COLUMBUS — Jimmy Blanton has been house hunting.

“We’re looking at two or three properties right now for them,” Blanton, associational missionary here, said earlier this year. “Once we see the cost, we’ll present it to the churches as to who would like to be a part of it all as a Jerusalem project. We’ll proceed from there.”

“We” is the Columbus Baptist Association. “Them” will be a family caught up in a wretched economy and without a home.

The association has partnered up with the city of Columbus’ 10-year effort to eradicate homeless. For their part, churches will undertake providing shelter for families at 30-to-90 day intervals, helping them get solid footing and break the cycle that often comes with being homeless.

“The idea is to keep families from being on the street or split up by social services,” added Blanton. “They won’t be required to attend church, but we hope they eventually will. We want to meet their need for housing and through that, share the Gospel.”

Later on in May, Blanton had found out what a large undertaking the association had taken. “Once you start looking at the regulations and rules, you see there’s a lot more to it,” he admitted.

Jump to July 6. Blanton told The Index a contractor had emailed the association on plans to begin renovating a house and two apartments in September.

The house was previously part of Mission Columbus and most recently used as Sunday School space for Seeds of Faith – a Georgia Baptist Convention African American church plant that itself will soon move into a new space.

 

Joining the fight

“Our Leadership Ministry Team [for Columbus Association] voted unanimously to go forward with plans to develop a Transitional Living quarters,” Blanton added. “To get things rolling, our senior adults organization donated $20,000 to the cause.”

Columbus city leaders learned of the 10-year plan by way of its usage around the country in locales such as Portland, Fort Worth, Knoxville, and Denver, said Nathan Heald of the Homeless Resource Network, a non-profit organization working directly with the city on the effort.

The Columbus-based HRN began in 1987 as an advocacy group made up of leaders from like-minded organizations looking to help the city’s homeless, Heald added. Around 1995 it formed its own organization and staff, educating the public on homelessness and applying for funding.

“In assessing needs for the homeless around Columbus, they found ways to help more,” said the 24-year-old Heald, who joined HRN two years ago after earning a social work degree from Auburn University. “They responded to those gaps in needs.

“One of the first ways was to provide people with a means to store their belongings.

“One gentleman working third shift would keep his things in a bag in some bushes before they were stolen. Important items like his birth certificate were taken.”

Mission Columbus, the outreach arm of the Columbus Baptist Association, has already ministered to the community through education programs such as earning a graduation equivalency diploma (GED), English as a Second Language, after school tutoring, and family budgeting classes. Its medical clinic has become well-known for meeting dental and eye care needs in addition to basic medical care. Craftsmen are available to help in minor house repairs.

This latest venture builds on those. When a family no longer has to worry about where to sleep or shower, many other problems take care of themselves. There’s the first step of finding that home base from which to operate, though.

“We’re following the motto of Mission Columbus – Meeting needs, making disciples,” said Blanton. “We want to provide the housing and share the Gospel.”

Along with a place to stay, families will be offered job training opportunities, computer skill classes, tutoring, and medical care.

“The idea is to look not just at responding to homelessness but preventing it from happening in the first place,” said Heald. “What are the barriers preventing people from ending their homelessness?”

In short, if substance abuse is keeping you from holding a steady job and you can’t keep a job because you have no place to stay because your only place is your dealer’s house and that keeps you abusing drugs … then that cycle is awful hard to break.

Those homeless for the first time are in particular shell-shocked about the situation, added Heald.

“They have no clue where to go or what to do and are in crisis mode,” he said. “It takes people awhile to get things figured out. There’s a huge learning curve as to what’s available [to fix their situation].”

“It’s our desire to assist these families in every area of transition,” said Blanton. “The end vision is to love them to Jesus through acts of kindness and compassion.”