Near downtown Dallas, Stanley Gilbert goes to work. His job is to stop where most people do not, “This may be public property in our mind. But this is their home. This is where they live,” says Gilbert, referring to people in tents and sleeping bags on the sides of streets in South Dallas. “We have to go out and look for them.”
When he finds them, sometimes on hands and knees, Gilbert approaches these people without homes and announces his arrival, “Hey anybody home?” He offers them a bag of food, some dry socks, and prayer, “We ask them if we can pray with them. Nobody ever asks them that. And they have a lot of needs. Sometimes they want that more than they want food.” We listen in as he holds hands with one man living in a small tent, “Father I pray that you keep him safe from the evils on this street.”
He prays with another woman in a tent nearby. She doesn’t want us to see her or know her name, but on this cold, rainy morning she agrees to a short conversation through her slightly unzipped tent door:
“What’s life like out here?"
“It’s hard. It’s hard," she said.
“You staying warm?"
"Trying to,” she said.
“They brought you some food today."
"Yeah, that made me happy," she said.
Gilbert asks her and everyone else he encounters out here a lot of questions, “Where are you from originally?” “What’s your birthday?” “Can I take a new picture of you?”
He takes photos, notes, and even GPS coordinates with his iPad. The goal of Gilbert’s frequent visits is to get them to come see him, “Not just going out and doing drive by philanthropy. We want a relationship with them.”
Gilbert works with Our Calling. Executive Director and Pastor Wayne Walker explains, “We are zoned as a church, so we want to welcome anybody here all the time.” Walker says the mission of the non-denominational organization is to offer a potential path out of homelessness for those who don’t live in shelters in Dallas County, “This is the largest collection of unsheltered people in the county. This is where they come.”
Walker says in addition to the people Our Calling visits on the streets, they welcome 400 to 600 walk-ins each day. We listen to one of those walk-ins greeted by an Our Calling representative, “The main thing I need, and you might not be able to help me, is a pair of socks and a belt.” They were able to help him.
Our Calling provides emergency clothing and hygiene items. They also give rare luxuries for people sleeping on the streets. “Your towel is right there. You have soap inside the shower,” a worker instructs one man as he is given access to a hot shower in one of the center’s several private bathrooms. Nearby a man hears his number called over the loud speaker and drags a heavy bag of soiled clothing to the help desk. Joe Garcia takes it from there, “We’ve got six machines going right now.” The staff washes and dries up to 15 pounds of laundry for people who need it.
Robert Miller takes advantage of the private shower and the laundry service, “How long have you been on the streets? Off and on for the past 25 years.” This chance to clean up is huge, he says, “It’s a big deal when it is wet and cold out like it is right now.”
While the laundry cycles, and lunch is served, Walker says there’s time to work on the cycles that bring people here in the first place, “If the root causes of homelessness are not addressed, and you just relocate somebody, they are going to repeat it.”
Walker says they bring in experts to help homeless people get IDs, reconnect with family, get mental health treatment, veteran benefits, and spiritual support. “We have pastors, chaplains, counselors, and agencies here to address the real need," Walker said. They have church services here, and they offer various life skills classes.
For 17 years, they’ve been assisting and tracking the homeless, “We are tracking details on over 10,000 folks.” Walker says, “The average person we serve is over 55. We’re seeing about 80 percent are male, about 13 percent of the population are veterans. But the most alarming thing is just the growth. It’s growing faster now than ever before. We see between 250 and 300 brand new people every month.”
One of those recent additions is that woman in the tent we talked to:
“How long have you been out here?"
"A few months now,” she said.
“Are you going to be all right?"
"I hope so,” she said.
When we finish talking to her, she zips up the tiny window we briefly have into her world -- a world that’s getting more populated here, despite the best efforts of those who are trying to help.
It’s hard work. During a dangerous cold snap recently, Our Calling opened the facility to give hundreds of the unsheltered a warm place to stay overnight, even though this is not an overnight shelter.
During our visit, Walker steps away for a moment and returns with a citation. It’s just a written warning, but Walker says another infraction could bring a hefty penalty, “We got this today. Code enforcement showed up. It says operating an overnight shelter. Illegal land use.” Walker is dismayed but unrepentant, “We’re not a shelter--don’t want to be one--but we feel a moral obligation when it falls below freezing to give people a place to stay so they won’t die. This makes me sad that Dallas hasn’t addressed the growing homeless population adequately and they are considering us in violation because we are trying to step in and fill the gap.”
Our Calling has gotten happier visits from other cities, “We have lots of cities that come in and learn what we do. We have no secret sauce. We teach them everything and they stay with us a while, and they take a lot of notes. We have about 15 or 20 cities that have asked us to come in to their cities and expand.” Our Calling has gone nationwide with its app, which gives citizens the ability to pinpoint a location where a homeless person looks like they need help. It also provides vital resources to homeless or abused people throughout the country. As for expansion plans, Walker says Our Calling is looking to go deeper, not wider; to concentrate on more areas of North Texas where the unsheltered are underserved.
About Our Calling:
Our Calling relies heavily on donations. The organization reports that it is 100% privately funded, that it gets no government or public money, that it is audited annually, and that it is an accredited member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. Our Calling says it has an annual budget of $1,500,000 and a client to staff ratio of 35:1. The organization breaks down it's funding as follows:
65 percent from individuals
30 percent from foundations and family trusts
5 percent from churches