They told me that if I did the prison’s substance abuse treatment programs, I would get work release and then I could do parole. The prison treatment programs were good. Narcotics Anonymous helped me realize that I had a disease, that the driving force to get the next hit was my disease. When I came home from prison, I had been clean for four years. Today I have been clean for 16!
In prison, I became a Christian. I started going to church, and I became an usher. That’s when I came back to God. After I got out, I was baptized at a Baptist church. It took going to prison for me to get my life together. I always say I was rescued, not arrested. ...
In 2000, I got out of prison and went to the Department of Corrections’ Phoenix House. After I left Phoenix House, I did everything I could to recover and get help. I joined the Women’s Prison Association. No matter what my counselor there asked me to do, I did it. I might gripe, but I did it. She said I was one of her best clients and gave me a Phenomenal Woman certificate. After that I went to Women in Need, where I was tutored for my GED. I worked hard, and when I got my diploma, I was so freaking happy.
People at Women in Need told me about the life skills empowerment program [EOP] at New York Catholic Charities, run by George Horton and Ms. K [Allison Kelsick]. In 2003, I joined the 29th class of the program. My mentor was named Lucille, and we connected spiritually. She was Catholic and I wasn’t, but God is God no matter what religion He is under. The program gave me the opportunity to hear stories from different people. When they shared their lives, I felt their pain, and that response told me that they were telling the truth.
On Speakers’ Night, I got picked to tell my story. I was really nervous, but God helped me. I shared about what I had done. I shared about prison, and I shared my experiences coming back home. After I finished, I got a standing ovation. My class had 16 people, and we didn’t lose anybody. We all graduated December 1.
When my mother died, I was afraid of idle time. In the past, I always dealt with death by getting high. I got in touch with Ms. K. at New York Catholic Charities, who told me, “Come on in and help with the EOP’s 15- year anniversary.” That was 10 years ago and I’m still volunteering at Catholic Charities. On any given Tuesday, you can find me there; after that I go to my NA home group. It’s like tea before the cake. You can bank on it.
LEARNING TO STAND
Before a homeless individual can enroll in the EOP, she or he must achieve stabilization. Usually
this means residence in a “safe harbor” shelter such as one of the Beacon of Hope facilities created by Catholic Charities. The EOP candidate also must be in consistent treatment to address any mental health issues – and those with substance abuse issues must have remained “clean” for 60 days. They have to be ready to become serious collaborators in the process of their own recovery.Those who are invited to join an EOP “class” embark upon a 12-week program meant to give them the skills to live in their own homes as responsible citizens. They take part in workshops on subjects ranging from conflict management and communication skills to increasing self-esteem and overcoming trauma. “Sometimes people come to us and don’t understand that you have to pay the rent at the beginning of the month – because no one in their life ever modeled that for them,” Allison Kelsick says. “They were never taught certain very basic things.”
In addition, the participants are assigned mentors to walk with them past milestones large and small – filling out forms to apply for housing or food assistance, filing taxes, preparing for a court appearance and eventually perhaps a job interview. “Unfortunately, the only way out of homelessness is to kowtow to a tremendous amount of bureaucracy,” says Susan Greenfield, Fordham University professor, editor of Sacred Shelter and a volunteer mentor for an IAHH life skills empowerment program.
“There’s a level of submission required to find your way to services. People have to be willing to accept that, and it’s hard. It comes from this mentality that there’s something wrong with people who are homeless.”
For mentors, who help participants through these steps, the process is fulfilling but also humbling. “I could never do what they have done,” Greenfield says. “Getting out of homelessness is harder than getting into Harvard.”
The third part of the EOP, and in many ways its culmination, is the storytelling project. “The storytelling is so important because they’ve never told their stories before,” Kelsick says. “First of all they didn’t have anybody to listen. Nobody listens to them. Does anybody even see them?”
In writing down and sharing their life stories, the participants come to terms with the pain of their pasts but also learn to recognize their own strength and take possession of their destiny. “Stories of suffering are painful, but when the people who have suffered have moved to a place of healing, they are also full of wisdom,” Greenfield says.
After 12 weeks, participants graduate and most go on to achieve independent housing and some sort of self-sufficiency. The vast majority of them find a calling – through work or volunteer assignments – helping others in need. To Greenfield, these people are heroic. “What if we were to recognize the incredible characteristics that go into recovering from homelessness?” she asks. “When those who have experienced injustice and suffering find their way through to a certain kind of generosity – which is true of everyone in Sacred Shelter – there is a wisdom that can be of enormous benefit to everyone, including those who consider themselves more fortunate.”
AMAZING GRACE
In 2002, at the age of 47, Deborah Canty (EOP graduate, 2005) checked herself into a rehab center. After an upbringing marked by sexual and emotional abuse, followed by years of alcoholism and horrific nightmares of a suppressed childhood trauma, she finally realized she desperately needed help. In rehab, Alcoholics Anonymous helped her come to terms with God and forgive the people who had hurt her. When she left rehab, she tried living with her daughter but the relationship was too volatile, so she wound up at a shelter.
Photograph by Ricardo Paiba
I used to put down homeless people. “Oh, they homeless because they don’t want to work,” I said. “They lazy.” So God said, “Let me put you in a shelter so you can see what’s really happening.”
Living in a shelter was hard. For the first three months at New Providence, I didn’t want to know any of the women because I saw a lot of arguing and fist fighting. The residents called you the “b” word and never used your real name. I signed myself out for the day as much as I could. I went to my AA meetings or to my doctors’ appointments. I visited my daughter. Then one day I was signing out and I heard some people singing “Amazing Grace.” My mother and grandmother used to sing it when they were in some of their harder times. Pen in hand, I looked at the security guard. She said, “Go back there, Miss Canty, you’ll like them.” So I went back, and this lady came up to me.
“Hi, I’m Sister Dorothy. Would you like to join our Life Experience and Faith Sharing (LEFSA) group? We’re not church. It’s about your lived experience and your faith, whatever that is.” Sister Dorothy’s presence made me feel so welcome. In the group, the people shared their real names, and everyone said, “God loves you and we love you too.” From then on, I started hanging out with the LEFSA women. In there, I met some friends that I still have today.
Before in my life, I always thought things were black and white. I never saw the in-between. But the shelter and LEFSA changed me completely.
Sister Dorothy suggested I attend the life skills empowerment program at New York Catholic Charities. So I met George Horton and Ms. K. Ms. K. was tough and no nonsense. I respected her for that.
George says, “Everybody has a story worth hearing.” I wrote about how I had been sexually abused. I told my story at graduation, and I told it at other places after that. Sometimes when I finished, I heard people say, “I can identify with that,” or “Something like that happened to me,” or “Thank you for bringing the monster out of the closet.” Maybe my words were setting them free to tell their stories. What they thought was their shame was not their burden to hold onto. We think the sexual abuse was our fault, and that’s what keeps us quiet. But what does a child have to say about a grown person taking advantage of him or her sexually or mentally? Get the guilt back to where it belongs.
I also started seeing a therapist once a week. That was because Ms. K. told me I should. My therapist allowed me to express myself, to let the anger come out. I had to get it out, whatever it took, screaming and cussing or hitting things. I had to do that until I was too exhausted to be angry anymore. It took a long time.
In the past, I was a nasty, mean drunk. I couldn’t even look myself in the eye in the mirror. I would never look into my soul because I didn’t like what I saw. I would fight at the drop of a hat. If you said two or three words I didn’t like, I was going to swing on you. During recovery I started asking, “Why am I so sore? Why am I hurting so bad?” I put myself in other people’s shoes, and I became the first to apologize. People who knew me before were shocked.
For a long time, I had been trying to get housing. Some of the places were so scary and run down. I wouldn’t allow my dog to live there. Finally, an organization called SUS – Services for the Underserved – offered me a room in an SRO called New Life Homes, only six blocks from my daughter’s apartment. When I first went to see it, I wasn’t sure. It was a little studio, and it had a stove but no oven. At the shelter that night, I got on my knees. “God, let your will be done ̓cause you know what’s best for me.” The next day I looked in the paper, and Macy’s was having a sale on toaster ovens. So I went and bought one, and I also bought three nonstick frying pans – small, medium and large. I gave the large frying pan to my daughter. And I said, “I’m claiming that apartment in the name of Jesus.” That’s where I’ve lived ever since.
After I got my apartment, Sister Dorothy called me. “Debbie, we have been talking, and we want to give you a job on our LEFSA team.”
I said, “I can’t do what you’re doing.”
Sister Dorothy was feisty. “Weren’t you homeless? Of course, you can do it.” That was nine years ago and I’m still working for LEFSA today. Two days a week, I go to the shelters to sponsor hope. I let people know that what God did for me, he can do for them.