Denver’s Road Home — Mayor John Hickenlooper’s 2005 initiative that included pairing a homeless family or senior with a faith community — has hit some important milestones but not gone the distance.
The mayor’s 10-year plan to end the city’s homelessness called on 1,000 congregations to embrace and mentor homeless families.
By the end of April, 285 congregations had risen to the challenge of the Family and Senior Homeless Initiative. Faith teams, with more than 1,500 people, have guided 704 families and seniors into permanent housing.
About 85 percent of the 2,300 who attained housing were still in it one year later, according to the program manager, the Denver Rescue Mission.
There is currently a waiting list of 13 families.
At the Colorado Prayer Luncheon on Thursday, Hickenlooper said the program has been one of the most rewarding things he has worked on.
“The faith community has been the backbone of this entire effort from the very beginning,” he said. “This is something that really does work. If we can get people back to self-sufficiency, we do more than just save resources and money, we actually re-create lives . . . and are doing the will of God.”
The initiative has served as a model for the cities of Fort Collins; Las Vegas; Portland, Ore.; Boise, Idaho; Dallas; and Knoxville, Tenn.
“Overall, we’ve had great response, but like anything, it kind of goes in waves,” said initiative director Brad Hopkins. “The challenge is to help 1,000 families by 2015.”
About half of all the homeless are families, Hopkins said.
While the program is on track to possibly exceed its original goals, Denver Rescue Mission spokeswoman Greta Walker said, there are families in need now, including:
• A 40-year-old woman who works as a medical lab technician but lost her home to foreclosure. The woman couldn’t take a second job, she said, and adequately care for her son. They’re living in the Salvation Army’s Lambuth Center.
• A truck driver who has been living with his wife and six children in a motel for one year.
• Frances Boyd, 62, who lost her apartment after a series of rent increases outstripped her fixed retirement income. The former Fort Carson medical-supply clerk has lived at The Crossing, a Denver Rescue Mission residential community, for about a year.
“It’s been a blessing. It was hard at first because I was used to having my own kitchen,” Boyd said. “What I’m looking for now is my own home . . . a mortgage.”
She is waiting for a church to step up, perhaps her own, with a mentoring team.
The program asks congregations to help a family or senior — those with legal, steady income — get into stable housing by providing money, typically about $1,200 for the first month’s rent and deposit.
The congregation forms a mentoring team of two to six people who can meet with the family or senior seven times over four to six months to help guide the household toward self-sufficiency.
Mentors participate in 90-minute training. The team’s main mentoring areas are budgeting guidance, material or spiritual support and help with forming and meeting personal goals.
Judy Douglas, a member of Jefferson Unitarian Church, was a casual friend of a woman she later came to mentor through this program.
The woman, 46, had divorced her alcoholic husband and later obtained custody of her 7-year-old grandson after her daughter succumbed to the same addiction.
The two had been homeless but were able to move into stable housing in November. The boy is attending school again after a long absence. His grandmother is working on her general equivalency diploma.
After she started mentoring, Douglas could see she had greatly underestimated the challenges.
“I didn’t realize how entrenched people are in poverty. I didn’t realize how entrenched I am in the middle class,” Douglas said. “In many ways, she’s like any other friend — intelligent, funny and good company. But she’s never been out of poverty. What seems natural to her is not natural to me.”
Douglas said it’s important for mentors to set boundaries at the beginning, with regard to the type and amount of support, monetary or otherwise.
“Most people respect that,” Douglas said.
At times, Douglas was discouraged, but her friend kept putting one foot in front of the other.
“Even tiny steps are good,” Douglas said. “It’s important to enjoy it as a friendship. But don’t go into it thinking you’re going to save somebody. You can’t.”
Staff writer Jessica Fender contributed to this report.
Electa Draper: 303-954-1276 or edraper@denverpost.com
