Change comes to Chattanooga Community Kitchen

Zack Lowman does laundry at the Chattanooga Community Kitchen on Friday, Dec. 9, 2016, in Chattanooga, Tenn.
Zack Lowman does laundry at the Chattanooga Community Kitchen on Friday, Dec. 9, 2016, in Chattanooga, Tenn.
photo People wait in line for food at the Chattanooga Community Kitchen on Friday, Dec. 9, 2016, in Chattanooga, Tenn.

For nearly a decade, "Sky" Ryan made his home in a pocket of woods near the city, sleeping inside a structure he built and insulated by hand.

He kept to himself, he said, and woke every day with only beer on his mind. He wasn't looking to be saved or to change his routine. Some days, he would pass by the Chattanooga Community Kitchen on 11th Street and stop for lunch. At times, he used the services offer by the Homeless Health Care Center, across the street. But he never asked about steady work or stable housing.

"I was disgusted with everything in life, and I had no reason to carry on," said the 58-year-old, who was born in California and traveled east to Chattanooga years ago to help care for his then-wife's mother.

Then he met Jimmy Turner, a military veteran and student at Tennessee Temple University. At the time, Turner was spearheading outreach to homeless camps around the area through a nonprofit ministry he helped start called Relevant Hope.

Over time, Ryan said Turner and his group built trust with many of the chronically homeless living in his camp, including him. They weren't like many he had met in the nonprofit sector. He didn't feel like a number or a problem when he was with them. The organization was manned by volunteers, and the love they exhibited changed him, maybe forever, he said.

"They convinced me that people do care," Ryan said.

He said he met Jesus Christ, and Turner was by his side as he navigated that new faith, entered rehab for 40 years of alcohol addiction, and transitioned to a new life and sobriety, with the help of caseworkers at the Community Kitchen who worked to secure housing for Ryan and assisted with his job search.

"I didn't realize what we did here," said Ryan, who has been working at the Community Kitchen for more than a year and is now head of the maintenance crew. "I just thought that it was food. I thought it was a government-controlled thing. I thought, 'This is where the tragic homeless people go.'"

For years, the Community Kitchen has provided far more than emergency food and shelter with its $2.4 million annual budget. Several federally funded programs managed by Community Kitchen caseworkers focus on moving the homeless to stability. Still, the programs lacked the level of personal attention that Ryan's experience illustrated to be essential, said Jens Christensen, executive director at the Community Kitchen since 2014.

So things have been changing at the Community Kitchen, Christensen said.

For one, a culture change is underway. Caseworkers and other employees will no longer call those using their services "clients" and instead will refer to them as "guests" or "participants." It's a small tweak to organizational lingo, but Christensen hopes it will signify the Community Kitchen's shift away from the transactional model that has dominated the social service field to a relational one, which experts argue should supplant it.

Relevant Hope is now working under the umbrella of the Community Kitchen. Christensen said he hired Turner as chief operating officer and to help the organization integrate a more personal approach to its services.

"It makes them feel like they are making a different and that they are participating and active in making their own lives better," said Sharon McReynolds, a case manager who works with one of the kitchen's four federally funded stability programs.

And with this new approach, the Community Kitchen is adopting a new focus as well, Christensen said.

By and large, housing is the biggest need of those who come for help. More and more, Christensen said caseworkers find that people have paying jobs but they have a host of complex issues that push housing out of reach. They are also seeing more families with children facing homelessness.

Local and national point-in-time counts show shrinking numbers of homeless people, but Christensen said the numbers don't reveal much about the current level of need in the community.

Counts can be unreliable, he said, because many people surveyed won't admit to being homeless. Many also don't consider themselves homeless if they are camping, sleeping in their cars or couch surfing - a more and more common reality, especially for young adults who have minimum wage jobs but no savings, transportation or safety net to allow them to live on their own.

Still, it's been hard to meet demand because several of the federally funded programs they managed had outdated restrictions that didn't take into account the complexity of many of the cases coming into the Community Kitchen.

Clarissa Silvels, a caseworker for nearly six years, said the program she managed would only accept single women receiving state assistance. That meant she couldn't work with couples or low-income women who were working and getting by without government assistance. A housing assistance program for men was only for the unemployed, which meant working homeless were turned away.

Thanks to changes in the restrictions, Silvels said all families have access to her program, which helps families find housing and stability through six months of personalized coaching.

"I think it has eliminated some of the boundaries," she said.

On Friday afternoon, as the sun was setting and temperatures fell, lines began to form outside the Community Kitchen as Ryan and others unrolled foam mats and lined them up on the floor, transforming the day center into an emergency shelter from the cold. Last year, on nights when temperatures dipped below freezing, an average of 110 people sought shelter each night.

The city of Chattanooga provides some money for the cold weather shelter, but the rest falls on the Community Kitchen, which increased its fundraising goal from $700,000 last year to $750,000 this year. Christensen said the kitchen is a little more than halfway to the goal. The deadline is the end of the year.

Sarah McKenzie co-chaired the 2016 Fast Day Campaign with her husband, Thorpe McKenzie, a home-grown hedge fund magnate. She said the Community Kitchen plays a vital role in the community that is often overlooked because it serves the overlooked.

"The people are there because this is in their hearts. It's more than a meal. They are invested. There really is that relationship," she said. "It's a great entry point for those looking for ways to give. It's a way to give directly, effectively and efficiently toward one of the community's largest needs."

Contact staff writer Joan Garrett McClane at jmcclane@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6601.

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