I found it hard to come up with a title that can express all the important points this video touches. From faith-based organizations using housing first and having medical clinics for our homeless transgender friends to the realities of living in a homeless tent city and how when governments close down a tent camp doing so does not solve homelessness! There is a lot of information in this video!
On a recent trip to Dallas, CitySquare invited me to join them as they provided outreach services to homeless people in tent camps! What I did not know is that CitySquare is a Christian ministry that…wait for it…uses housing first! In fact, recently CitySquare helped 75 people out of the camps directly into housing in just 89 days using the housing first model. That is amazing!
I visited two tent communities in Dallas with CitySquare’s outreach team. In the last bunch of years, I have toured many tent camps, but for some reason, this experience messed me up more than usual.
We then traveled to visit the Stewpot which is another Christian ministry working to help homeless people in Dallas. The Stewpot provides identification and birth certificate services. I learned that n Dallas if a police officer asks for ID it’s the law that you provide it. The Stewpot as has a new dental clinic and a medical clinic that one day a week turns into a clinic for transgender folks! Yup, a church helping our LGBTQ friends! Really AWESOME!
But that’s not all! The Stewpot also has an art program that is beyond any similar program I have visited.
Like my visit with the faith community in Traverse City a few weeks prior, this visit with CitySquare and the Stewpot greatly encouraged me. As homelessness gets worse and government support keeps being reduced, I strongly believe that the burden to help people will fall on the faith-based community.
