One University-area church is attempting to stem the stigma of homelessness by breaking down barriers.
The Central United Methodist Church holds a service every Sunday called Community of Hope that invites everyone to worship together. Associate pastor Greg Henneman said when the program began; its aim was to break through the stigma and generalization set upon a majority of the homeless population.
“If you’re not familiar with a group of people, it’s easy to be uncomfortable or feel threatened. That’s part of why we’re trying to build relationships and build communities, for those barriers to come down,” Henneman said. “Our whole motivation for starting it was to bring people together.”
The program, which began three years ago, serves about 60 to 80 people every Sunday, almost doubling in size since its infancy, Henneman said. All monetary support for Community of Hope comes from the congregation itself and surrounding businesses that lend a hand.
Panera donates bread every week and Cheba Hut provides around 50 sandwiches to the congregation twice a month, he said.
The lunch is served as a balanced meal with health in mind; for instance, last Sunday’s menu included pork chops, watermelon, asparagus, bread and a sugar cookie to top it all off.
The church knows how hard life is for those who attend and that dealing with those conditions can be much more difficult with a bad or unbalanced diet, he said.
It’s not just about the meal, volunteers from the congregation and the homeless community are given the opportunity to play music and sing.
“It’s not only a safe place where you can get a meal, it’s a safe place where you can speak, you can be heard. People who are homeless are living in a survival mode, so they are constantly asking questions of; is this safe? Do I trust this?” he said. “When you serve next to somebody you realize, this is a person just like me and the differences melt away pretty quickly.”
To further elicit that sense of community and solidarity, those who serve and help out are not only congregation volunteers but also homeless themselves, he said.
One of those volunteers, Mary – who requested to be identified by her middle name – attends and serves at Community of Hope to help others like her, she said.
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“I come here because I like working with people on the street. I care about what they need and mainly, that they’re being treated right,” she said. “The people that help out here and most of the volunteers, they treat the people with respect and treat them like they are people and that’s what they like, what they want.”
Mary goes to United Methodist every week for Helping Hands, another program offered Monday through Friday that gives out bus passes and sack lunches to those in need, she said.
Mary said the biggest issues she faces daily is getting a job due to disabilities and travel restrictions, along with finding a place to stay regularly, she said.
Shelters are extremely overcrowded, especially during the winter months, when safety and warmth are paramount concerns within the homeless community, she said.
As a result, many homeless people seek refuge on UNM campus, coming into contact often with UNMPD, who try to help those seeking shelter.
Lt. Tim Stump, UNMPD’s public information officer said because the University is the urban center of Albuquerque and the cross-junction of numerous bus routes, homelessness is especially prevalent in the area around campus.
“It’s an attractive, secure place where the homeless seek for shelter.” Stump said, “It’s a daily occurrence but we treat it more as a proactive approach. We have officers go out every morning and in the late evenings. We try to get them to shelters, we’re in touch with all the organizations that take people in, we try to get them in to MATS (detox program) or Joy Junction”.
Stump said UNMPD recognizes the homeless population as human beings and don’t generalize or underestimate their struggle. The numbers of homeless people in the area remains stagnant, not increasing or decreasing.
According to surveys conducted by The Coalition To End Homelessness, there were around 400 unsheltered homeless in 2011, with the total number at about 1,600 citywide. The 2013 survey shows only about 150 homeless unsheltered and a total number of about 1,200.
While the data suggests that the numbers are decreasing, it is difficult to take a correct tally of displaced people because of their transient lifestyle.
Even with the apparent decrease, there is a far more imposing reality: Those who die as a result of being homeless.
Every December, United Methodist holds a memorial service for those homeless who passed away over the course of the year, Henneman said, an average of about fifty casualties.
“Its not just a statistic, they’re people’s lives and there are people who you learn very intimately and you’re very close to and you become friends with. When you’re involved intimately in people’s lives, no matter who the people are, you get to share in great joys and you shed tears.” Henneman said. “It’s easy to stigmatize anybody you don’t know, whether that’s racially, economically or culturally. We can stigmatize anybody until we know them, once you have a relationship with somebody then you realize this is a person with hopes and dreams and pains just like me.”
Henneman has been in Albuquerque for five years and is committed to the fight to stem and eventually end homelessness, he said.
On the advocacy board for Healthcare for the Homeless and affiliated with the Coalition To End Homelessness, Henneman said he believes that while finding a place to stay and food to eat are major struggles there is a equally crucial issue to be addressed.
That issue is breaking the stigma of homelessness and the separation the population feels to them, the main goal of Community of Hope, he said.
Although a daunting task, Henneman holds faith in the work he’s doing and knows the day he anxiously awaits is not unattainable.
“The dream day of my job, would be the day I open the doors and there’s nobody there. Or we go to do the Sunday service, and everyone’s full,” he said. “We all need to take stock of what’s happening around us and work together to help our fellow brothers and sisters, those who struggle silently, otherwise we are dooming ourselves to complicity in leaving their voices unheard.”
Matthew Reisen is a freelance writer for the Daily Lobo. He can be reached at news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @DailyLobo.
